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Amanda Griscom-Little:
My name is Amanda Griscom-Little and I am a syndicated columnist. I do a weekly column on energy and the environment for www.grist.org that's syndicated on www.salon.com and occasionally on www.msnbc.com and I write for magazines ranging from Rolling Stone and Wired to Vanity Fair, New York Times magazine and outside but all generally on the same topic which is energy and the environment and I touch on a kind of broad range of issues whether it's the technology angle or the policy angle or the cultural implications. So I have kind of, I have one beat which is energy and environment but I take a lot of different approaches to the same beat. I started out as a technology writer out of college and I graduated in '96. So it was just at the brink of the dot boom and I started writing for Wired Magazine. I did a column in The Village Voice the ultimate paper in New York City on urban technology upgrades. So I specialized as a clean tech writer around that time. So my entry into the world of environment, energy policy was really through the technology angle which is why the story was so exciting for me. It was sort of a return to my roots, my techie roots where I could kind of geek out with engineers and talk about really abstruse to technology issues. Well it's interesting. The hardest thing for magazine writers and probably for reporters in general is to not kind of fall in love on some level with your subject and to really not get to maintain the objective distance that you are supposed to from your subject matter. In this case with such an intensive and immersive experience that I really found myself just getting so kind of deeply connected to the world or to the very rarified world of course of General Electric and the people that work with General Electric and the enormity of the scale of your innovations and the ingenuity of your employees, I mean it was very hard not to apply for a job at GE once this project ended because it was just captivating. It was totally enthralling and really seductive to report on and observe the way that your company works. My first trip was to Schenectady and to the Global Research and Development Headquarters and I met with Mark Little. I think that was actually the very first trip. We went then to Erie. We went to the Aviation Headquarters which is also in Upstate New York. Then we went down to Tampa to the IGCC facility and I went with Jim to Ireland to Arklow which was spectacular, another visit at the end to the upstate headquarters went into the city, met with best com stock at the NBC offices and then to Fairfield and that was the final visit actually to the great home headquarters. Then I met with Mr. Immelt in his office, or just in the conference room you know his office and I think that was the kind of last hurray for me. The day after actually we were slated to go, I think we were set to go on an afternoon and my travel was delayed because of weather problems and I risked missing the whole literally missing the boat to get out to the windmills. But they were very nice and redid the schedule so that I went the following morning which was a Saturday morning and it was very misty and sort of stormy as Ireland is known to be. And they have this incredible, I don't know it's sort of a barge I guess but this boat has been engineered to nudge right up to the base of these massive 400 foot structures. So it's not exactly very heavy craft. So we were among enormous swell these sort of 14 foot swell as that is how big they were in my memory. I couldn't exaggerate. On this very kind of light and buoyant craft, the winds were just tremendous and the misty Irish air was really quite romantic. So from this fog emerges I think there were 7 of them massive science fiction Esk structures that from the distance were very kind of delicate and elegant and as we got closer and closer were just these almost were boating beasts but just totally magnificent in their sheer size and the grace. I was so struck by how slow from a distance the blades seemed to turn as we got closer and closer just the sound of the edges of the blades just whipping against the air were so dramatic. And Jim and I actually got right up underneath. They literally nuzzled the boat, this craft right up onto the base of the structure. And so we touched the base and were right below these massive football size blades whipping around and were basically kind of screaming into the oblivion and I felt like I was on the movie Titanic or something, just king of the world. It was very romantic and powerful. Visiting the cleaner coal plant was an incredible experience. I loved that section of the trip IGCC. It's such a complex and really controversial on some level of technology just because it turns all the assumptions we have about coal on its head and it takes a lot of explaining because it's just technologically so counter intuitive and complicated and kind of futuristic. So I found that I didn't really have enough space and the tease to build that scenery out because it just, I worried that people would get too kind of bogged down in the details of how the technology works and lose the flow of the story. But that experience was amazing. Lynda and I went to Tampa and we were picked up early in the morning on a Friday by Burnet. He was this encyclopedia of knowledge on both how the technology works and the policies around these kinds of technologies. So we had an incredible walk fest on the way there and just I got this download of everything you would ever want to know about IGCC late at the site. And when we got there as you know it's yet another kind of science fiction experience just because the physical spectacle of this massive plant, just huge and the sheer size of these generating conceptions I wouldn't even know the term to use at the moment. It's just so overwhelming and so beautiful from the standpoint of a layperson and I am sure even more so from the standpoint of an engineer. We had a briefing on how the technology works and as I said it's a really, really complex thing to explain. And from there we took a tour around the plant and saw actually, I remember looking up and seeing this huge chamber which was where one of the types of pollutants that is extracted from the gasified coal was held and this sort of reservoir where this pollutant that otherwise would have gone into the air was capture and sequestered in this chamber. And I remember looking at that and thinking that is the future right there, that we can actually extract pollutants from an energy stream and stiffen it off and hold it and keep it from entering the atmosphere. It was just so dramatic to actually physically see that it's possible that coal which we always think of as that kind of black lump of rock can actually turn into a gas, a vapor and essentially become zero emission. Well it's hard to prioritize among all of my great GE extreme adventures but without a doubt nothing could possibly equip the experience of sitting 3 feet from Jeff Immelt and having the great privilege of spending an hour with him and sharing his kind of great wit and energy and enthusiasm for his company and the optimism he has for the future was just totally exhilarating. Now I remember getting to the airport after that interview and basically just calling everyone who means a lot to me because that gets a lot of people. No, but calling my husband and my father and my brother and my kind of closest advisors and just saying I have met the man who is going to change the world. And I just could not contain my awe and just totally humble appreciation for what he is trying to do. I just had total faith that he is a guy who welcomes the impossible. He welcomes the extreme adventure in the world of business and economics and there could not be a more extreme challenge to say than trying to solve the world's toughest problems and make money while you are doing it. And so if there is ever a guy who could do it I think it's Jeff Immelt and I would say well not only was it the best moment of my trip I would say it's easily one of the best moments of my career. I loved meeting.
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