Belated update on my trip to California

As you may or may not know, I recently went to the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference in Sacramento California.

The trip was an awesome experience. I headed out to the airport with my friend and colleague Jen at 3:30am Wednesday morning. We arrived in San Francisco and had enough time to do a bit of exploring and eat lunch. It was a gorgeous day, but we didn't have a lot of time to spend there before we needed to catch our bus to Sacramento. (And just a short note: the Greyhound in the US is not the same as in Canada... they're very very sketchy... but we arrived in Sacramento safely)

The resort where the conference was held was beautiful. The conference speakers and the sessions were very informative and useful for my thesis work. My poster presentation was well received, and I got a lot of good feedback. I made a lot of great professional contacts.

There were several key themes presented at this conference, including: the acceleration of technology adoption and appropriate use, climate change policies and programs, individual action and decision making, models of behavior, and media and marketing. It was interesting to see the focus on technology, a very capitalistic approach to the climate change problem. There was very little talk about the actual curtailment of energy using behaviour. Rather, the bulk of the conversations were about how to live our lives more efficiently - without having to change our core behaviors.

This conference had several big political connection. Governor Arie sent a letter to the conference attendees (actually, I expect that the reason that they held the conference in Sacramento was because they were hoping that he was going make an appearance.) And, the co-president of Al Gore's organization Alliance for Climate Protection gave an inspirational key note address.

I got to see quite a bit of Sacramento. I was treated to dinner in Old Sacramento with some of the other Canadian attendees on Thursday night after the poster session. Old Sacramento has an Old West theme and is quite touristy.

I got to see the rest of downtown Sacramento on Friday night. Jen and I, along with another grad student we met, went out to a fancy-ish restaurant for dinner and a drink. Afterwards we went for a walk and saw the the State Capitol and other important state buildings. It's a beautiful city, but a little sketchy... the state prison and court houses are right downtown... surrounded by many many Bail Bonds.

Unfortunately, the only day that I had to see San Francisco was Saturday and the weather didn't co-operate - it was pouring rain. However, I made the most of it by visiting with a friend I had met at the conference - a PhD student at Sanford - and some of his friends. We went out for lunch, and then went out for a few drinks before I caught my plane home.

The only thing I regret is that I didn't take very many pictures.... I didn't really have time between rushing to conference sessions, traveling and bad weather. Not a good excuse though.

That about sums it up!