Sustainability News

In a May 2016 segment of "Is it worth it?" on FOX 10 Arizona Morning, ASU senior sustainability scientist Harvey Bryan answered frequently-asked questions about installing solar panels on a home.

Bryan, a professor in The Design School, explained to hosts Rick D'Amico and Andrea Robinson that there are a variety of rooftop solar options available. They range from crystalline to thin-film, and vary in efficiency and price.

He confirmed that 85% of the rooftop solar market is constituted by power-purchasing agreements, where there are no up-front costs and you are paid for the energy that you generate. There are also leasing agreements, where you pay to lease the panels but get your energy for free, as well as outright purchasing.

In the instance of outright purchasing, an expensive option in the short-term, Bryan estimates owners can expect paybacks in six to eight years. This is because technology is reducing costs by up to 30% a year in some instances.

Bryan advises shopping around and getting at least three quotes prior to making a purchase.

Strengthening Arizona State University’s commitment to innovation, ASU and Beijing Normal University have agreed to establish the Joint International Research Laboratory of Disaster Risk and Sustainability Sciences. The mission of the Joint Lab is to establish an international innovation platform for fostering research, training and education programs in both disaster risk and sustainability sciences, with an emphasis on integrated risk governance for sustainable development.

The ultimate goals for the Joint Lab are to understand the transformation of social-ecological systems in the context of global climate change, to provide the knowledge required for societies elsewhere in the world to deal with risks posed by global environmental change, and to seize sustainable development opportunities in a transition to global sustainability.

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Arizona State University is developing a long-term partnership with Beijing Normal University through a joint education program. This program between ASU and BNU allows the universities to drive their shared vision of sustainability through education.

We’re excited to announce that BNU and ASU have agreed to establish a collaborative education program known as the “BNU-ASU 3+1+2 Program.” This program allows qualified undergraduate students enrolled at BNU to successfully complete three years of their curriculum at BNU, and then transfer to ASU for another year to finish their undergraduate program. When students complete the first four years in the program, they receive a bachelor’s degree from BNU, after which they have the option to pursue a two-year Master of Science in Sustainability degree at ASU's School of Sustainability.

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Honolulu – Leaders from Kamehameha Schools (KS) and Arizona State University (ASU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on April 11 to cooperate and advance education and sustainability.

“This MOU signifies a call to action for both of our organizations. Partnerships such as this also demonstrate our commitment to foster local and global servant leadership and cultural engagement among Native Hawaiians and all learners in Hawaiʻi,” said KS Chief Executive Officer Jack Wong. “We acknowledge that we cannot do this alone, but instead we need to work together with those who share the same goals and whose priorities align with ours, with Hawai‘i’s.”

The partnership with ASU is another step toward KS’ strategic goal of contributing to our communities’ collective efforts to kōkua educational systems throughout Hawai‘i.

“Arizona State University and Kamehameha Schools share a mission to improve the communities around us through education,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “This partnership creates pathways for our students to sustain and enrich society -- at a local level and far beyond.”

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To commemorate Earth Day 2016, the ASU Wrigley Institute partnered with the City of Tempe to host a clean-up of "A" Mountain on April 22.

Roughly 150 volunteers from at least seven organizations hit the trails of Tempe's only preserve, armed with trash pickers and bags. Staff from the Department of Public Works – who had come in on their day off, in some instances – hauled away four dump trucks of debris, with many more small loads taken away in golf carts.

According to Robert Bartelme of the City of Tempe, up to 150 bags of trash were removed. This is a testament to the impressive volunteer turnout – the largest in the event's seven-year history.

ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City was one of only 30 National Science Foundation-funded projects invited to represent the organization at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., from April 16-17, 2016.

Visitors to the DCDC  booth learned about water in the West through WaterSim – a simulation tool created by the center to estimate water supply and demand for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. It allows users to explore how various factors like regional growth, drought, climate change and water management policies influence water sustainability.

The festival – the largest and only national science festival, as well as the largest STEM education event in the United States – saw an estimated 350,000 visitors over the course of two days.

Author, journalist and food activist Michael Pollan — named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine — gave a Wrigley Lecture on April 14, 2016, as part of the School of Sustainability's 10th anniversary celebration.

Pulling from 15 years of research, Pollan detailed the many shifts in agriculture since the industrial revolution – including the move from sunlight to oil. He explained how many factories that supported WWII – like those that manufactured bombs – went into the food business post-war, making products like pesticides instead.

These shifts have had a number of unintended negative consequences, Pollan explained. They include crops that are so laden with chemicals that they are not fit for direct human consumption, a poor quality of life for farmed animals, and a significant toll on the overall health of Americans.

Pollan concluded by commending the ASU Wrigley Institute for its focus on solutions to the problems of food system sustainability. After receiving a standing ovation, he joined the excitement at both the Rescued Food Feast and Festival of Sustainability at ASU.

In 2014-2015, more than 1,500 ASU students were enrolled as sustainability majors and minors across business, engineering, sustainability, humanities and nutrition. Ten years prior, the degree did not exist – not at ASU or any other university in the nation.

The festivities on April 14, 2016, not only celebrated the evolution and accomplishments of the first-ever School of Sustainability, they recognized the foresight and collaborative spirit of Arizona State University as a whole.

The day began with a packed house at a Wrigley Lecture by best-selling author and food activist Michael Pollan, who discussed some disturbing trends in our food system and how they can be reversed. After receiving a standing ovation from the audience, Pollan joined the migration to the Rescued Food Feast, which served nearly 1,000 people with delicious meals made from nutritious foods typically disposed of for cosmetic reasons alone.

Diners then followed members of ASU's marching band to the front steps of Wrigley Hall, where Benefactor Julie Wrigley and President Michael Crow remarked on the occasion. Alumni, faculty and community members alike then enjoyed the Festival of Sustainability at ASU, featuring a Farmers Market, live music and exhibits by departments throughout the university.

It was a 10th birthday to remember!

Efforts to reverse climate change are not fast-acting enough, so we must take practical steps now to blunt disasters, says a March 2016 report called “Adaptation for a High Energy Planet: A Climate Pragmatism Project.”

Co-author Daniel Sarewitz – a sustainability scientist and the director of ASU's Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes – explains that while working toward a reduction in carbon emissions is important, we must adapt to the increased likelihood of extreme weather events in the meantime. This can be achieved through flexible, forward-thinking infrastructure; contingency plans for evacuation and emergency housing; and improved weather tracking, among others.

“There’s all sorts of aspects to this; it’s not just a technological problem,” Sarewitz says. “What we’d really like to see is policymakers and the media realize that there is a different, more hopeful way to look at the problem, and it points the way towards solutions.”

How we cope with the accumulating effects of our actions is a major issue for society and requires understanding and political leadership.

This was the sentiment of the Sustainability Series talk given by Sir Crispin Tickell – a member of the Board of Directors for Sustainability at ASU – in April 2016.

He began by staging The Anthropocene, which he described as a man-made geological epoch that started when fossil fuels began replacing muscle.

Now, Tickell said, we need to address climate change on an intellectual level, closing the gap between scientific findings and political will. We need to learn to think differently and – above all – to expect the unexpected.

Tickell is a member of the Advisory Council for Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. He is the former director of the Policy Foresight Programme for the University of Oxford and former chancellor of the University of Kent. 

The world we know is the product of an infinitesimal period, not only human history but in that of life on Earth. To understand the future as well as the past, we need to look back not only over the last 200,000 years since humans began to change the surface of the Earth, but also the last few million years which saw the evolution of our species.

Sir Crispin Tickell – British diplomat, environmentalist, academic and member of the Board of Directors of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU – explores the subject of "Big History" in this discussion, hosted by the Spirit of the Senses arts and cultural organization based in Phoenix.

Biodiversity describes the plethora of different species on the Earth, as well as the ecosystems that they create and sustain. Humans couldn’t survive without a biodiverse planet, simply because the ecosystems we rely on only function due to the interactions of all these different species. In many cases, we don’t know exactly how a single species fits into the web of ecosystem functions; we do know that once a species goes extinct, there’s no going back.

The Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) is one of Arizona State University’s newest endeavors to conserve biodiversity around the world, through research, natural resource management and education. In terms of education, the center is one of several ASU programs now working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to connect student researchers with partners in the global south to address conservation challenges.

“We are delighted to collaborate with the USAID program to provide our students with hands-on practical conservation development research,” says CBO director Leah Gerber.

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A five-year Arizona State University initiative called FutureH2O is flipping the global conversation about water – focusing on abundance and how to create it, rather than on scarcity.

John Sabo, a senior sustainability scientist and professor in the School of Life Sciences, directs the new initiative and announced it at a White House Water Summit on March 22, 2016.

“FutureH2O will look for new opportunities to harness the abundance of water on the planet,” said Sabo. “Some of these opportunities are things you’d expect us to do as a university, like training the next generation of water managers. But some of the other opportunities are things that ASU is uniquely poised to do."

ASU will work with large corporate water consumers to restore what they use, train a new generation of leaders on water usage, turn a Phoenix-area municipality into a model for reducing outdoor water use, as well as maximize sensors, data and the internet on a global scale to instantly manage water and hydropower.

Taking part in a high-visibility event near the nation’s capital means you need to be on your toes. Just ask sustainability scientist Zak Holman, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. He was displaying a technology at the recent ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit near Washington, D.C., when Al Gore, the former vice president, walked up and asked him about the PVMirror Holman had invented.

Holman’s PVMirrors were part of an ASU LightWorks display put on by Arizona State University for the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy) summit. ASU professors, staff and students took part in the three-day event. They had the chance to show off their work to several people, including dignitaries like Jim Yong Kim – president of the World Bank – who was also impressed by Holman's technology.

The agencies involved in implementing the Endangered Species Act have difficult choices to make regarding which species and actions are of the highest priority.

Of the 1,125 currently listed species under the Endangered Species Act, 50% still have declining populations or are high risk for extinction, with 800 additional species that must be considered by 2018. Listing species under the act is assumed to promote recovery, yet for this to be successful, conservation actions must be taken post-listing and adequate funding must be allocated. Currently only approximately 12% of listed species receive the recommended funding.

CBO Director Leah Gerber proposes that reallocating funds from species with budget surplus to offset funding deficits for underfunded species could support recovery for 180 species. The full publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can be accessed here.

Read more on the paper in Science Insider, Climate Progress, The Wildlife Society, 91.5 KJZZ,  Wired and Global Possibilities.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

By Wayne Pacelle

Note: Wayne Pacelle is president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, the nation's largest animal protection organization. He is author of the book, "The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals," and his March 2016 Wrigley Lecture is titled "The Humane Economy." 

A decade ago, Arizona voters approved a ballot measure to stop the extreme confinement of pigs and veal calves on industrial-scale farms. Opponents mounted a vigorous and mocking campaign, claiming that food costs would rise and farmers would suffer if these animals were given just a little room to move beyond tiny crates. The electorate saw through those scare tactics and passed Prop 204 in a landslide, with 62 percent voting to give animals raised for food better lives.

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The Food Systems Transformation Initiative (FSTI) is excited to collaborate with the Global Youth Innovation Network, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and other partners to support the Youth Agribusiness, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship Summit on Innovation YALESI 2016 held in Dakar, Senegal.

Youth employment and hunger are two key issues that have been impacted by the economic crisis. This is particularly true for youth living in developing countries, representing 85% of the world youth. To address these issues, YALESI 2016 will prioritize young people’s needs, considering their developmental needs, and including underserved populations, such as girls, to an effective and inclusive employment strategy.

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“We have more interest, more data, and more planning tools than we’ve ever had."

This was a sentiment expressed by James Eklund – director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board – at Decision Center for a Desert City's annual keynote on March 3, 2016.

The discussion, titled "A Conversation about Solutions for Water Sustainability in the Colorado River Basin," also included Eklund's Arizona counterpart Tom Buschatzke – director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

The two water chieftains, moderated by sustainability scientist Wellington “Duke” Reiter, explained that Arizona and Colorado have an ample water supply as the result of very careful planning and conservation.

They stressed that this fact should not keep residents of the states from viewing water as the precious resource it is.

In this March 2016 lecture, Dr. Wally Broecker discusses the changes that global warming will bring to our planet.

Broecker, whose research has focused mainly on defining the ocean’s role in climate change, is known as the grandfather of climate science.

Winner of the 1996 U.S. National Medal of Science, Broecker is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society, a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and of the European Geophysical Union, and a senior sustainability fellow at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

By James Hansen

Note: James Hansen is the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute. He is credited for perceiving the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, and delivered a Wrigley Lecture on the topic in February 2016. This essay appeared in The Arizona Republic in the same month.

The commercials are low-key, but omnipresent. Gentle, warm encouragement, the key message implicit: vote for the political candidates on the take from the fossil-fuel industry. “I am an energy voter” commercials are persuasive. They promise jobs, low prices at the pump, warm homes, and energy independence for our nation.

Benefits for all, or so it seems. In reality, benefits flow mainly to a handful of people, the fossil-fuel magnates, who prefer to be anonymous. “I am an energy voter” commercials, in effect, ask us to place our offspring on a sacrificial alter. As we raise the knife, unlike Abraham, we hear no voice telling us to stop, to put down the knife.

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