Accelerating risks demand urgent actions

Since March 30, 2022, the U.S. has witnessed nine billion-dollar catastrophic climate events, from drought in the Southwest to tornadoes in the Southeast to destructive hailstorms in May in the northern Midwest. Globally, Europe is addressing unprecedented drought in its primary agriculture regions; Afghanistan has dealt with tragic results from a warm winter merging with a record monsoon, creating deathly floods; and the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica continues to trend to a “doomsday” melt that could raise global sea levels by a matter of feet, not inches.

This trend of extreme climate impacts on various regions of our planet is no longer unusual, but an annual occurrence of starkly visible environmental changes that are directly attributable to the Anthropocene — the time when human activity is directly altering our climate and world. Yet, despite the seeming onslaught of disaster, we still find ourselves standing at the front edge of a decisive decade in which we as humans remain able to develop solutions to these challenges instead of further digging a hole we are unable to climb out of.

This year, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory in partnership with Carbon Collect has deployed the first MechanicalTree TM based on research by ASU Professor Klaus Lackner. This passive carbon capture technology has the potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere at ten times the rate of natural trees, providing a comprehensive technology-nature solution approach to curbing

global temperature rise. Scientists with the ASU Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science released a report showing how sunken warships are becoming habitats for coral regrowth. This discovery coincides with new research from scientists at the Florida Aquarium who have developed a process to reproduce fragile Caribbean corals. And this fall, ASU is launching a number of new centers dedicated to convening people to better understand behaviors and policy decisions while working with stakeholders to drive decision-making processes that are inclusive, equitable and smart for future growth. These include the Center for an Arizona Carbon-Neutral Economy, the Center for Energy Research and Policy and a new multi-institution partnership with UNESCO called BRIDGES, designed to better integrate sustainability science into society.

The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory is at the core of three additional efforts taking place this fall with the specific intention to help shape decision-making and policy engagement:

• The 2022 Global Futures Conference.

• 10 New Insights in Climate Science 2022.

• Carbon-free energy consortia.

Read on to learn more about these efforts.

The 2022 Global Futures Conference

What are the “must-have” outcomes and “mustdo” actions that can accelerate the necessary transformations to a safe, just and habitable planet for all? In other words, what keeps us from acting and what options are left if we do not meet the targets presently set for moving into a future that leaves options for the next generations to thrive on a healthy planet?

That is the central question for the 2022 Global Futures Conference, a world-class convening of global stakeholders representing a wide diversity of backgrounds, ages and experiences. This inaugural conference will be held in New York City from Sept. 20-22, coinciding with the 77th United Nations General Assembly and the 2022 Climate Week NYC activities. More than 150 leaders will come together to consider a new framework of 10 “must-have” outcomes and then design through dynamic, engaged working sessions the “must-do” actions to actualize the goals.

Several well-researched and ambitious frameworks already exist to reroute humans on a sustainable path for the future. For example, the 2015 U.N. General Assembly established a set of goals that were designed to address the needs of the planet and its populations, called the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Yet, we now are eight years from arriving at 2030 and, in all likelihood, will not reach the targets set to repair our relationship with each other and earth’s life-supporting systems.

The Global Futures Conference and its “10 Must Haves” build on the insights from these efforts to codesign an urgently needed “Plan B,” establishing an aggressive series of targets and associated actions toward futures in which all can thrive.

Conference speakers and participants include such noted scholars and experts as celebrated oceanographer and environmentalist Sylvia Earle, former president of the U.N. General Assembly

Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garcés and the Right Honorable Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand. The conference is organized and co-hosted by the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and the Earth League, guided jointly by Peter Schlosser and Johan Rockström.

“The goal of this conference, which we have been working toward with our expert steering committee, is to provide a new road map for humankind to use as we continue to learn and innovate through this critical time,” said Schlosser. “I cannot imagine a more invested group of people than those who are set to participate in this conference to help lay out options for our pathways ahead. I am excited to see how the outcomes of this conference will be able to help shape some of the research agenda and global partnerships for Global Futures Laboratory.”

The finalized outputs of the Global Futures Conference will be distributed this winter.

10 New Insights in Climate Science 2022

Since 2017, scientists from the Earth League, Future Earth and the World Climate Research Programme have published the “10 New Insights in Climate Science” for the international climate negotiations by way of its annual launch at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP). This report outlines 10 recent and essential climaterelated research findings that can be used by world leaders to preserve and protect the planet.

While the 2021 report stated that stabilizing global warming at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius remained viable, the world would require immediate actions across a number of areas to ensure that meeting at least 50% greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 and net zero targets by 2040 could be attained.

“To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken,” said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary- General, in his 2021 State of the Planet address. The state of the planet’s brokenness is exacerbated by the impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the failure of infrastructure across Mississippi from flooding and a new potential famine hitting eastern Africa.

The 2022 edition of “10 New Insights” will be released at COP27 in Egypt this November. With COP26 failing to establish agreements around coal-based energy and climate-based finance, this new set of insights will look to provide key implications for policymakers at global, regional and local levels that address these and other key areas.

The “10 New Insights in Climate Science” report is prepared by a consortium of leading researchers from around the world. The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory is the North American secretariat for the Earth League, one of the primary and founding partners of this publication.

Learn more at: 10insightsclimate.science.

Carbon-free energy consortia

For Arizonans, furthering a clean-energy transition in partnership with numerous stakeholders presents a historic opportunity to remake the economy in a way that benefits everyone, including businesses, residents, rural areas and the most vulnerable communities.

“There’s virtually no disagreement in Arizona that we need to decarbonize,” says Gary Dirks, senior director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. “As we’re making this transformation toward renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels, we have to get it right.”

ASU LightWorks ® , under the direction of Dirks, is a multidisciplinary effort within the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory to solve energy challenges. LightWorks brings together researchers and stakeholders, including policymakers, business leaders and community leaders, to address pressing climate issues. These collaborations, Dirks says, are absolutely key.

“This energy transformation is going to take deep relationship building,” Dirks says. “We also need to be more purposeful about including all sectors and disciplines, especially social scientists who can help think about how we can evolve our political and societal will to change policies and our behavior. This framework is crucial for creating a successful transition.”

He points to the urgent need for an “us” mindset in order to make the transition to a carbon-neutral economy equitable, to bring along people who are most vulnerable to energy shortages, and to bring along those whose jobs will change during the transition.

“We cannot leave people behind as we transform the energy system,” he says. “We need to be especially attentive to communities hard hit by plant closures, and rural and Indigenous communities.”

Clean hydrogen is a promising solution to two of renewable energy’s challenges: that solar power is naturally intermittent, and that achieving deep decarbonization will require an alternative source of fuel to displace the natural gas and oil that power many vehicles and industrial processes. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and a fuel source that produces no carbon emissions. While the clean hydrogen economy has been promised for decades, it has failed to materialize due to several technological and economic hurdles. But Ellen B. Stechel, the co-director of LightWorks, a Senior Global Futures Scientist and a professor of practice in the School of Molecular Sciences, believes hydrogen’s time has come.

Stechel is the director of the recently established Center for an Arizona Carbon-Neutral Economy (AzCaNE), a coalition founded by Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project, Tucson Electric Power, Southwest Gas, ASU, The University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. AzCaNE, which is part of the Global Futures Laboratory and housed in the Rob and Melani Walton Center for Planetary Health, is joined by the Arizona Commerce Authority and many other stakeholders, including businesses and cities, and is in conversation with tribal communities.

“Our goal is to reach a carbon-neutral economy, but since there will be support from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, our first focus is clean hydrogen,” Stechel says.

A major part of AzCaNE’s work is collaborating with researchers, utilities and other stakeholders to find ways to dramatically lower the cost of hydrogen production to make it cost competitive with fossil fuels. This means creating future-forward technologies that scale. One of the more notable examples of this kind of technology is being developed by Ivan Ermanoski, a research professor at LightWorks and the School of Sustainability, and a Senior Global Futures Scientist, in a highly collaborative project for which Stechel serves as the principal investigator.

In addition to these technologies and while working on the social and behavioral aspects of the transition, ASU is developing and scaling other technological solutions toward a carbon-neutral economy, including carbon capture, water conservation, better battery storage, more resilient electrical grids, ways of approaching agriculture that improve soil and lower carbon emissions — and many more. The goal is to build a carbon-neutral economy that benefits all Arizonans.

“We have to come together with an inclusive mindset, not an us versus them approach, to pave the path toward the economy and planet we all want to see,” Dirks says.

The last section of this article is excerpted from the story Going Carbon Neutral by Daniel Oberhaus in the Fall 2022 edition of ASU Thrive.