Global Futures: Futurecast | Vol. 4, Spring 2023

Instability everywhere

Societal instability overlooked driver of global challenges

Often, I am amazed by the ingenuity of people. We are facing grave threats because of our inability to live in balance with Earth’s systems, and still, the ideas and innovations that flow forth are remarkable. There are engineers, computer scientists, chemists, physicists, social scientists, and arts and humanities scholars focused on solving the most critical challenges of our time, including climate change, availability of water and food, and stable energy supplies, to name just a few examples.

Unfortunately, our efforts to date are not enough. For example, it is highly likely that we will miss the ambitious goal of stopping global warming at 1.5°C, and it will take every solution possible to hold the warming of our planet to less than 2°C. The negative impacts of climate change are not a “future” problem – the effects are visible now, with increasingly frequent, record-breaking disasters happening on every continent.

And yet, society fails to act with the necessary urgency. Why?

There is no simple explanation. Yes, more education is needed. Yes, we need more policies to bolster sustainable development. Yes, we need to overhaul economic and government systems that continue to subsidize companies that

further the crises. But, as scientists/scholars and human beings, we must also take a step back and realize that climate change and other pressures placed on Earth’s life-support systems are actually part of a much larger picture; that these issues are rooted in choices people made that depleted Earth’s resources. Humankind must focus on how to transition the fundamental systems that we rely on. Such a focused effort can only take place in a stable society. A lack of it is the transcendent threat to thriving futures.

Societal stability is closely linked to how members of communities and societies feel about the security of the system in which they live. The United Nations defines human security as the “widespread and cross-cutting challenges to the survival, livelihood and dignity” of people. There is no security without societal stability. If too many elements of a society are suppressed or exploited, people will reach a tipping point and demand change. They may take extraordinary measures, including risking their lives, to force reform. Oppression is inherently unstable.

Across the world, there are whole communities struggling to meet biological and safety needs, and

while climate change amplifies those risks, it is not the root cause. The scientific community has spent more than a decade defining and measuring the Environmental Planetary Boundaries, nine subsystems of Earth that are key to its overall stability and survival of life. Researchers have spent considerably less time exploring Societal Planetary Boundaries or the role human security will play in the ability to address environmental crises. Social processes – human activities and decisions – are why humankind is approaching and exceeding environmental planetary boundaries. We have replaced the primary threats of the past – lack of adequate shelter and food, plus humans’ former status as prey for significantly larger carnivores – with complex challenges caused by social dynamics and decision-making that represent immediate threats to societal stability and human security. Many still lack protection from inclement weather, though not because the materials do not exist. Too many are food insecure due to inequitable distribution and extreme weather. Violence and war are putting lives and livelihoods in immediate peril. Increasingly, the underlying reasons for these threats are rooted

People search for survivors in the aftermath of the earthquake that ravaged Syria and Türkiye in February 2023.

in our decision-making. The choices we make are endangering the future of our species and our planet.

These threats are present across all nations, though inequitably distributed and often overlapping. Consider the outdated water infrastructure in Jackson, Mississippi, where government officials ignored for decades the basic need of safe water of the majority-Black city. Or the failing energy sector in South Africa, where a combination of poor workforce training and alleged sabotage are contributing to blackouts severe enough to damage the economy and cast doubt on governing parties’ ability to lead. Or Ukraine, where the Russian military is attacking military and civilian targets, including electrical

grids and other vital infrastructure. And Aleppo, where an earthquake ravaged a populace already under pressure from compounding crises left by civil war, lack of government, economic turmoil and cholera outbreaks. Aleppo is a prime example of the increasing impact of human-made disasters.

The human species has moved far out of equilibrium with the life supporting systems of our planet and disrupted the finely tuned balances between Earth systems. This interference has led to an increasing number of challenges and crises for our planet and humankind, and has narrowed the option space for the coming generations. At the same time, humankind repeatedly has demonstrated its ability to rise to the challenges it is facing and solve complex problems on appropriate time scales. The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory is a place that is focused on bringing a diverse set of talent together to anticipate and address the most critical challenges ahead of us. Together, we can and will provide decision-makers with options and innovations for shaping our world in a fashion that will provide opportunities for future generations.

Peter Schlosser Vice President and Vice Provost, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Arizona State University

Ukrainians and Turks protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Istanbul, Türkiye, in February 2022.

Floodwaters from the Pearl River spill into a Jackson, Mississippi neighborhood in August 2022

Holy grail of shark science

Researchers uncover highly elusive shark birthing behaviors

Under a clear blue sky and rocking in rhythm with ocean waves, a mother receives her first ultrasound. Outside of a hospital setting, the procedure is far from typical. This mother is not an average patient — she is a scalloped hammerhead shark.

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances explores the previously unknown timing and location of tiger and scalloped hammerhead shark births. “A novel intrauterine satellite transmitter to identify parturition in large sharks” was published March 1, with funding for the research provided by Herbert W. Hoover Foundation.

James Sulikowski, co-author of the report and Senior Global Futures Scientist with the Arizona State University Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, says understanding when and where

sharks give birth can lead to more effective conservation efforts.

“Sharks are highly migratory and can travel thousands of miles a year, which makes it difficult to measure where they give birth,” said Sulikowski, who is also a professor in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences . “Previously, researchers would try to capture the babies close to shore to establish where the nurseries were. That isn’t always accurate. Baby sharks, even newborns, can travel hundreds of miles in very little time.”

Co-author Neil Hammerschlag, who conducted this research while a research associate professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, said other methods used to study shark reproduction are traditionally

derived from sacrificing specimens and inspecting their reproductive organs.

“This new technology opens up a new path for generating accurate data on shark reproduction in a non-lethal way,” said Hammerschlag, the founder of Atlantic Shark Expeditions . “This is really important as sharks are among the most threatened vertebrates on the planet.”

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, more than an estimated third of sharks are threatened by extinction. Overfishing is a major contributor: unsustainable fishing practices lead to habitat loss in addition to overexploitation of both shark and fish populations.

As apex predators, Sulikowski said sharks are paramount in regulating ocean ecosystems. The already elusive migratory creatures are also highly susceptible to anthropogenic and environmental change due to their slow growth and long life spans. Pollution and urbanization in particular are already disrupting shark nurseries, hence the need for proactive conservation efforts at vulnerable points in a shark’s life such as newborn stages and pregnancy.

“Our oceans in general need to be healthy, and sharks control all sorts of populations that could throw that health out of balance,” Sulikowski said. “Oceans provide invaluable food, economic services, and recreation; take sharks away and the world loses that.”

To discover where sharks are being born, Sulikowski and Hammerschlag implanted waterproof, satellitelinked intrauterine transmitters into pregnant scalloped hammerhead and tiger sharks. This is implanted via the cloaca, a cavity at the end of the digestive tract used for both excretory and reproductive purposes. The transmitters, created in collaboration with Lotek, a fish and wildlife monitoring company, act as a “birth alert tag.”

Contrary to some other methods of shark reproduction research, this process does not harm the sharks. The egg-shaped, six-centimeter-long by 2.5-centimeter-wide tag was designed to be inserted non surgically into a shark’s uterus and remain unobtrusive among the developing embryos without harming them. A satellite tag is also placed on the mother’s fin to track her location as she travels before the birth.

When the baby sharks are born, the egg-shaped transmitter is expulsed and floats to the ocean’s surface. Once buoyant, a flexible antenna points skyward and transmits messages in 15-second intervals until the battery expires.

This allows Sulikowski and Hammerschlag to pinpoint where the mother shark gives birth, and in turn, better understand where conservation efforts should be focused.

“In order to protect sharks as babies, we have to protect their moms,” Sulikowski said. “Being able to see exactly where sharks are giving birth — something we’ve struggled to do in the past — is the holy grail of shark science and conservation.”

The electronics of the birth alert tag were encased in an egg-shaped synthetic foam covered with a biologically inert sealant that, upon expulsion at birth, would float to the surface.

Video: Shark intrauterine satellite transmitter

What a waste

Single-use plastics dominate the present. An ASU expert says it will take significant change to create a more sustainable future.

From our homes to our bodies, plastic is everywhere and it’s here to stay — depending on environmental factors, plastic can take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to decompose.

Tyler Eglen, creator and manager of ASU’s Circular Living Lab, is driving plastic solutions today in hopes of a cleaner tomorrow.

The Circular Living Lab researches and applies solutions that address challenges related to sustainability, economic growth and community development. One project from the lab is the Plastics Microfactory, which repurposes used plastic into functional items.

“Some local businesses and community groups have a large supply of plastic but don’t know what to do with it,” Eglen said. “What a lot of people don’t know is that there is real entrepreneurial potential in giving that plastic a second life.”

Eglen believes an answer to eliminating plastic waste in communities lies in repurposing the material into locally produced household goods. With horizontal expansion of plastic microfactories throughout communities, local plastic could be shredded, melted and reshaped into something new with a significantly longer lifespan. The plastics microfactory machines and workers have created tabletops, stools, skateboards and more out of single-use plastic materials.

“In a perfect world, we could partner with communities and businesses that are producing clean streams of plastic and turn them right back into a new product quickly and locally,” he said.

Eglen knows that in our imperfect world, more work must be done to actualize a wastefree future. One of the main barriers to achieving this goal is the growth of the plastic industry, which shows no signs of slowing.

“There are resources and associations that try and guide brands to design their products more sustainably,” Eglen said. “The brands just aren’t interested, and they aren’t interested because they don’t need to be.”

These brands have good reason not to be: the responsibility to manage plastic waste does not fall on the brands who produce them. Consumers currently bear the weight of properly recycling and disposing of their plastic goods.

“A lot of the time, the consumer is often misinformed about what can be recycled and what can’t,” Eglen said. “I see a big opportunity as we go forward to increase consumer education, but the most efficient driver of change has to come from policy.”

Examples of implementing policy to reduce plastic waste can be seen in states like California, but policy is driven by those in power in 2015

Gov. Doug Ducey signed Senate Bill 1241, which declared that regulation of single-use plastic bags cannot be regulated by local authorities and must be left to state officials.

It seems fitting that plastic waste, a humanitycaused problem, can only be solved through human solutions. Eglen said policy adjustments, if combined with consumer changes and human innovations, could be groundbreaking for a more sustainable future.

“Science and technology are advancing everyday and we just need a plastic alternative to gain enough momentum to really gain popularity and stick,” he said. “There is a new hope in the younger generations to use social media and the internet to change minds and show us new options: we saw that happen with electric vehicles and I think we could see that happen with plastic.”

The current state of our global [in]stability

February 24 marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Since then, tens of thousands have died, counting military and civilian deaths, including many Russian soldiers. Many people are counted as missing. Approximately 14 million people are displaced either within Ukraine or to other countries. The cost of damages is well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the end is not in sight.

Ukraine is just one hotspot demonstrating global instability and insecurity. Nations in the Middle East and Africa are facing conflicts of their own. Brazil recently saw an uprising like the insurrection in the United States on Jan. 6, 2021. Planetary pressures and natural disasters are disrupting governments and regions. And supply chain issues continue to plague global commerce after the COVID-19 crisis. The following is a transcript of a conversation between Schlosser, Orlich and Hanson during a Global Futures Roundtable on Feb. 23, 2023. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Ileana Orlich is President’s Professor of Romanian Studies and Comparative Literature and a Distinguished Global Futures Scholar.

Margaret Hanson is an assistant professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies; her research focuses on authoritarian politics.

Peter Schlosser (moderator) is the vice president and vice provost of Global Futures and director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.

Schlosser: The war in Ukraine highlights so many weaknesses in our societal systems and their stability. It is a stark reminder of how quickly we can experience instability at the local and regional levels, but also witness effects on global scales. On the one hand, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the associated disruptions came very quickly. But on the other hand, of course, we had precursors with the occupation of Crimea and the general evolution of what was the former Soviet Union. What are the historical contexts and geopolitical issues that might further instability?

Orlich: Allow me to go back to 2021 a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin feels on top of the world. He has eviscerated civil society. He has gotten rid of his political adversaries. He has good connections with China. And finally, he has pushed Russia back to a point of central focus on the international stage. He feels that he needs to reappropriate what belonged to the Soviet Union, what in his mind is Russia including places such as Georgia, where Russia occupies Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And there was Crimea. No one said much of anything, and even sanctions failed to discourage him or severely impact Russia. Now he is ready to appropriate Ukraine, which in his mind is not a country. He thinks of Belarus, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova as low principalities, little fiefs of the Soviet Empire, which he is trying to rebuild. Ukraine is only a pawn. It is the center of a proxy war. Putin is trying to bring himself and Russia into prominence. If you look at all his speeches, he is mainly talking about the West. He is talking about the United States. We, in the United States and in the West, very seldom think of Russia. But in Russia, everybody thinks about the West and the United States at all times. So, this added element of empowerment makes Putin engage in a war with the United States, NATO and the European Union.

Schlosser: There are many who believe, exactly as you said, that Putin wants to reestablish

the former Soviet Union and uses that to juxtapose the power of an expanded Russia against the West. Looking to the east, what role does China play in the conflict, in terms of either escalating it or de-escalating it? Recently, we heard talk in the media of a potential third world war that might be stirred by China. Do we need to be concerned about that?

Hanson: China’s role to date has been primarily to hedge its position. There have been suspicions about arms deals and sidestepping sanctions, and China has also spread Russian talking points regarding the war. However, it has not come out swinging for its Russian ally on the world stage, either. China does not want Russia to lose because they are allies and have a shared interest in challenging Western geopolitical power, but it also does not want to back a loser. I think the broader question here, when we are talking about geopolitical instability, has to do with the rise of personalism in authoritarian regimes around the world. We know from studying different types of authoritarian regimes that not all dictatorships are structured equally, and they tend to have differing levels of constraints and different types of information problems. For example, as these regimes, such as Russia under Putin and increasingly China under President Xi Jinping, become more personalistic in terms of how they are governed, they are more likely to become belligerent on the world stage. They are also more likely to make egregious missteps such as Putin’s now famous proclamation that he would be able to take Ukraine in three days because they surround themselves with yes-men and have issues getting accurate information about conditions on the ground.

Schlosser: If we are looking at the world, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just one of many examples that seem to indicate that democracy is weakening. We heard quite a bit of language directly addressing that concern during President

Biden’s address in Ukraine. These discussions are also happening within democracies, including within the U.S. between the two dominant political parties one is seen as threatening democracy, whereas the other is seen as being radically left. Worldwide, it appears as if there is a decline in democracy over the past few decades. If we look at the future, will we have democracy at the same level as we enjoyed in the past? What is the role of authoritarian states in the future?

Orlich: It is a very complicated question. With Russia, there is this notion of recreating the former Soviet youth, who is built a certain way to give his life and his family and everything else to the country. But then, there is the other aspect, where the Russians do understand that at the end of so many decades of Stalinism and bashing the West, life is generally better in the West. In response, Russians are looking for flaws in democratic systems. Putin was a spy. His main job was to find flaws and weaknesses in other people, in other systems. Putin has been looking for flaws to show the Russian people and the world that the democratic agenda advanced by the U.S. and the West is a mere veneer to give the impression that Americans live in a democracy but in fact do not. The point is not for the Russian side to embrace or research or understand issues that

Americans face every day. It is to use conflict in the West and forward those issues as agendas.

Hanson: Authoritarian regimes, like democracies, are always changing and evolving. You are right to point attention to democratic backsliding. This is very difficult to separate from the current conflict in Ukraine because Russia has engaged in sophisticated misinformation campaigns designed to undermine trust in democracy, and this has really aided extremist political movements in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere. The rise of populist movements has given Russia an opportunity to drive a further wedge in democracies around the world. But we have also seen efforts to fight back against that, with some of these populist leaders losing their bids for reelection. It is a very dynamic situation, where we’ll see autocrats like Putin continue to learn and adapt. But I do not think it is the end all be all for democracy, either, as we have seen its resiliency in the face of those threats.

Schlosser: Will most of the resistance against the rise of authoritarian structures come from the outside of nations, or will it come from within resistance from their citizens?

Hanson: These two factors are interrelated. My own work, with researchers Hannah Chapman,

Valery Dzutsati and Paul DeBell, suggests that how people understand democracy plays a big role in whether they support it; this could extend to their willingness to show up on the street to protest or at the ballot box. But of course, people learn about democracy from their information environment and their civic education, which is why the work that institutions, including Arizona State University, do to further civics education is potentially very important for providing a bulwark against authoritarianism.

Schlosser: If Russia conquers Ukraine, it will be left with a destroyed country. Russia would inherit a country destroyed down to its bare bones. Why would Russia do that, and would they have the will and resources to rebuild?

Orlich: Ukraine was destroyed before, during the famine of 1932-1933. It was starved; 7 million Ukrainians died. And yet Joseph Stalin benefited from adding Ukraine to the Soviet collectivization project. After the famine, the Russians “Russified” Ukraine. They brought in people from other parts of the Soviet Union to populate the region. I have a feeling that should Russia win the war which I do not think will happen they will do the same thing. Russia is not interested in welfare. It is not interested in community

building, institutions or academics. Russia is about power and totalitarianism. The ways in which we wonder about rebuilding a country are not commensurate with the way in which Putin desires to appropriate territory and make himself look like a great leader descended from czars. Russia is currently undermining another country, the Republic of Moldova, which is kept poor and without roads. The Republic of Moldova, fearing the threats of Russian occupation, has declared that it will blow up its only airport if the Russians occupy or aggress Moldova. They understand that Russia is not interested in having their land, their beauty, their people, their culture. Rather, Russia is interested in destroying it and building a totalitarian, autocratic regime not unlike Stalinism that shifted power from a white to red czar. It is not about the quality of people’s lives; it is just a matter of might makes right.

Schlosser: How long will the Russian population go along with the suffering they are experiencing? Some of the suffering is hidden from the larger population, but there is building pressure that is felt by the population. At this point, the people still seem to support Putin, but for how long will that last?

Orlich: The Russian people do not know that they suffer. For the longest time, Soviet regimes have not issued passports so people could not travel. Now they do and Russians can see the differences, so Putin highlights and magnifies the flaws of democratic governments. In Putin’s recent speech, while having the Orthodox Church of Russia by his side, he said the West makes God look neutral and talked about children engaging in gay parades. This gives the Russian people a sense of being engaged in some sort of crusade that is based on moral, normative values. They have not given up the idea of Moscow as “third Rome.” The Russians are convinced that their traditions, their customs, their language and their faith are going to be preserved within a state that is disciplined, God-fearing and ruled with an iron fist.

Schlosser: Interesting perspective and also a view into the Russian soul in a way. There is quite a bit of support from Europe and the U.S. to Ukraine to hold off Russian occupation. Can this support prevent Russia from winning the war? Or, at some point, will the war of attrition go in favor of Russia?

Hanson: Winning can mean a lot of different things. Relatively few wars end in a decisive rout, historically speaking. Winning is defined by goals: for Ukraine, that means pushing Russia out of its territory and retaining its independence. But in my opinion, the intent of the U.S. and NATO coalition is to support Ukraine so that Russian advancement can be contained, slowed and exhausted. In that sense, I am relatively optimistic. But of course, this is contingent, not only on time, which is multifaceted, but also how long both the Russian population and Russian elites will support the war. Regarding the former, it is hard to know the real proportion of Russians who support the war. There is an underappreciated impact of the prevalence of propaganda and misinformation within Russia. While older populations in particular may believe it outright, for a lot of people, it has instead just caused them to distrust everything. This helps breed apathy. Even among those who I have interviewed who fled Russia, there is no sense of agency. But at the same time, highly repressive regimes like Russia tend to appear very

stable until suddenly they are not. Remember, virtually no one predicted the collapse of the USSR. Change within Russia will depend on whether the impact of the war is felt more widely and who people blame for that impact when it happens. How the war unfolds also depends, obviously, on how Ukraine does and that depends in part on the continuation of Western support so there are a lot of complex variables at play.

Schlosser: Yes, there are discussions in the U.S. saying the support for Ukraine should not be at its current level, and the U.S. should look at its internal issues first. In terms of the complexity you mentioned, one factor I feel is playing into Russia’s hands with respect to the support from other nations is Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenal. A lot of the tactical moves and strategic decisions circle around the question of will Russia pull the trigger on a tactical, if not a larger nuclear weapon? Are we seeing the curse of the nuclear weapon coming back to haunt us?

Orlich: Putin was convinced that he was going to take Ukraine quickly and that other nations would look the other way. It was only after the initial attacks that he realized this was not the case. Now we see the hardliners, including Dmitry Medvedev and Nikolai Patrushev, pressing Putin to become more and more aggressive. I know that from this side, it may not look this way. But it is like the

Praetorian Guard for a Roman Emperor as a distant analogy to Putin’s own 30,000-plus close-knit retinue. They want to succeed; they want to show the West that they are better. In the context of continued defeat on the battlefield, the nuclear solution is the only one left. It is a solution that they will embrace. You mentioned the Russian soul. There is a belief they will have heroic deaths defending their motherland. This is a very scary notion because they will go down with the ship it is part of their worldview.

Hanson: I have a slightly different take. Putin is someone who sees any kind of concession or willingness to compromise as weakness, and it tends to encourage him to go further. We saw a microcosm of this with the grain embargo. Russia threatened to stop ships from leaving, but the ships just kept going, and Putin backed down. It is justifiable to worry about nuclear weapons, certainly. But because we know that Putin is using this threat very strategically, to stymie the speed of assistance to Ukraine, and to try to keep the West from being even more involved in the conflict, it is wielded as a tool. But I am not sure that it necessarily serves the interests of Putin to take that step because of the risks to Russia itself.

Schlosser: Besides military conflict, we see pressures from living out of balance with our planet, from environmental degradation, and from so-called natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria. What role do these increased pressures play compared to traditional military conflict in our futures?

Hanson: Natural disasters and other crises can and do precipitate regime change. But political revolutions are also a very complex phenomenon because regimes are ultimately constructed by people, and people learn and adapt to their environment. The earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria have generated rumblings of discontent within Türkiye due to the widespread corruption that many people blame for the

building collapses. However, that is certainly no guarantee that President Erdoğan will fall. Dictators expend considerable effort in making their regimes resilient to unexpected threats. This brings us back to the earlier point that these regimes are very strong until suddenly, they are not. When regimes fall relies on something we call tipping effects, where once you get a critical mass of people moving, regime change is more likely. Other threats, for example, large-scale migration, environmental degradation and climate change, will put pressure on democratic and authoritarian governments alike. But I think democratic governments are in many ways better able to respond adaptively to those threats than autocratic ones, whose inclination tends to be repression rather than accountability.

Schlosser: Given all the pressures that we’ve seen, do you think we are moving into a world that is more unstable than what we have seen in the past? Or is it more or less the same level of stability and instability, just of a different kind?

Orlich: According to one of my favorite literary figures, Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Lenin, Stalin, Putin we have seen it before. But the sun also rises. There are cycles. I think we have been very fortunate in my generation, at least immediately after World War II. So now, payback time may be in order. It seems as if after a certain amount of time, there is another disaster, and then the tide turns. And so it goes.

Hanson: World history hasn’t exactly been characterized by stability overall. So in that broad sense, I think this is nothing new. The types of threats we are facing are certainly novel. My hope would be that we learn to respond to them in a way that enhances stability. I have hope in our ability to adapt to the changes in front of us.

State of Arizona taps ASU to lead water innovation initiative

Global Futures

Laboratory to manage initiative that explores state’s water needs, security

Arizona State University is leading a multiyear Arizona Water Innovation Initiative to provide immediate, actionable and evidence-based solutions to ensure that Arizona will continue to thrive with a secure future water supply.

In November of 2022, Gov. Doug Ducey committed resources and asked ASU to work with industrial, municipal, agricultural, tribal and international partners to rapidly accelerate and deploy new approaches and technology for water conservation, augmentation, desalination, efficiency, infrastructure and reuse.

“Since the very beginning of my administration, Arizona’s water future has been a focus, and today’s announcement will advance our efforts to use every tool possible to make sure communities across the state have access to the water they need,” Ducey said.

The state has committed to make a $40 million investment in ASU for the initiative, which will build upon and leverage the university’s successful programs in water science, technology, management and law.

“This is a critical innovation moment for water in the state of Arizona, and frankly for all seven basin states who have been sharing responsibility for creating water policy in this region for more than 100 years,” ASU President Michael M. Crow said. “The Arizona Water Innovation Initiative will strengthen water resilience while enhancing economic competitiveness, supporting high-value job creation, and recruiting and retaining leading industries.”

The funding for ASU’s water innovation initiative serves as an extension of the goals set forth by Arizona’s plan to secure its water future. That plan was set in motion with the inaugural meeting of the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority.

The Arizona Water Innovation Initiative strategy team is working closely with the current administration under Gov. Katie Hobbs, including the new Office of Resiliency led by ASU alumna Maren Mahoney. Gov. Hobbs has clearly stated her intentions to tackle the water crisis, which she has called “the challenge of our time.”

Given the pressing nature of the water challenges, the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative is being implemented rapidly. The university-wide initiative is being led by ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory in collaboration with the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, the largest engineering college in the country.

Mother Jessica Bezdecny (in cap) checks on her kids as Caleb Porras, 14, walks across the Colorado River, while (from left) Dovena Porras, 11, Felissa Porras, 7 and Elias Porras, 10 play on the beach at Gateway Park, adjacent to downtown Yuma, Arizona, on Nov. 7. The Bezdecny-Porras family lives in Yuma, and the children are becoming increasingly aware of the river’s decreasing water level. Caleb worries that when he’s older, there won’t be enough water for the town nor the nearby agriculture.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News

“Water resiliency in the arid American Southwest presents subject-matter challenges for which GFL exists, and its purpose is to provide researchinspired solutions of public service,” Crow said.

Federal partners in the water initiative include the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Science Foundation and NASA; state and local partners include the Arizona Department of Water Resources, Central Arizona Project, Salt River Project and the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, and both the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University; industry partners include TSMC, Intel and SOURCE Water, an ASU spinoff company that provides safe, clean drinking water for industrial, commercial, residential and community applications.

The initiative will include a Global Center for Water Technology. The center will advance a full range of solutions, including:

• Technology, policy, law and infrastructure for coastal water desalination

• Advanced technology for more waterefficient agricultural operations

• Commercialization and deployment of water treatment and reuse technology that supports energy production and microchip manufacturing

• New designs for urban water conservation

This work will impact agricultural, municipal and industrial sectors throughout the state. Once operational, the Global Center for Water Technology aims to produce tangible results including inventions, patents and related startup companies.

The initiative also focuses on an advanced water observatory and real-time decision support to revolutionize water measurement, modeling and prediction. This will provide the data necessary to identify critical risks, vulnerabilities and capabilities. The observatory will deploy state-of-the-art technology to fully map, monitor and model all of

Arizona’s water supplies. This investment will enable ASU to partner with federal and state agencies, local water management agencies, research institutions and the private sector to enhance water security and reduce risks of future water shortages.

The Arizona Water Innovation Initiative takes advantage of the long history of collaboration on water solutions in the state and region. University researchers are working directly with partners across government, industry and nonprofit organizations to ensure cutting-edge research and technology are translated into real-world impact.

“This is an economic and social opportunity for Arizona to emerge as a national and global leader in water innovation, creating entirely new industries and technologies,” Crow said. “The status quo will not solve the problem. This is a critical moment for our institution and for the state, and we have the tools, ideas and systems to be of service.”

Energy systems vulnerabilities today, tomorrow

The physical infrastructure of our energy systems is insecure from small-scale attacks, such as the substation shootings in North Carolina and Washington in 2022, to large-scale military actions, such as Russia’s offensive on Ukraine’s energy grid. Yet these concerns are only a piece of the systems’ larger vulnerability risks. Our three experts, Clark Miller, Amanda Ormond and Jennifer Richter, sort through current and future hazards for energy systems and the impact on people who use and need those systems.

Amanda Ormond is a professor of practice and the co-director of the Just Energy Transition Center with LightWorks® at the Global Futures Laboratory.

Ormond has more than 30 years of experience in policy work in energy and clean energy development.

Clark Miller is a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and director of the Center for Energy & Society. His work examines the design choices in front of us as we choose which clean energy futures to build.

Jennifer Richter is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She researches and teaches energy policy and environmental justice, placing her at the intersection of energy justice.

Jennifer Richter: It’s important to examine why these vulnerabilities seem to be suddenly emerging. I’m a professor working with mostly 18- to 25-year-olds, and when I teach energy justice, the students have no idea how our energy system works. They can’t envision that system. I think one of the major vulnerabilities of our energy system is that it’s still portrayed as a system of technologies outside the reach of people. Yes, there’s material power, but people don’t quite understand the political power that goes into shaping the materiality of our energy systems. Attacks on energy systems demonstrate that political vulnerability, which someone like Vladimir Putin intimately recognizes. He understands that the age of his kind of fossil fuel-generated power is coming to the beginning of the end, so he’s exerting that power as quickly as possible in the most outwardly dramatic way.

My concern is the breathtaking cynicism and cruelty that goes into disrupting an energy grid. I think of the schools, hospitals, and facilities that keep our lives going and keep us safe; to attack those is a way of not recognizing the people that are embedded within those systems, much as Russia is doing to Ukraine. It is the refusal to acknowledge the humanity that is embedded within these political systems. We’ve done ourselves a grave disservice over the past 50-70 years by not recognizing all of the human labor that’s involved in keeping our energy systems going. And to make them safer would be to recognize and really celebrate that kind of labor. I think of all the Ukrainian public service announcements that celebrate the people who, even in a war zone, go to the energy substation every day to keep it going. As I consider vulnerabilities, I consider all of the different webs, whether it is privileging the political power embedded in these systems or refusing to understand the power embedded in these systems. Both can drive the intentional destabilization of energy infrastructures.

It’s important to think of fear as a privilege, too. To be scared of an unstable future implies that you had a stable past that you were able to depend on. So, if fear is a privilege, how do we go from it being a weakness into a strength, a concern instead of fear, of trying to not plan for a stable future but to plan for an inherently uncertain and constantly changing future? We just have to stop thinking that we can promise that stability to future generations doing the same things over again.

Amanda Ormond: We have an electric system that’s been built over the past 100 years and as we bring on new technologies, as we have climate challenges, we’re trying to fit round pegs into square holes and modify the electric system the largest machine on Earth. We’re trying to modify this very embedded system both from a technology and infrastructure standpoint, but also from the human, political, regulatory, and institutional business side. We have these very embedded old systems that now we’re trying to change rapidly. Yes, we are seeing vulnerabilities. For example, in my career, communications technology has gotten so cheap that everything now has two-way communications, which opens up many different avenues for attacks. The same thing happens with distributed generation. Utilities have been reluctant to connect small solar systems because they see those as pathways into their system. We’re trying to change the system to be something much different than what it was, at a pace that utilities have never seen. And they’re very uncomfortable about that. It’s changing the way we do energy.

Clark Miller: We need to be clear about the variety of changes that are happening in the electricity system. One of those is the addition of renewables to the grid, because renewable power plants don’t operate the same way as big, thermal, fossil fuel-generated power plants. Additionally, we’ve introduced markets into our electricity grids in the last 30 years, especially in places

like California and Texas. Those are some of the places where we are seeing utility grids go down more frequently than they have in the past. We should also recognize the changing environmental context within which electricity systems operate. We’ve had cold snaps in Texas; wildfires and atmospheric rivers in California. In Arizona, we’ve had water shortages in the Colorado River, where we get small but important parts of our electricity supply from hydro generators, which historically have shored up our electricity grid and are now more restricted because there is less water. Those climate changes are changing the physical context within which the grid is operating.

We are also putting more and more of our economy on the back of the electricity grid. As we add electric vehicles and electrify industries as part of decarbonization, we expect more from our electricity grid; our relationship to it is changing. There’s a lot happening in our electricity system: new technologies, new business models and new ways of operating. In the southwest, we’re rapidly growing our economy it is great for the economy, but it means that we need more electricity. And again, we’re having to act more rapidly at a time when people are increasingly concerned about where we’re getting our power from and where we’re siting our power plants. It is a paradigm shift in the electricity sector.

Attacks on the electricity grid are compounding these existing vulnerabilities, which is why these attacks are getting more attention. I’d add that the security of energy supplies from a military perspective has been an issue for over 200 years, and probably even longer. Historically, we’ve seen attacks on energy security as part of geopolitical considerations for a very long time. It is not a surprise when you get into questions of large-scale military conflict that energy resources and supplies are very much a part of the calculation of combatants to disrupt modern, high-tech economies.

Ormond: The “electrify everything” goal creates its own vulnerabilities because of the scale and scope of change, and the pressure we’re going to put on the electric system to be reliable. If you don’t have electricity, you can’t pump gasoline for your gasoline car. But, as we move forward with electrification, if you don’t have electricity, and your car runs on electricity, and your house runs on electricity, and your power plant runs on electricity, there are much bigger vulnerabilities coming. One of the things that keeps me up at night is that we honestly don’t know what is coming with weather variability and extremes. With some of these big heat storms, I think we are just getting a thumbnail of what is possible, and we’re not prepared. In our electric system, we have variable weather at the same time as we are trying to build the system with variable resources weather-dependent variable resources.

Let me just bridge to the equity question, which is a whole new lens to think about energy. We built very big, very polluting power plants. Where did we build them? Far from where people lived on purpose because they’re big and polluting. But the populations living near those plants have grown. We have also been redlining, putting industrialized facilities where poorer people live. I hope the next generation will not tolerate that. But there are complications we

have industrialized complexes, where there are pipelines and electrical systems. Where do we put these things now? And the question about equity in renewable energy development is going to be an interesting one. For me, the expectation is that we don’t do what we did in the past; that we do consider people’s livelihoods and the impacts on societies when we build in the future. This has to be done in conjunction with variable power generation, weather changes, and concurrent with change at a pace and scale not seen before by the energy sector.

Richter: As we have this discussion, I am thinking about all the missing conversations that need to be had. Something people talk about all the time is cryptocurrency as a form of economic justice, but I look at how much energy it takes to mine cryptocurrency now we’re exacerbating energy justice issues. Bringing those conversations together, all the time, requires massive planning. It’s interesting how technocratic the energy planning in the United States was for such a long time. Now we are acknowledging the shift in values from affordability, stability, security all of which are wonderful values that undergirded the creation of our energy system but left out many communities who were seen as less important to economic development. Now we see the generational shift to values of equity, sustainability and resiliency because younger generations know they will not grow

up in the same circumstances as we grew up. They cannot rely on affordability and stability as the only markers for a successful energy system. We’re bringing together these quickly shifting values in a quickly shifting landscape, while also attending to the obduracy of these existing energy infrastructures. A massive amount of planning and conversations need to happen across sectors that have traditionally been isolated and don’t want to talk to each other and don’t use the same vocabulary. At the same time, we are trying to decentralize the energy system, which requires even larger conversations across more stakeholders. How do we scaffold these conversations, amongst all these different stakeholders, and then act upon those wishes against a pretty opaque energy system?

Ormond: One of the things I think about is how to build a resilient electric system in a future where there are more vulnerabilities, including climate vulnerabilities. We have had a reliable system, both gas and electric, for decades. Now, we have more instances where we face weather events that are going to cause more vulnerabilities; having a near 100% reliable electric system may become cost prohibitive. What are we willing to accept and pay for? The policymakers and people that design the electric system do not want to have any kind of outages, but I believe we’re going to have more outages. We need to have a political conversation about what is acceptable, and what do we do when we have outages because the finger pointing doesn’t help.

Miller: That conversation must happen. And it’s one of the things that we’ve really been missing locally. In the 1910s and 1920s, when we were building the electricity system, conversations about key issues, such as whether cities wanted public power or private power, were debated broadly. It was a national conversation and also a local conversation. When Samuel Insull built Chicago Edison, he gave talks and held listening sessions with

community groups all over the city because he was asking for a very new kind of business arrangement. We have lost that way of really taking conversations about the future of energy out into all of the communities that are involved.

Locally, with rising urban heat, there’s no question in my mind that the future of air conditioning in Phoenix is an absolutely critical conversation because that’s the point at which people are going to die if the electricity goes out and there are no ways of keeping communities, households and especially vulnerable populations cool. Unfortunately, we do not have a good data set on who has what level of efficiency of air conditioning service across the city. We do not have good insights into whose air conditioners are breaking, how frequently, or how quickly they’re able to get them repaired. We do not have a good understanding of the cost per degree cooling that different households are paying and the differential inequities in that cost. But what we have are examples that suggest that low-income households may be paying four times as much per degree cooling as wealthy households in Phoenix. And we imagine, at least given what we know about programs to upgrade the efficiency of air conditioners, that renters and low-income households aren’t able to take advantage of those programs. So we again imagine that the cost of air conditioning is a much higher burden on our more vulnerable communities, who are then more at risk in extreme heat events.

Given the consequences of outages, we really need everybody involved in that conversation. And that’s hard to do. But I have great and high hopes for our new Office of Resiliency in the governor’s office as a place where some of those conversations might be able to get started, and where we might be able to bring in the diversity of folks who need to be at that table, in order to make sure that the conversation addresses all dimensions of the heat problem.

Ormond: Moving from large systems to small, there’s a sustainability resiliency opportunity. When I think about where the burden lies to take care of people when extreme events happen, it largely lands on the local government: the fire department, police department and community center(s). When we think about trying to build systems in the future that can take care of people when events happen, local resilience is the most important. And that may be as simple as community centers that have their own backup generators, so when people lose air conditioning they have some place they can walk to and be housed for a couple of days.

Additionally, with the amazing changes we’re seeing in battery technology and hybrid wind/solar/battery power plants, we have an opportunity to build a more democratized system and make it more resilient at the same time. But that flies in the face of our regulatory system. The electric utilities want to build things because then they earn a rate of return that’s how they make money. The wealthy can get off the system through independent solar systems and batteries, but what about the people that are truly vulnerable? To the point of low-income households paying more for energy, I had this astounding experience at a public forum where a utility person made a statement about how poor people are so wasteful in energy and they pay so much. And I remember thinking, “Have you ever been in a poor person’s house?” They use so much energy because the homes are leaky and equipment inefficient. I was shocked by the lack of knowledge. When we think about threats, human life really should underpin all of what we’re doing in the electric and gas systems, but we’re in a system where making money is king.

Richter: This returns to a concern of a wider conversation or whiter conversation, as energy planning has generally been racialized. We talk a lot about how we need to have

this conversation, but who is the “we?” The conversations are happening, there’s just no action because the energy planning is divorced from the conversations. I think the key issue is this finance structure around what incentivizes certain behavior. Right now, we envision energy as an agent for democracy, but it is also seen as a meritocracy. We accept as part of the American culture that if you can’t afford energy, then you must not deserve it. That’s perfectly encapsulated in that utility person’s comment.

I was at Diné College recently, and on the second day I was there, the electricity went out. I was surprised, but the students got out lanterns and kept working. I asked, “How often does this happen?” and they said every few days. If that happened at ASU, the university would come to a halt. We don’t live within those systems, so we choose not to recognize them as systems that structure the possibilities of our lives. For example, Tempe is in a really privileged space. We get our energy from a lot of places that we don’t acknowledge. But I think of a community like Randolph that was summarily told by SRP that the utility will double the size of its natural gas plant. Now we’re in a political moment where those concerns can actually be heard. But can they be acted upon? We still have a utilitarian principle that if it is for the greater good, i.e. Phoenix Metro,

then the hinterlands don’t really matter. It’s just their job to endure this pollution. That is not a system of justice. It’s not a system of equity. It’s a system that still privileges profits and relies on keeping communities separate from each other.

Miller: This is where I’m going to fall back on the College of Global Futures and the Global Futures Laboratory they have the word “futures” in them for a very specific reason. And that is not just because we’re planning and making decisions today that will deliver us into the future. It is because we are building capabilities to think much more ambitiously about what futures might look like, and what we need to do today in order to help orient ourselves toward those futures in which we might want to live. We are already flying the airplane our economy is dependent on these energy systems, we don’t get to stop them for three years and do something different. We’re stuck with these systems and where they are; we have to rebuild them in flight. That’s not going to be easy. But I do think we have huge choices to make about which kinds of futures we intend to live in. These systems now include all kinds of communities in all kinds of ways, and our ability to have a secure energy future impacts people in many other places. We must recognize and build a future in which our ability to have secure energy helps people throughout Phoenix,

as well as in other places, build thriving, just futures for themselves. We do that by getting very realistic about what particular kinds of futures look like if we go down particular paths, and not pretend that we can’t think hard about where particular trajectories are taking us. For example, we’re closing a bunch of coal plants. But we don’t seem to be able to take seriously the question of what the future is going to look like if we continue along this trajectory without doing something significant about the economic and social futures of those communities where coal plants currently operate. Our ability to think about the future, to understand where particular kinds of trajectories are taking us and then bring that back into contemporary decision-making is what we have to get much, much better at doing.

Ormond: I agree, we need scenario planning. We know how to do it; it’s an effective tool to examine what happens if the pathway becomes this or what happens if we choose this pathway. You have to think about where you could end up to figure out what steps to take along the way. We, as a state, as a region, as a society need to think about those things. It is a challenge to have those conversations. We know in the near-term that we’re not going to get rid of the monopoly utility construct tomorrow, but the finances that drive the choices utilities make can change. If we want a low-carbon future, or a more democratized or distributed energy system, we can pull people in that direction through financial incentives, changing the rate making process and how utilities earn money. I think that’s all completely doable if we, as a society, determine that addressing carbon and climate change is our priority. People understand that climate change is happening. We need to start making changes that are commensurate with the threats that we’re facing. And that’s difficult, because people have a hard time with change. But more voices speaking, working in the same direction, can help.

Richter: The key term for me is intergenerational justice. That gets us out of short-term, for-profit planning. I love the idea that there’s an opportunity here to use equity and long-term planning as values to inform the creation of a new system. Utilities naturally have to be part of that transition, and then in parentheses, also plan for their own obsolescence or evolution, which is the really tricky part. But they do have a role to play. What do they envision that role to be? For a lot of them, I think they’re envisioning it will be like it was in 1950-1970 without recognizing that as a unique period in global history, building new infrastructure under the same financial and environmental models. So how do you use the utility system and the political system to incentivize and potentially penalize the “business as usual” thinking? How do you connect actual consequences? How do we reframe this conversation, especially among the American public, that energy is both a right and therefore responsibility?

We also need to get these conversations into the community. While I enjoy the conversations we get to host in academia and with communities, I get frustrated about the Global Futures Laboratory because we’re behind a very expensive paywall. We keep our expertise in our classrooms and aim it towards big research grants. How do we bring this out of classrooms and out of policy meetings and proposals, and really bring it to the public and say, “What do you think?” Also, I can’t stand the word “solutions” because it seems to imply that we know what the problem is, or that we know the right question. I’m not convinced that “we” are ever talking about the same question when “we” offer solutions. You can teach people about the energy system, but you also have to simultaneously discuss the political process. That’s really complex the financing, the planning, the zoning, et cetera. It is our responsibility to explain this complexity, make it interesting and bring that to a wider audience.

a multifaceted human problem Heat and health risks:

To one Valley resident, rising temperatures signify the beginning of the summer season. To another, the pounding of the desert sun ushers in severe health threats. The dangers of heat exposure are not a result of rising temperatures alone. Our experts discuss the interwoven nature of heat, housing, climate change and other “threat multipliers” in our desert state.

David Hondula is an associate professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. He works closely with local, regional and state authorities on the development and implementation of plans and programs to make communities safer and more resilient to extreme events.

Jennifer Vanos is an associate professor in the School of Sustainability. She focuses on extreme heat and air pollution and related health impacts on vulnerable populations, such as children and athletes. She is currently running numerous field projects in Arizona and collaborates with schools, government and nonprofits in community-based research.

Patricia Solís is the executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, a campus-wide effort to link multi-sector community needs with research innovations in building community resilience. She is also the co-founder and director of YouthMappers, a consortium of student-led chapters on more than 208 university campuses in 48 countries who create and use open spatial data for humanitarian and development needs.

David Hondula: Phoenix, like most other cities around the world, has gotten hotter over the past several decades. However, the specific way that Phoenix has gotten hotter might be a little different than other locations. What we see in records and what we hear talking to people is that the summers are generally getting hotter and are getting longer, but it’s really a shift in our typical summer days that’s been more noticeable. We haven’t pushed toward new all-time record highs — the all-time record for “hottest day” was set in 1990 and has stood for more than 30 years. But that doesn’t mean that the increase in heat isn’t associated with increased danger for public health and increased stress on households. The days that used to be 108 degrees are now 111 and the days that used to be 111 are now 114. Those are all certainly meaningfully more impactful on the population.

These changes, just like everywhere else around the world, are happening for two reasons. The first is what’s happening on the global scale of climate change and the concentration of certain gasses in the atmosphere. But also what’s happening locally on the ground and how we’re building and designing our cities. Both of those factors have contributed to a general increase in how hot it is for people in our city over the past few decades. Understanding what is happening with changes in the physical and built environment, and how we might be able to impact the outcomes is really important knowledge to build. The story of heat is certainly about more than just the air temperature.

Zachary Van Tol is a sustainability Ph.D. student in the College of Global Futures. As an interdisciplinary scholar, his research explores how access to space impacts climate risk among vulnerable communities.

Jennifer Vanos: ASU and the Urban Climate Research Center have really emphasized the fact that it’s a lot more than just the air temperature value that is going to indicate if someone is experiencing heat stress or heat strain or heat death. Especially in the Valley, incorporating metrics of radiation and understanding how much radiation the human

body is receiving from the sky and the ground is extremely vital. That’s why we see shade being so important as an urban design feature to keep populations who don’t have access to cooled, indoor areas as safe as possible. We can measure how well various types of shade do to keep people safe. Those measurements help us understand patterns of where unsheltered individuals are seeking shaded areas for cooling. So it makes sense why there’s an attraction to these cooler places, and we do need more of these spaces to provide refuge from the heat and decrease the overall heat load on the human body from the sun, not just from high air temperatures.

ASU has really been pushing forward in the last five or so years on understanding what heat exposure means in someone’s daily life. That is going to look different for someone who is unsheltered compared to someone with consistent access to cooling and shelter. Weather conditions are one piece of that, and some people may not be able to escape extreme weather conditions. If a person doesn’t have the ability to get those coping resources like water, cooling and food, then they might enter into heat strain. This is where they start to see rising core temperatures, which can result in hyperthermia and potentially death. We can also see that

an elevated heart rate from the body trying to cool itself can cause cardiovascular collapse.

There are a lot of nuances to what heat exposure means for individuals. We often just assume everyone experiences heat in the exact same way, but for somebody who already has preexisting conditions, who is dehydrated, who is using drugs or alcohol, that pathway in the body may look completely different and that means the solution is going to look completely different. So this isn’t really just a climate change problem, it’s even more so a vulnerability problem. Climate change can exacerbate this problem, but the amount of vulnerable people being exposed to these extreme conditions is going up.

Patricia Solís: Just as Dr. Hondula and Dr. Vanos explained, the intersection of climate change and heat is indeed an interesting one. I would add that the impacts of climate change that we have to address are not some far distant future — they’re with us right here, right now. There are people and institutions trying to address that of course. But as Dr. Vanos noted, not everyone experiences things the same way. One of the main factors on how you might be exposed to heat has a lot to do with how you can shelter yourself from heat. People who are

experiencing homelessness make up about 50% of outdoor, heat-related deaths. They certainly don’t make up half of our residents. Importantly, it’s not just people who don’t have any housing that are represented in numbers on heat-related deaths. Indoor heat-related deaths can happen when a person has inadequate housing or cannot keep their own housing cool. They may not have the economic resources, they might be economically insecure or energy insecure. With indoor heat-associated deaths, we found that people who live in older mobile homes, which were produced in an earlier era of manufactured housing, are also very disproportionately over-represented in heat-related deaths. In Maricopa County, 5% of our housing is mobile and manufactured housing, but anywhere between 25-40% of indoor heat-related deaths in the last 10 years occur among people who are residing in older mobile homes. Inefficient shelter combines with an energy problem when you cannot pay to cool with AC. Furthermore, a large number of people in manufactured housing tend to be older adults who might have other health conditions, so they’re disproportionately at risk to heat for that reason as well.

Looking towards the future, we know we’re going to see high temperature patterns increase exposure to heat and that is in part due to global climate change, yes. But also, our city is growing at an extremely fast rate and our housing situation is not keeping up with that. At the same time, we’ve got another worrisome trend just beginning, where evictions this past July, hit the highest numbers since the 2008 housing crisis right here in our county. All these systems are really interconnected to create a threat multiplier to heat.

Zachary Van Tol: I would just echo the fact that climate change and social issues are inextricably linked with one another. I think the biggest issue that we will see over the next few decades here in Phoenix is that we are not only the hottest city in the country, but we’re also simultaneously located in the fastest growing county population-wise in the entire country. Even if temperatures were not to increase at all, how do you account for the influx of people moving to our area? We see eviction rates and housing prices increasing, so more and more people are finding themselves in precarious housing situations or even experiencing homelessness. When you consider inflation and other economic phenomena

that are ongoing and overlapping with the issue of extreme temperatures here in the Valley, we have to start thinking about how we can change the narrative or change social behaviors around heat. An example is making mediary factors like public transportation more easily accessible for those who find themselves homeless, or strategically placing cooling shelters to maximize effectiveness. Not only do we need people to be able to seek medical attention so they don’t find themselves in a really dangerous situation with the heat, but we also need to provide services or an avenue for them to actually make it to the medical services. Having hospitals is great — having readily available practitioners is awesome — but if you don’t have a way to actually get to these facilities to receive the care that you need, then we’re only doing half of the job. So I think the climate change aspect is a really important point to touch on, but it’s equally as important to understand that even without any increase or change in temperatures from a sustainability perspective, we really have to think about how we change the housing, financial and economic situations of our county. This makes it so that we can actually accommodate the influx of people because I think that’s a more important aspect: city growth here in Phoenix.

Solís: And the fortunate thing is, if you solve the housing problem you’ve taken a bite out of the heat problem.

Hondula: It’s just as important to think about the non-climate factors, and I would argue if preventing heat deaths is the goal, it’s actually much more important to think about those non-climate factors. As we look at the past 10 years of data here in Maricopa County, we see heat associated deaths rising tremendously. It can be argued that there’s been a temperature increase over that time but nowhere near what we’ve seen in those outcomes statistics. That is because of all the factors that I and my colleagues have mentioned with housing and access to other services. So while I agree that climate is a part of the story here, we think there are other parts of the story that are much more influential in shaping our trends and year-to-year variability and outcome data.

Vanos: You can think about it this way: the housing crisis here is increasing the number of exposure hours to the population. So if we put a thousand more people on the streets, that means that we have a thousand more people who potentially have 24 hours of exposure to heat every day. And that means that hospitals have to respond even quicker and have more room for them and so forth. So the connection to health is obviously there. Not just health, but the health system as well. If we want to be supportive of increasing our population in Maricopa County, the health system also has to be able to respond, and the housing system, and I’m really hopeful we can get to that point.

Hondula: This may be a bit overgeneralized, but I don’t think the solutions to the unsheltered heat death problem are going to come exclusively from biometeorologists. That’s not to say that biometeorology research isn’t important. As a member of that community, I believe it is very important. However, I think we have a pretty good

understanding by now that a body outside, all day, in Phoenix in the summer is at risk. The research has already told us that, and we need action elsewhere to support solutions to the problem.

I think the solutions to unsheltered heat deaths are coming from housing policy experts and their adjacent communities. We need to make sure the biometeorologists and the housing policy experts are talking to one another and can have some literacy in each other’s domains so we can speak effectively to each other and a larger audience. That’s part of the reason why university initiatives that connect people working on these topics are so important.

Solís: Like you said, we need to have a multidisciplinary and multi-sector group connected to break down silos. Many of the solutions to these issues are already known solutions, but it’s really hard to move those systems in tandem with each other. It takes a lot of conversations, like the ones we’re having right now, to get everyone on the same page so we can promote and implement solutions once the resources become available, and the willingness of decision-makers to act. At this point there are still barriers. I would love to see more effort from the developer community and the private sector. Right now, if you can’t make money on a solution it’s off the table. But, I’ll say that the public sector has been tremendously responsive to our work, as has the nonprofit sector. From where I’ve been sitting, there has been a great amount of growth in awareness and mobilization and I do think there will be a time that we can fill in all of these gaps. I’m hopeful that in five to 10 years, we can look back and know that we made the future better because of the conversations and growth we had today. We need a few key actors to join us, in order to get there.

Van Tol: Something that I always like to bring up is that Arizona is one of seven states in the country that prohibits local jurisdictions

from mandating inclusionary zoning, which is one of the largest issues I think when it comes to creating affordable housing. For example, we have the Valley Metro light rail going across the Valley and there’s a lot of development occurring along the rail line, which is awesome for those communities. But, a lot of it is luxury apartments, upscale dining and coffee shops. From a local level perspective, we can’t do a lot of things that we would like to do to make our communities more inviting, more affordable, because state law would have to change in order for us to be able to make such changes. So I think that is a complex portion of the puzzle: there are multiple layers of policies that have to change in order for local governments – who are doing a great job within the confines of the rules they are playing under – to make changes. There are other things that need to change on higher levels in order for Maricopa County, for example, to make the kinds of progressive jump that I think a lot of local policymakers want to make.

It’s important to note that the solution to preventing outdoor heat deaths doesn’t just end with housing. We’re looking for solutions to set people up for improving both their physical and economic well-being. That doesn’t mean just putting someone into a house where they can’t afford the utility bills, and patting ourselves on the back. At a national scale, there is a narrative of “housing first, but not only.” What’s the easiest way to prevent people from falling victim to a lot of the dangers that come with being homeless? Get them into a house, and that’s the first step but that’s not the only step. They may need mental support, career support and other resources in order to actually maintain and pay to cool their home. There are resources that exist to help people who need it, but they’re often underfunded. It takes more than just a house to keep people from being unsheltered, and those resources need more support.

Solís: At the end of the day, there is no money left on the table when it comes to funding for resources aimed at helping the unsheltered population everything allocated is being spent and the needs are too great. The main problem isn’t that people in need don’t know about programs that could help them. From my experience, the main problem is there’s not enough resources being put at the right kinds of things. There is a severe shortage of resources.

Vanos: Another barrier we haven’t really talked about is the importance of social cohesion. In just looking at the 2021 heat deaths report by the county, 50% of the heat deaths were in a house, but 80% of those were people living alone. Very few of those deaths were associated with illicit drug use. The indoor heat deaths often pose such a different problem than those experiencing homelessness or who are unsheltered on the street. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to understanding and solving the problem and this is a really good example of that.

Bringing social cohesion into it, especially as we consider those indoor heat deaths, what would have happened if there was a better buddy system for those living alone? Social cohesion goes a long way, and that’s something that was directly impacted by the pandemic. Social cohesion and the use of cooling centers was definitely disrupted by COVID-19 and we can especially see that in the indoor heat deaths. It’s especially notable when you consider that older adults who often live alone are particularly at risk for both COVID-19 and heat complications, so during the pandemic we’re looking at a threat multiplier for older adults in particular.

Hondula: We see another potential multiplier in substance use as well, whether those substances be prescriptions or illicit substance use. Some prescriptions will impact how the body regulates temperature, and adding on to the issue of population and housing we

have another connected issue to heat deaths in methamphetamine and fentanyl use.

Solís: Speaking to the human perception of heat as well, research has shown that the longer that you live here the less you perceive yourself to be at risk from heat exposure. An older adult might have lived here for 20 years, and then their heat risk is elevated due to their age. But they perceive themselves to be less at risk, just because over so many years they’ve survived it. It’s sort of a psychological attitude around heat. So not only do we see issues from our society that play into heat vulnerability, but personal attitudes as well. And the attitude of the existing solutions is that individuals are responsible to address their own vulnerability, so the prescription is limited to just outreach and awareness. We need to change these perceptions so that we redesign our cities and rethink our relationship to climate.

Vanos: I think this is a good time to note that the people experiencing heat vulnerability are just that: human. These are people, and regardless of how multifaceted an issue of heat is, it remains crucial to treat people with the dignity and respect that they deserve. That should be reflected in our research and our policy going forward, and I hope that continues to be at the forefront of conversations as we move into the future.

keeping global warming below 2°C What’s next:

On March 20, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, finalized the synthesis for its sixth Assessment Report. Among its headline statements was that warming will exceed 1.5°C this century in fact, it is possible that it will do so in the very near future. The news media broadcast the report as an “urgent wake-up call.”

The chance to limit global warming to a value below the 1.5°C mark was not missed last month it was missed years, possibly decades, ago. Some estimates say the world may exceed 1.5°C warming temporarily within the next five years.

The coming 10 years are frequently called the “decisive decade.” This denotion recognizes the fact that decisions made during this period will have substantial consequences for how the world will look like in the coming centuries and millennia. To avoid accelerating negative effects caused by

human activities, we have to make fundamental and transformative decisions within the coming decade.

At this moment, 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to the IPCC report. This number will increase if we continue on the present trajectory. Across the world, ways must be found to make dramatic shifts to hold global warming as close to 1.5°C as possible over pre-industrial levels. Hard decisions must be made with urgency to limit the amount of overshoot past 1.5°C. Adapting to the next 0.5°C interval is not an acceptable path forward.

The IPCC’s sixth Assessment Report amplifies two guiding principles that researchers, including those in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, must follow to support decisions by policymakers and the broader society. First is that mitigation alone is not enough. The IPCC report states there is a “substantial emissions gap” in what countries

have committed to doing versus the deep cuts necessary to hold warming to close to 1.5°C. As decision-makers implement emission-reduction strategies, they must also look to support scaling carbon capture and storage opportunities, including direct air capture and nature-based solutions. Technologies, such as the Mechanical Tree,™ created in partnership between the ASU Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and Carbon Collect, are critical to minimizing the 1.5°C overshoot and all corresponding impacts and damages that come from unabated global warming.

The second principle that must guide researchers and decision-makers is that there are limits to adaptation. For example, consider low-lying island nations, such as Kiribati and the Maldives, which are being overtaken by the seas. Once underwater, adaptation is no longer a possibility. The inability to adapt will become more widespread, deepening the climate change-induced humanitarian crisis. Humankind is also in jeopardy from the pitfall of maladaptation, where natural or human-led changes inadvertently increase climate vulnerabilities.

Self-adaptation is still the planet’s dominant way to correct, and it can be unpredictable. Societies must

redefine our sense of “adaptability” and re-prioritize our energy toward anticipatory innovation rather than reactionary, short-term adjustments.

Efforts and initiatives to limit our global warming have been established with the greatest of intentions, yet they have not resulted in sufficiently changing the trajectory of our global warming curve that has placed so many humans and their homelands in peril–or on a trajectory toward peril. We can no longer simply hope that adaptation will be enough.

Humans are unlike any other species on the planet in that we have manufactured the crisis we face but are also capable of finding our way out of it through our actions and innovations. For example, we have the knowledge to regulate the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which presently accounts for about two-thirds of global warming, but we are not moving quickly enough. We have to respond with urgency and act for the betterment of all. The Global Futures Laboratory is leading efforts to mitigate and adapt to our changing planet, as well as anticipating and exploring potential new pathways to resolve the crises.