Micha and Committee Work

Sometimes being in a board is quite hard. Especially when you have to organise an event, whilst you do not have the time to do so. It has already been abnormally busy with the TEDx talks livestream here

http://www.tedxutrechtuniversity.com/

and normal meetings.  Last Sunday I also arranged a lecturer to come here to talk about the International Stop the Tar Sands Day (I'll later on explain what it is). However due to the fact that I had quite some papers to do I completely forgot to arrange a room for the lecture! In the end everything ended up alright, we went sitting on a terrace on the market square instead :-).

So before I begin explaining what the  International Stop the Tar Sands Day actually is I should perhaps first begin with explaining what tar sands are. Most of the time when you start talking about the tar sands people think you talk about Tarzan. However sadly enough the tar sands aren't as great as Tarzan. Tar sands are basically oil mixed with clay, these tar sands can be found in Alberta, Canada. The reason why tar sands are so interesting to oil companies is because you can get oil out of these sands. For oil companies oil  equals money. So to get these tar sands companies engage in massive open pit mining; basically removing everything on top of the tar sands. To clarify I added some pictures which say more than a thousand words.

So now that the tar sand idea is a bit clearer I'll move on to the lecture(r). The lecturer was Derek Leahy, a Canadian born now living in Berlin. Two years ago he first got involved in clime change, by going to the Copenhagen climate talks. Now he is organiser/initiator of the International Stop The Tar Sands Day. He is just like you and me, and managed to get this international day of the ground with demonstration worldwide.

Derek explained us a lot about this day, as well as how it is to organise an international protest. However as time moved on it more turned into a discussion from which everybody learned in my opinion. Perhaps that was also because we were sitting on the terrace ;-). I would love to tell more in detail about what we talked about, however there will already be an article in the Tabula Rasa, as well as a clip in the CampusNEWS so I think I should stop here ;-).

I will posts some links or pictures as soon as these articles are available. Besides this I feel the urge to promote the event myself as well a bit. If you are interested or just want to know more feel free to contact tarsands.amsterdam@gmail.com. The demonstration will be the 18^th of June and it's going to be a great amount of fun.

My name is Micha, I am a first year student focussing on anthropology and sociology.