Our World

ALUMNA The Universe

Could Alien Worlds Host Life?

Laurie Barge ’09, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, investigates the origins of life on Earth to make sense of how life could form on other planets.

If you rewound the timeline of Earth to the beginning and then restarted it, would you get life again? If you tweaked some major condition, like taking away the moon or the continents, would life reemerge?

These are the questions astrobiologist Laurie Barge ’09 contemplates in her Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Barge, who received her Ph.D. in geological sciences from USC Dornsife, is researching how life first sprang up on Earth and which conditions are most essential to its emergence here — and on other planets.

To do so, she simulates environments like ocean vents — which some scientists hypothesize played host to the first life forms — conducting experiments to learn more about their chemicals and minerals.

Barge was inspired by the research of USC Dornsife’s Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences Kenneth Nealson, who used geology to search for signs of life on other planets, especially Mars.

In addition to her lab work, Barge is the science lead for the InVADER mission, which is sending a probe down to the deepest depths of the ocean to understand how life forms in deep-sea vents.

The more we know about the birth of life on our own planet, the better equipped we will be at finding signs of life on alien worlds, says Barge. —M.C.

ALUMNA Spain; Germany; Latin America; Washington, D.C.

Growing up in a small, rural town in Northern California, Carolina Cortez ’18 missed the community and culture she remembered from her early childhood in Imperial County on the California-Mexico border. But now, as a graduate of USC Dornsife’s School of International Relations and a new fellow in the Rangel Graduate Fellowship Program, Cortez is pursuing her dream of becoming a diplomat to a Latin American country, a career that would draw on both her American and Mexican heritage.

“I want to give back to both of my communities,” she says.

At USC Dornsife, Cortez completed a study abroad program in Bilbao, Spain. After graduating, she worked in thenSen. Kamala Harris’ office for a year before being accepted into the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals program. Upon her return from Germany, Cortez volunteered with a nongovernmental organization in Mexico.

Now, thanks to the Rangel Fellowship, a five-year program that prepares young people for a career in the U.S. Foreign Service branch, she started an internship in Washington, D.C. in May with the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security, Migration and International Economic Policy. —M.M. FACULTY Latin America

When Deisy Del Real’s studies on immigration took her to Argentina, she felt a sense of acceptance there that pleased her. The country had recently passed laws making immigration a human right, expanding constitutional protections to all people in the country regardless of legal status, and promoting mechanisms that ensured immigrants had access to legal services to help them start down the path to residency and citizenship.

The United States could look toward Argentina and some other South American countries when visualizing its own immigration policies, says Del Real. Currently Turpanjian postdoctoral fellow at USC Dornsife’s Equity Research Institute, she will join the faculty in the fall as assistant professor of sociology.

“The discussion tends to be open borders or full restriction, but there are a lot of things in the middle,” she says.

Public education efforts might also be useful, Del Real adds, noting that some South American countries have launched programs aimed at inspiring empathy between immigrants and the local population. —M.M.

ALUMNUS Bell Gardens

In his campaign to be elected to the Bell Gardens city council, Jorgel Chavez took to his skateboard and traveled from one end of the city to the other, talking to residents about the problems they were facing and his plans for the community.

And it paid off for Chavez, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in political science from USC Dornsife and a master’s degree in public administration through the Progressive Degree Program at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. In November the 23-year-old won a seat on the council, becoming the youngest person to hold a city council seat in Los Angeles County history. As a proud lifetime resident of Bell Gardens and a graduate of the city’s public schools, Chavez says he’s eager to serve the community he loves.

“It means a lot to me, growing up in the city, to be able to give back and to advocate for the people here.” —M.M. STUDENT New York City

When New York City announced it would be greatly expanding outdoor dining in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions abounded as to how a city full nearly to bursting with cars, buses and people would be able to accommodate thousands of tables and chairs in its preciously limited outdoor space.

But it turned out that by cutting off some streets to car traffic and capitalizing on more limited late-night and weekend bus routes, the city was able to secure additional outside dining space for more than 10,300 restaurants through its (now permanent) Open Restaurants program.

Using geographic information sciences tools, Alexa Weintraub, a junior majoring in geodesign at USC Dornsife, created a map showing how street and sidewalk space could be repurposed to allow for more outdoor seating — without affecting public transportation.

Weintraub notes that her map, “Eating on the Streets: A New Pandemic Lifestyle,” can serve as a guide to how restaurants in other high-density, space-limited cities might be able to modify their dining spaces to prevent disease transmission.

“I think there’s a lot of potential for restaurants to continue expanding and coming up with innovative ideas for outdoor dining in the future,” she says.

Her instructor, Leilei Duan, a lecturer with the Spatial Sciences Institute, agrees, noting that Weintraub’s project has broader lessons for sustainability and city planning. —M.M. ALUMNA China, Worldwide

U.S. Foreign Service

Betty Thai, who graduated in May with a degree in political science and East Asian languages and cultures at USC Dornsife, has earned a fellowship that could lead to a job as a United States diplomat — an ideal fit for the first-generation graduate who wants to help tackle global challenges.

The Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship will cover Thai’s tuition and fees at a two-year master’s program. The aspiring diplomat will also receive a stipend to cover living expenses and complete two summer internships — first at the U.S. Department of State, then overseas at a U.S. embassy or consulate. In exchange, Thai has agreed to spend at least five years as a foreign service officer after completing her degree.

Like many children of immigrant parents, Thai grew up in the role of cultural navigator. Acting as a crucial bridge between two worlds made her deeply passionate about understanding cultural differences.

After devoting her Saturdays to learning Mandarin as a child, Thai became the de facto translator and navigator for her American classmates while she studied in China through a Gilman Scholarship in 2019.

Now Thai, who is working toward a master’s degree at USC Gould School of Law, envisions a career devoted to advocating for vulnerable groups worldwide.

“I realized there are a lot of deep-rooted issues, especially facing underserved communities and minorities,” she says. “I want to get involved in politics to help solve those issues.” —E.L.

Mapping the Road to a Better Future

The COVID-19 pandemic upended lives around the world. Where do we go from here? By Meredith McGroarty

Even in Venice, Italy, the church catches and holds the eye. Its imposing proportions, lofty domes and opulent statues, not to mention its location on the Grand Canal, speak to its importance.

The high altar features an elaborate sculpture of the Virgin Mary, from whom the church derives its name — Santa Maria della Salute, or Saint Mary of Health. It’s a name that provides the key to its origins, for the baroque church was built to commemorate the end of a particularly vicious wave of the bubonic plague that swept through Venice from 1630 to ’31, killing nearly a third of the city’s population.

Santa Maria della Salute is one of two early modern churches in Venice that were constructed to celebrate life and the living following devastating outbreaks of disease, says Lisa Pon, professor of art history at USC Dornsife.

“People back then saw far more death than we have to date, and they saw it much more closely than most of us who are not frontline workers,” Pon says. “And yet, these two votive churches are celebratory in their decoration. They have the power to uplift us.”

But how does one capture that spirit of life, of renewal and recovery, after a disaster? While estimates vary, the Black Death killed at least 25 million people — up to 60% of Europe’s population — between 1346 and 1353. Although the COVID-19 pandemic is not nearly as lethal, it had, as of June 2021, killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide. In the United States, at the time of going to press, more than 600,000 people have died of the disease, which has left families devastated, shuttered businesses and upended our way of life.

But as we emerge from the pandemic, is there an opportunity to learn lessons that can help us recover as individuals, as Americans, as humans? What can we do to help heal our own wounds and those of our communities? And can we use this moment to push for everything from better child care to better access to mental health services? People’s answers to these questions will vary widely, but here are some good places to begin.

GOING TO EXTREMES Sometimes an epidemic is followed by a period of relief, or even indulgence. In the U.S., for example, the Roaring ’20s — a time when few boundaries were left unpushed — came fast on the heels of the Spanish flu pandemic.

William Deverell, professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies, notes that while multiple factors — including World War I and large-scale urbanization in the U.S. — were responsible for the way the 1920s unfolded, the Spanish flu also played an important role in shaping people’s views on life, death and pleasure. Those who could afford it spent money lavishly as the Jazz Age blossomed, seeking to live life to the full after the grief and deprivation brought by the hardships of the preceding decade.

“The pandemic — the death and the fear and the invisibility of it — made people scared. And when the fear and the danger and the deaths of the Spanish flu subsided, it had an influence on the excesses of the 1920s,” says Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

The great unanswered question is whether history will repeat itself: Will the 2020s come roaring back once COVID-19 has subsided and the pandemic is safely behind us?

The jury is out, but experts, including Deverell, say it’s certainly possible.

LOOKING INWARD COVID-19 attacked not just the body but the mind as well. The stress of losing a job, loneliness brought on by extended isolation, depression resulting from a friend or loved one’s death, fear of becoming infected with the virus and other factors ravaged many people’s mental health. Disadvantaged communities have been particularly hard-hit, according to studies by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR).

The center’s Understanding Coronavirus in America tracking survey shows that since the start of the pandemic, a quarter of U.S. adults have lost a friend or family member to COVID-19, a third struggled to put food on the table, and half have experienced financial insecurity.

“In the face of stressors like these, it’s no surprise that two-thirds of U.S. adults have reported symptoms of mild-to-severe psychological distress at least once over the course of the pandemic,” says Kyla Thomas, associate sociologist at CESR.

“Research suggests that for many — particularly those hit hardest by the pandemic, including Blacks, Latinos and low-income workers — the mental health effects of this kind of trauma will persist long after infections subside and the economy reopens,” Thomas says.

At a time when the need for mental health services is acute, the good news is that more Americans are seeking help. The number of people seeking services from mental health professionals has risen, at least partly due to the convenience of home-based virtual sessions, according to Beth Meyerowitz, professor of psychology and preventive medicine at USC Dornsife.

Meyerowitz says that she hopes virtual mental health services, and people’s willingness to continue using them, will continue after the pandemic. But she adds that there are also several strategies people can employ to protect their mental health during the transition to post-pandemic life. One involves a compartmentalization strategy, in which we focus on the small shifts we might need to make to adjust to our new lives.

“I think one thing we can learn is to break concerns down into manageable pieces so that it’s not, ‘How am I going to get back to life after the pandemic?’ but, ‘How am I going to get the kids enrolled in school?’” she says.

SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL Large celebrations may be few and far between for a while, but social interaction on a smaller scale will also probably look different after the pandemic.

“The prospect of reentering the world is bringing up a lot of unexpectedly ambivalent feelings,” says Darby Saxbe, associate professor of psychology at USC Dornsife.

While some people might be excited to return to in-person holiday dinners or drinks with friends, not everyone is

jumping at the chance to gather, party and hug, she notes. And people may be even more hesitant about larger gatherings. Saxbe predicts that people will continue to watch movies, sporting events and concerts at home, rather than attend them in person.

Temporary work-from-home solutions are likely to become long-term or permanent. And now that we have grown adept at using video conferencing tools like Zoom, we may simply opt to connect virtually more often, instead of meeting in person.

Meyerowitz says that the isolation and introspection of the pandemic prompted people to reevaluate their priorities, and many may realize that pre-pandemic they had overburdened themselves with commitments they actually cared little about. Some people may have discovered their job isn’t as important to their well-being as they thought, while others might realize that the groups or activities they were previously involved with didn’t really make them happy.

“The idea is that we don’t go back to the life we left,” Meyerowitz says. “We should really think about what we’ve learned and what the important things are that we need to rebuild and what are the things that we can let go.”

REINTRODUCING CHILDREN TO THE WORLD It’s not only adults who must navigate a post-COVID social landscape. Many children have spent the past year isolated from their friends and peers, relying on Zoom to meet their social and educational needs. Saxbe wonders about the long-term effects of a year spent largely on screens.

“Are we going to be a generation that is more isolated

“The idea is that we don’t go back to the life we left.”

or spends more time on screens than any before? We were already heading in that direction — is that going to accelerate to where we’re going to have a much lonelier generation of kids?” she asks.

But Saxbe adds that children have lived through worse disruptions — wars, famine and natural disasters among them — and their resiliency and ability to adapt will likely help them recover from the pandemic without too much long-term trauma.

She notes that, unlike adults, young children tend to live in the moment and react to what is around them rather than spend a lot of time worrying about the past or future or what is happening to other people in other parts of the world. This makes it easier for them to adapt and recover from stressful world events.

“Children take their cues from parents and caregivers, and we know that supportive and nurturing relationships offer an important way to boost resilience,” Saxbe says.

A MOONSHOT MOMENT Individually, people may feel tempted to pull back from public life, to look inward. But self-examination is not

enough, we must also look outward, to the chasms that the pandemic has exposed in our society, Saxbe says. Notably, more than a year of disrupted and disparate schooling, coupled with a scarcity of child care resources, have demonstrated the fragility of the work-life balance for today’s families. This is particularly true when both parents work outside the home. Between February 2020 and April 2021, more than 2.5 million women left their jobs, with most of the job losses occurring among low-income women and women of color.

“I think the potential upside is that the pandemic has brought increased attention, awareness and energy to the child care and educational deficits in our system, to the cost of chronic underfunding, and to the importance of policies that support low-income families,” Saxbe says.

But she hopes the pandemic has prompted Americans to view universal child care as part of the country’s infrastructure.

“I think we’re in a moonshot moment,” Saxbe says. “There are some once-in-a-generation opportunities to really create new policies around kids and families.”

SPIRITUAL RENEWAL The dialogue surrounding COVID-19 has been largely political and scientific, but the pandemic had deep spiritual repercussions. For some, faith was a source of solace — or anger — during the crisis.

“Among other things, religion is a sense-making phenomenon. It helps you find your place in the world, and this is what is going to be needed because it’s likely that our world will be changed,” says Dorian Llywelyn, president of USC Dornsife’s Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies.

Llywelyn explains that he sees religion’s role not as a counter to science, but as a supplement — healing the emotional self as opposed to the physical one. And there’s one aspect of the emotional self he would like to see people cultivate as the pandemic recedes: empathy. The squabbles over vaccine distribution demonstrate that empathy tends to be lost when we lack what we need.

“It’s easier to feel empathy when something is very far away,” he says. “When it’s actually in your neighborhood and resources are scarce — that will be the measure of how empathetic we will become.”

HOPE FOR RENEWAL The early modern Europeans erected monuments and churches to commemorate the end of epidemics and celebrate the prospect of renewal. While there will likely be a multitude of plaques, monuments and other structures to memorialize the people who died during the COVID-19 pandemic, what shape will our personal recovery take?

In this, too, we may be far closer to the spirit of the early modern Europeans than we might think.

During research she conducted in Rwanda, with survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Meyerowitz held a workshop on recovery. Participants split into breakout groups to explore different aspects of recuperation. One group addressed finding joy in one’s life.

“I asked people to raise their hands for the group they wanted to join, and two-thirds wanted to be in the joy group. These were people who had been through genocide, and that is what they wanted — joy,” Meyerowitz says. “So, it’s not just a matter of getting past the bad — people really want to seek out joy in their lives.”

The Post-COVID City — A New Quality of Life?

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted us, particularly those of us who live in cities, to rethink our public lives and routines. Commuting, restaurant dining, even neighborhood walks — suddenly the staples of daily life needed to be reconsidered. But such a rethink is not necessarily a bad thing, and in some ways is even long overdue, according to John Wilson, professor of sociology, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, architecture, preventive medicine, and spatial sciences, and director of the Spatial Sciences Institute at USC Dornsife.

Wilson notes that climate change, wildfires and other issues are reason enough for public officials to make changes to create more resilient cities. The COVID-19 pandemic might provide that extra bump to push them from ideas to action.

“I’m hopeful that this year will help generate a reawakening, so that people think, ‘Well, what should the city be like?’ ” he says.

Wilson expects that a lot of real estate will open up as some large venues, such as movie theaters, conference halls and even office buildings left vacant when businesses moved to a work-fromhome model, close or are reconfigured. Those vacant spaces could be transformed into leafy public parks or squares, with plenty of trees to provide shade. This opportunity for urban improvement is similar to how the USC Urban Trees Initiative led by USC Dornsife Public Exchange — of which Wilson is a part — is determining how best to add trees in neighborhoods adjacent to the USC Health Sciences campus. Tree canopies are especially vital in East Los Angeles neighborhoods, often in low-income communities where shade and air conditioning are scarce.

Another big opportunity now open to L.A. and other American cities is to reconfigure traffic and open spaces in order to encourage outdoor dining and walking, as opposed to driving.

“In Europe, there’s a lot of outdoor dining because cities have these large squares with no traffic around them. If we were to do things like that, particularly in L.A., I think you’d find that those spaces would be pretty popular,” Wilson says.

Although he has no simple solution for disease-proofing a city, Wilson notes that making the changes he mentions will help create a healthier, more equitable population.

“L.A., for better or worse, has traveled down a certain trajectory. Is COVID a trigger to help us take a different route? I believe risk and resources go hand in hand, so if you want big rewards, you need to take big risks. I think some of the communities that are now willing to take those risks will find value in that.” —M.M.

“I’m hopeful that this year will help generate a reawakening, so that people think, ‘Well, what should the city be like?’”

ALL I NEED IS A MIRACLE

History has taught us that in times of crisis, our desire for easy solutions makes us vulnerable to charlatans — but beware, their seductive quick fixes will not lead us to a lasting and genuine revival.

By Stephen Koenig

In March 2020, the governor of Puebla, Mexico, proclaimed that a vaccine for COVID-19 had already been discovered. To stave off the virus, he advised, simply tuck into a plate of mole de guajolote, a local specialty dish of turkey in a rich poblano pepper sauce.

Can I get a second dose?

Modern science blew us away with the speed and ingenuity with which it developed highly effective COVID-19 vaccines. But the pace of scientific innovation is no match for the pace of misinformation. From the earliest days of the pandemic, it has been easy to find a smorgasbord of unproven treatments, prophylactics and medical devices living somewhere between laughable pseudoscience and dangerous exploitation.

Hucksters develop sophisticated strategies to target receptive consumers, particularly on social media. You might not be the kind of person who would buy a colloidal silver solution that can turn your skin Smurfblue, but what about a synergistic herbal blend that boosts immunity? Despite frequent warnings from doctors and scientists, the market for miracle remedies has been robust.

It’s a problem that transcends intellect or politics. The virus is scary, and most Americans have never lived through a more uncertain time. Even when we acknowledge that there is no good reason to believe exaggerated claims, good reason may not overrule any reason.

“People become very susceptible when their stress levels are high,” says April Thames, associate professor of psychology and psychiatry. “Resources in the brain that are typically allocated to problem solving get allocated to managing anxiety and we look for quick solutions.”

Across time and cultures, history bears out this truth. The anxiety we experience in times of crisis makes us vulnerable to con artists and quacks peddling recovery for their personal enrichment. While most will agree that revival is best accelerated by a combination of empathy and expertise, plausible shortcuts have been proven to spark our innate desire for comfort on demand.

From the fabled “Fountain of Youth” to claims of weather manipulation to ubiquitous internet scams, history is filled with countless examples of shady actors offering miraculous cure-alls. That said, not all pseudoscience is crooked. Many offering unproven remedies aren’t villains with a scheme, but well-intentioned zealots with misguided hubris.

Not surprisingly, California has ties to some of the more colorful of these characters. With the help of USC Dornsife experts, we’ll get to know a snake oil salesman, a rain man and a frozen man whose “solutions” epitomized the problem.

CAN I SELL YOU A SECRET? It’s the memory boosting supplement, the healing crystals and the cancer-killing tea. It’s snake oil — a catch-all epithet for the massive category of products that claim to treat ailments or improve lifestyle, despite having no fact-based medical value.

True snake oil, however, hasn’t always had a bad reputation. In the mid-19th century, Chinese immigrants arrived en masse in the American West, bringing their traditional snake oils for soothing aches and pains. The claims were not, in fact, far-fetched. The water snakes used contained a moderate amount of omega-3 fatty acids, compounds that have proven effective at reducing inflammation.

Like many nostrums arriving from parts unknown, it didn’t take long for snake-oil products to catch on.

Enter Clark Stanley. Dubbed the “rattlesnake king,” Stanley toured the country by stagecoach, hawking his eponymous Snake Oil Liniment. A garish showman, he recognized that Chinese medicine would not seem as exciting or exotic as an elixir that leveraged the American West’s lingering mystique. Performing in a combination cowboy and Indian costume, he engrossed audiences with tales of two years spent with a Hopi tribe, from whom he claimed to have learned ancient healing practices.

It was just the warm-up act.

To the crowd’s amusement, Stanley wrangled a live rattlesnake from a sack. Handling the serpent like a child’s toy, he would rave about the medicinal properties of its oil before abruptly chopping off its head. Demonstrating his extraction process, the snake was boiled in a cauldron, causing fat to float to the top. Once mixed with Stanley’s proprietary formula, he claimed the oil cured “all forms of pain and lameness” from arthritis to reptile bites. We might assume

“Escaping mortality is likely the oldest snakeoil scheme in the world. It’s a constant concern of humans everywhere — why can’t we live forever?”

that Stanley was not only the salesman, but also a client.

As his star continued to rise, Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment was sold around the country, finding its way into catalogues and drug stores. It took more than 30 years before the truth was revealed. In 1917, the United States District Court of Rhode Island, acting on analysis from the government’s Bureau of Chemistry, found that Stanley was misrepresenting his product. Not only was his liniment ineffective — rattlesnakes contain only trace amounts of the omega-3s found in water snakes — but snakes weren’t used at all. The product comprised a blend of mineral oil, cayenne pepper, camphor and beef fat.

“When strong claims are made backing up any product or method, that could be a red flag,” says Thames. “Scientists use cautionary statements and acknowledge there may be a subgroup of people who won’t benefit at all.”

Like many peddlers of patent medicines, Stanley walked away exposed, but wealthy. And before long, the snake oil salesman became an infamous mainstay of popular culture.

UNDER THE WEATHER Health concerns are not the only problems prone to chicanery. Long before the global climate crisis became obvious, humans were concocting schemes to manipulate the weather as a remedy for stressed environments. Claiming they could coax moisture from the sky, a cohort of amateur scientists called pluviculturalists gained increasing public attention after the Civil War.

If anyone could turn skeptics into believers, it was Southern California’s own Charles Mallory Hatfield, who rose to fame early in the 20th century. With amphibious eyes and a vagabond fedora, he looked like someone Delta bluesmen meet at the crossroads.

As a young adult, he was a sewing machine salesman who grew increasingly fascinated with the pluviculture movement. Finding his father’s drought-stricken farm an ideal laboratory, Hatfield built 30-foot towers on which he evaporated chemical solutions, sending noxious fumes into the atmosphere. When storms finally brewed, they brought much needed revival to the suburban Los Angeles property. By 1904, he was contracting with local farmers and business leaders for services to “accelerate moisture” using a 23-chemical cocktail that remains unknown to this day — though one witness recalled that the air smelled as if “a Limburger cheese factory has broken loose.”

Although Hatfield insisted that he didn’t create rain but merely coaxed it from the clouds, his reputation quickly grew, earning him rainmaking gigs with cotton growers in Texas and mine operators in Alaska. According to the written account of his brother and rain-coaxing partner, Paul, every one of the nearly 500 jobs the pair accepted was successful. More than that, the work was guaranteed, as Hatfield would only accept payment after the contracted amount of rain had been measured.

This policy extended to a handshake deal Hatfield made with the San Diego City Council in 1915. Concerned that protracted drought would disrupt attendance at the city’s much-anticipated Panama-California International Exposition, the council agreed to pay Hatfield $10,000 to fill the Morena Reservoir over the course of a year.

Within days, an evaporation tower was erected 60 miles outside the city. A week later, the skies opened up and would not relent. The torrent lasted 18 days, washing away bridges, inducing landslides and forcing downtown residents to navigate Broadway by rowboat. But this was only a prelude to the destruction unleashed when the nearby Lower Otay Reservoir burst under extreme pressure.

“A wall of water thirty feet high was released,” reported the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 29, 1916. “Sweeping down the valley, the great flood of water carried people, livestock and valuable property to destruction. Scores of residents were missing tonight.”

Meteorologists had predicted powerful storms up and down the Pacific coastline ahead of the commencement of

Hatfield’s evaporation tower. In fact, historians suggest that most of the rainfall Hatfield claimed to facilitate was forecast by scientists or aligned with longstanding weather patterns. But many San Diegans pinned the destruction on Hatfield, some calling for his lynching.

“I don’t consider Charles Hatfield a quack or charlatan,” says Karin Huebner, academic director of programs at the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, noting that he was a devout Quaker. “I think he was sincerely convinced of his concoction of chemicals, but I also think he studied patterns and may have had a special sense of weather.”

As for the $10,000 fee, Hatfield insisted he had delivered on the San Diego agreement. The council did not want to pay because acknowledging a contract would concede liability for millions of dollars in damages. Courts eventually ruled that the storms were an act of God, and Hatfield had little recourse but to continue attracting moisture elsewhere.

If nothing else, the great flood became a powerful marketing tool that helped Hatfield land opportunities as far away as Honduras. He worked until the Great Depression dried up business, forcing the prodigious rainmaker to pack up his secrets and hang up his umbrella.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL Elixirs, oils, vaccines, precipitation: Legitimate or loopy, the history of remedies for our existential problems are frequently related to fluids and moisture.

“To some degree, the idea of fluids is connected with life, whereas the opposite, dryness and desiccation, is associated with death,” says Professor of Anthropology Tok Thompson.

It explains the abundant folklore related to a fountain of youth found across cultures. The legend maintains that those fortunate enough to take in these waters would never grow older. More generous versions speak of reversing the aging process and restoring vitality and strength. Twenty-first century stand-ins for rejuvenating waters may come in the form of kale juice or age-defying skin creams, marketed as weapons against the ravages of Father Time.

“Escaping mortality is likely the oldest snake-oil scheme in the world,” Thompson says. “It’s a constant concern of humans everywhere — why can’t we live forever?”

If you have plenty of cash and even more patience, there’s a super cool answer to that question: cryonics. Cryopreservation is a pseudo-scientific process where immediately upon death, a body or brain is prepared, flash-frozen and stored in industrial vats of liquid nitrogen. The hope is that scientists will eventually figure out how to revive these individuals and have the cure to whatever it was they died from.

The industry started in 1967 when James Bedford, a University of California professor of psychology with advanced cancer, entrusted a trio — including television repairman and cryonics enthusiast Robert Nelson — to preserve his body upon death.

Bedford was placed in suspended animation and stored in various places in California, including his son’s home. Now in Scottsdale, Arizona, he continues to wait out the days among hundreds of individuals — including the head of baseball legend Ted Williams — and dozens of hallowed pets, preserved in one of four cryonics facilities around the world.

If it sounds far out, it is. According to Andrew Gracey, associate professor of biological sciences, it’s not just the fact that we don’t know how to revive these folks. We don’t know how to freeze them either. “For the process to have any real shot at working, it would require technology that can instantaneously freeze and thaw the body tissue,” he says.

The problem, Gracey explains, is thermal inertia. In the case of cryopreservation, it relates to the degree of slowness with which the temperature of tissue and cells become equal to that of the liquid nitrogen environment. As fast as the freezing process may seem, it’s not nearly fast enough to avoid damaging cellular structures.

“Life just doesn’t do well in that transition,” says Gracey.

Be that as it may, it wouldn’t kill you to try.

Notes on a Post-Pandemic Economic Revival

With Americans having saved an extra $1.7 trillion during the pandemic, the economy is about to get a jolt of consumer spending. But big questions remain about how the spending spree will alter our economy.

By Lance Ignon

Jacob Soll is like a lot of Americans. (Except for the fact that he’s a MacArthur Genius.) He wants to get out and spend some money.

After working from his home office in Los Angeles for more than a year, Soll, who trained as a chef before becoming an academic, wants to dine out at his favorite restaurants, browse through a bookstore, travel — do those things that add spice to life.

“I know that I myself am going to spend money just flying around the world to catch up with family and friends … and just going out to dinner,” says Soll, University Professor and professor of philosophy, history and accounting at USC Dornsife. “I’m going to do it. We’re all desperate to do it.”

And more people can now afford to do it.

As horrific as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, one of its few silver linings has been an increase in personal savings, thanks to government stimulus payments and a dearth of things to buy and do. Americans reportedly saved an extra $1.7 trillion during the pandemic, bringing total personal savings in the United States to $6.04 trillion at the end of March. The extra amount alone is almost identical to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019.

Economists roundly agree that consumers are ready to spend a good chunk of that money — though how much remains a matter of some debate. Granted, lower-income families are more likely to have to spend their stimulus checks on basic necessities, such as food and housing. But people in higher income brackets who held onto their incomes have newfound spending power for trips to everything from manicurists to Monaco.

“Yes, we have more money saved, particularly because of the stimulus and the government payments to individuals,” says Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business. “People may be ready to go out and take themselves on long-awaited vacations and buy things that they haven’t been able to really appreciate during lockdown.”

Soll agrees.

“If people get vaccinated and the virus is suppressed,” he predicts, “there will be a boom.”

But big questions remain. How much will consumers spend and what will they spend it on? To what degree will the post-COVID consumer economy change or remain the same? Who will benefit or lose? And can we use this transitional moment to build a more resilient economy?

“I don’t think people will spend everything quickly,” says Provost Professor of Psychology and Marketing Norbert Schwarz. “I think they will be scared that there will be additional waves of COVID coming. And, probably everybody will keep a little rainy-day fund because they’re worried that jobs may go away again.”

RETAIL DETAIL Brick-and-mortar retail outlets were already under pressure from online shopping before the pandemic. In fact, more stores closed in 2019 than in 2020 — 9,300 compared to 8,300, according to Business Insider(although some estimates put the 2020 number at more than 12,000). Another 10,000 are predicted to close this year. But as consumers open their wallets, new retail businesses will open their doors. However, Soll says mom-and-pop outfits may have difficulty competing. Bigger, more

“If people get vaccinated and the virus is suppressed, there will be a boom.”

well-capitalized ventures will have an edge in reopening shuttered retail spaces.

“The big money will have a lock on much of it,” Soll says. “And you’re going to see a lot of extinction of the small personal places because many people and small businesses got cleaned out trying to stay alive during COVID and ended up getting wiped out. That said, I think it will be a great moment for entrepreneurs and smart investors who can adapt and capitalize on this boom.”

With many consumers still traumatized by their first pandemic, business may not want to go back to business as usual. For those operations that have the good fortune to remain open, attracting consumers may require a fresh approach, especially during the initial stages of reopening.

For example, restaurants that continue to offer heated outdoor dining, fan-driven light breezes and hand sanitizer may have an advantage. It’s the same for stores when it comes to offering a safe environment.

“The basic principle of marketing post-pandemic enjoyment is that you want to be sensitive to your customers and convey that you meet their desires,” Schwarz says. “And so, if you have the kind of business, or are in the kind of location, where people are worried about COVID, then you have to say, ‘No reason to worry, we make it safe. So, come here, wear your mask, sanitize your hands and keep your distance — isn’t it wonderful?’ And, if you’re in a place where people don’t care and think it’s all just a nuisance, then you say, ‘We don’t care, either. Come in here, it’s nice and crowded.’ But beware, the next surge may ruin that strategy.”

HABITS DIE HARD? OR NOT The future of consumer spending will rest in part on habits that last and those that wilt away. For example, if you took up gardening during the pandemic, will you still be buying planters and that cute, steel watering can if you’re spending your mornings and evenings stuck in traffic?

“Simply because you did it a lot during the pandemic — or you found it enjoyable — doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to continue after the pandemic ends. It really depends on whether your family goes back to pre-pandemic work and school schedules,” says Wood, who researches how habits are made and broken. “Even if you formed a habit of making dinner at home during the pandemic — and started to like your own cooking — you won’t necessarily continue when you go back to work or into the office. The cues that triggered your cooking habit — being in the kitchen at 5 p.m., for instance — won’t be there anymore. Instead, you will likely fall back into old work habits from before the pandemic. Driving home by that take-out restaurant will trigger your old dinner take-out habit.”

One of the most ingrained habits — and it didn’t take long to develop — is shopping online.

Online shopping was already on the rise prior to the pandemic, and being locked down only introduced its convenience to more consumers. E-commerce retail sales were 14% of total sales during the fourth quarter of 2020, down from a peak of 16.1% in the second quarter — when the pandemic first took hold — but up from only 4.6% a decade earlier, according to the Federal Reserve. Estimates vary, but U.S. consumers spent more than $860 billion online last year — up 44% compared to the previous year.

“Even older consumers, who weren’t buying much online before the pandemic, have now formed habits to do so,” Wood says.

Post-pandemic, the cues to our online purchasing will still be there. So consumers are likely to continue going online to buy everything from jewelry to kitty litter.

But not everything is going online. We will still get out, Wood predicts, especially when it comes to shopping for clothes. She says consumers will probably return to their favorite stores to try on garments and make an outing of it with friends.

Pablo Kurlat, associate professor of economics, agrees with his colleagues that consumer spending will accelerate as the pandemic wanes. But he says there are still a lot of unknowns.

“So,” he asks, “are we going to go back to consuming about as much as we would have, had this not happened? And if that happens, how fast? And then, are we going to choose a different bundle of goods to consume than we would have if this hadn’t happened?”

There are two schools of thought about how Americans will — or won’t — part with their newfound savings.

The first, known as Ricardian equivalence, holds that consumers will hang on to their stimulus checks because they know they’re going to be taxed to recoup some of the massive financial outlay that the government used to stabilize and revive the economy. In this case, Kurlat points out, “getting money from the government doesn’t change anything in terms of how much you consume.”

The second model is less rational but more familiar: People spend the money they can, without heed to the future.

“The truth is somewhere in between, probably,” Kurlat says. “Exactly where in between, we don’t know.”

BOOM OR BUST With consumer spending accounting for 70% of the nation’s GDP, there’s no question that how, where and when people spend their savings will have a major impact on tomorrow’s economy. But there are related factors to consider as we emerge from this grim period and reassess our priorities.

Putting an end to the COVID-19 pandemic is, without doubt, a once-in-a-generation reason to celebrate. But Soll says we have to be careful not to bring on a global hangover by spending recklessly and neglecting to use this moment as an opportunity to build a better economy.

“If America can remain united and work on its strengths, which happen to be its giant research sector and its creative sector, and if America can hold together, then I think it will come out stronger,” Soll says. “But those are big ifs.”

Just as the U.S. did after World War II, Soll believes this is the moment for government to renew investment in academic research, which for generations has been the driver of innovation. The Global Positioning System, the internet, modern treatments for cancer and a host of other diseases — these and numerous other advancements started as fundamental research projects in universities.

“We have a huge scientific powerhouse structure, the biggest in the world,” Soll says. “But if we don’t invest in it, we’re going to be left behind. We’re living on what we built before.”

THE SHY ALUMNA

Cat Moore ’05 long suffered crippling loneliness until she cracked the secret of creating relationships. As USC’s director of belonging, she now helps students do the same. By Susan Bell

It’s unlikely that anyone meeting Cat Moore before her late-20s would ever have imagined her holding the position she now has as USC’s director of belonging.

Throughout her childhood and early adulthood, Moore was painfully shy and found it hard to make friends and fit in.

“I went to all kinds of different schools and really struggled to find my place,” says Moore, who was born in Canonsburg, a small steel town outside Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. “I spent a lot of my time up trees in the woods connecting with chipmunks because I just could not figure people out.”

She found connecting at high school to be so difficult that she dropped out and homeschooled herself alone in her bedroom in her junior and senior years.

She was still struggling to find friendship when she enrolled at USC Dornsife to pursue her dream of studying creative writing. But after taking a philosophy class her first semester with the late Professor of Philosophy Dallas Willard, she decided to become a philosophy major instead.

“Dallas was such a steady, warm, wise presence,” she says. “I was able to connect with him, and he was able to connect me to my deeper values and purpose, and help guide me. My life wasn’t working and I was desperately trying to understand these things, not only academically but personally.”

Moore knew that there were answers out there because she saw others succeeding at living the connected, joyful life she so longed to live herself. She chose to major in philosophy because she hoped it would help her find solutions to her difficulty in connecting with others. Her education at USC Dornsife became a personal quest to find the answers she felt she was missing.

“I was determined to crack the code of belonging,” Moore says.

“Through my studies, I realized it’s relationships, or what I call ‘the relational matrix of life,’ that is the foundation through which all other things happen. Relationships are the bedrock and the infrastructure of life.”

However, while she took satisfaction and comfort from the intellectual answers to her questions she had discovered at USC Dornsife, she still struggled to put what she had learned into practice. In fact, she says she continued to experience crippling shyness until she was 28, married and expecting a baby.

So, where did she finally find the elusive key to conquering her persistent loneliness?

Around the corner, in her local coffee shop.

“I HAVE MY BOOKS AND MY POETRY TO PROTECT ME” Moore had begun hanging out in cafes in high school because they were a place she could comfortably be with people without having to interact with them.

“I spent so much time in cafes and yet I had never once said hello to someone,” she says. “I think of the Simon and Garfunkel line, ‘I have my books and my poetry to protect me.’ That was me. I would stack books on my café table so no one would try to sit down and talk to me.”

Then, as a mother-to-be, she began hanging out every day at her local coffee shop in East Los Angeles, but despite her defensive fortress of books, something changed.

“Pregnancy is such a conversational icebreaker and as my belly grew, people started breaking the ice with me.”

This made Moore feel so anxious she would sometimes take refuge in the restroom. But after a couple of months, she found she was able to respond.

“I realized, ‘this is something I can do. I can look at people. I can say hello. I can let them sit down for a couple of minutes.’

“It was just that little window that I needed to realize that I could interact with people,” Moore says. “I felt like I had been living in a snow globe my whole life. And it really only took one crack to shatter the whole thing.”

Once Moore’s son, Noah, was born, she brought him with her every day to the cafe, prompting more customers to interact with the young mother.

Soon, people were lining up to talk to Moore for a few minutes — what she calls “the latte window” — while they waited for their coffee to brew.

“People would sit down not knowing me at all, spill their life story or tell me whatever it was that was weighing on them, burst into tears, not even know why, and get up and say, ‘Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for listening to me.’”

Moore says this happened over and over again with people from every possible walk of life: homeless people, CFOs, rock stars, veterans, single moms.

When she told Willard of this extraordinary transformation in her life, he responded, “Being with each other, as we are, where we are, is everything. But we organize

CAT MOORE’S TOP FIVE TIPS TO IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH

As vaccines provide hope and we start emerging from the restrictions of the pandemic, USC’s director of belonging provides her top five suggestions to boost well-being.

1

All the elemental things are still asking for our attention right now, so practice good sleep, exercise/movement, nutrition, time in nature.

2

Find a contemplative practice, such as journaling or meditation, to process your experience.

3

Savor simple joys, allow yourself to be curious and in awe of life around you, and cultivate daily gratitude for the good you are still holding.

4

Find simple ways to serve others and create belonging for those around you. Whether on screen or safely off screen, reach out to friends, family, neighbors and essential workers to see how they’re really doing, ask what they need and reassure them that they are not alone — we have gone through this, and will continue to get through this, together.

5

Remind yourself that this is one season, not your whole life, and we are all navigating change together. If we can embrace the limits and opportunities of this unique time, we’ll be free to experience the new possibilities of it and maybe discover the seeds of a new, hopeful vision for our shared lives.

FINDING CONNECTION Clockwise from top left: Cat Moore in a local café; with her mentor, USC Dornsife’s late Professor of Philosophy Dallas Willard, and her son, Noah; learning how to cultivate a network of friends; enjoying an affectionate moment with Noah; and nurturing a baby goat as a child. our lives to death to avoid it because it requires that we slow down and risk being known.”

Moore says that when she received Willard’s blessing that what she was doing to interact and connect with others was indeed meaningful, she felt she had discovered her life purpose.

“I realized the dire human need to be heard and cared about in these extraordinarily simple, organic ways. In creating my own sense of belonging, I recognized everyone’s common need for this. And in providing it for others I was, in turn, providing it for myself and my son.”

Through her community work in the café, Moore devised and trademarked the methodology she had successfully used to crack the connection conundrum, a process she calls CLICK: Connect, Listen, Investigate, Communicate kindness and Keep in touch.

“ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE, WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM?” Impressed by her community-building work and the research she had conducted on behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District on the role of relationships in education reform, USC appointed Moore to be its director of belonging in 2018.

Moore says the creation of her post in USC’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life represents a breakthrough for universities in their approach to student well-being. She credits Varun Soni, USC’s vice provost for campus wellness and crisis intervention and dean of religious life and the Reverend Jim Burklo, senior associate dean of religious life, for their pioneering vision and tireless work to make this role possible.

At a time when the nation is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness — with young adults particularly impacted, according to USC Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research’s Understanding Coronavirus in America survey — Moore’s work has never seemed more relevant.

At USC, Moore has created workshops to teach her CLICK method to connect with others — and oneself — in order to defeat loneliness. For alumni, she designed SPARK, a stand-alone workshop to help people facing loneliness over the holiday season. “The holidays are, honestly, always a difficult time for people, but we knew not being able to gather because of the pandemic was going to make it even harder,” she says. “So, we wanted to create a space for people to reimagine what’s possible.”

Moore says it’s immensely important for USC to have taken the lead in creating a position such as hers.

“As far as we know, there is no other position of this kind at any other institution of higher education,” she says. “What USC is saying with this non-therapeutic, non-intervention approach is that a sense of belonging and the experience of relational well-being are basic, healthy human needs and we’re going to create the conditions for those needs to be met.”

Moore says that we have found the restrictions caused by the pandemic to be particularly challenging because our usual social structures have dissolved or been severely narrowed. This change has forced us to become acutely aware of our own experience, needs and resources.

“We’re having to pioneer a path through a new social landscape without a map, without the familiar tools, processes and teams,” she says. “It’s a big, exhausting ask, but ultimately, we are building new muscles, discovering new things about ourselves and each other, adapting to new mediums and forms of connection, and learning how to accept the challenge on the tiny, moment-by-moment scale.”

Asked what she hopes we can all learn from the difficult period we have traversed — and that many of us are still traversing — Moore says she hopes that we can gain clarity on what really matters to us and why.

“When the storm shakes the tree, many leaves fall off, but the roots dig down deeper,” she says. “I’m hoping we can all re-root in our cherished values and vision for our personal and shared lives and discover new ways forward together, starting with acknowledging that we all belong here, exactly as we are, and are irreplaceable.

“Whatever else is true of tomorrow, we can be sure that we’ll still have the power to create belonging for those around us by being present, listening and caring.”

Clearing the Air

As the climate crisis escalates, USC Dornsife experts are studying ways to quickly enact positive change and find a path to greener days. By Darrin S. Joy

I believe it’s too late. I’m a pessimist by nature, and a year of pandemic living hasn’t improved my disposition, but even taking those factors into account, I don’t feel I’m overestimating the threat. I think we’re all but doomed, effectively exterminating ourselves and countless other species by making Earth’s climate — our climate — increasingly unlivable.

I’ve held this view since long before Jonathan Franzen penned his provocative, fatalistic New Yorker essay in 2019 — and for many of the same basic reasons. Human beings don’t change until the pain of not doing so becomes too great to remain complacent. Instead, we plug along, blinders firmly affixed, ignoring the ruin we leave in our wake. By the time we react strongly enough to curtail climate change, the snowball (ironic metaphor, I know) will have gained too much momentum to be stopped. And in fact, it may already be unstoppable.

But Franzen had plenty of detractors arguing against his assertions — and so do I. People I work with at USC Dornsife, in fact. Scholars who, while willing to listen to us cynics and acknowledge some validity to our despair, aren’t about to succumb to hopelessness.

Instead, they’re looking for practical solutions — ways of working with human nature rather than bucking it, so politicians, business leaders, policymakers and everyday people find it easier to act in ways that will save us from ourselves.

TO DECIDE OR NOT TO DECIDE Joe Árvai came to USC Dornsife in late 2020 to lead the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies as its director — with an academic appointment as Dana and David Dornsife Chair and professor of psychology.

Árvai specializes in risk analysis and decision-making, studying why people make the decisions they do and how they can make better ones. He also has an oceanography background and a passion for seeking solutions to the mounting climate crisis.

Hiring a Wrigley Institute director with a strong background in a social science like psychology rather than one steeped solely in the natural sciences, like biology or environmental sciences, is strategic. It’s part of USC Dornsife Dean Amber D. Miller’s vision of expanding research that addresses the human side of the climate crisis to find ways to incentivize us to speed the development and adoption of beneficial policies and solutions.

Árvai and I meet for the first time through the magic of Zoom, and as I confess to him my cynical resignation to the horrors that await us all, Árvai sighs, head in hand. He’s heard it all before.

Then he begins to show me the error of my ways.

“I think there are a few things that we need to realize. One is the fact that not doing something is a decision; we’ve made a decision to not act,” he says. “So, to just bury our heads in the sand and proceed by not taking action, that’s not passive in any way, shape or form. We are actually making choices to not do those things.”

Ouch.

Not only is my cynicism not helping, it’s poor decisionmaking that actually may be making things worse.

But then he generously lets me off the hook, at least a little. Making thoughtful, evidence-based decisions is hard, he says. After working for the past couple of decades with everyone from individual consumers to policymakers and from local government to the White House, he knows that decision-making doesn’t come naturally.

And one important decision-making skill is the ability to put options in context, and to see each decision as part of a continuum. Each decision leads to changes that, in turn, make future new decisions necessary. These future decisions also lead to changes that call for more decisions, and so on.

Choosing to install solar panels on your roof may help reduce your carbon footprint and lower your electric bill, but that means less traditional revenue for the utility company, which may then need to make decisions about their investments in future technologies such as advanced renewables or carbon capture. These decisions by utilities then create feedbacks that affect consumers of the future.

Making good decisions means trying to predict the potential consequences of options down the road, learning from what actually happens, and then teeing up the next round of decisions, says Árvai.

Now that he’s at USC Dornsife, it’s these expanded decision-making skills and how they affect approaches to

“At the Wrigley Institute, we want to help educate the next generation of change agents working on the environment and sustainability.”

the climate crisis that Árvai is working to understand and improve, particularly among students.

“At the Wrigley Institute, we want to help educate the next generation of change agents working on the environment and sustainability. We need to start imparting new kinds of analytic skills so that when these students eventually become the CEO of Microsoft or Ford Motors or governor or mayor, they’re working from a more modernized curriculum that teaches what it means to be effective.”

TELL ME A TALE But making smart, defensible decisions isn’t just about analysing data. Part of the challenge in implementing lifesaving decisions is in how we think, Árvai says. It’s in the balance — or lack thereof — between analysis and emotion. Often discussions of climate change deteriorate when emotions run too high, but sliding too deep into analysis may be just as big a problem.

“I think a lot of our communications about climate change — communications that are meant to motivate people — fail because they’re too rich in statistics,” he says. “They’re too much of a numbers game.”

This is where a healthy dose of insight from the humanities and fine arts can help. By putting decisions in context and presenting information that balances decision-makers’ emotional and analytical needs, artists, filmmakers, writers and other storytellers can help them more effectively evaluate the potential risks and benefits of their choices.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to get people to think in a more comprehensive way about alternatives, alternative pathways, alternative policies, different things you could do as an individual, as a consumer, as a policymaker or leader,” Árvai says. “We need chemists and physicists and ecologists and psychologists and sociologists to work with artists and painters and writers to create that context.

“It’s about building a system in which we recognize that we are all contributing to decisions we make as a society,” he adds — and ultimately working together to avoid disaster.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, SIR Findings from a study coordinated by USC Dornsife Public Exchange in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation jibe with Árvai’s point about leaning too much on the analytical side of the brain.

Led by Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science at USC Dornsife and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, the study examined how well people undertood particular words used in public reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Bruine de Bruin is herself a noted expert in the psychology of decision-making. (She and Árvai have known each other for years.) She says that simplifying information can help make decisions easier, which is one reason Public Exchange and the UN Foundation initiated the research.

For the study, climate scientists selected the most important words in their communications. Their list of eight terms includes “mitigation,” “carbon neutral,” “unprecedented transition,” “tipping point,” “sustainable development,” “carbon dioxide removal,” “adaptation” and “abrupt change.” The researchers then asked a group of participants with widely varying views on climate change to interpret the words.

Even among seemingly ordinary terms, study participants struggled to understand what the words meant in the context of climate change, according to Bruine de Bruin.

“Even ‘adaptation’ and ‘mitigation,’ which are among the most commonly used words by climate scientists, are not widely recognized,” she says.

Bruine de Bruin attributes the confusion to the propensity for people to borrow word meanings from more familiar contexts, especially if they aren’t quite sure of the meaning as it relates to climate change.

“So for ‘adaptation,’ people think of adapting a book into a movie,” she explains. “For ‘mitigation,’ people confuse it with ‘mediation,’ like resolving a conflict.”

Add more nuanced terms and the confusion mounts. “ ‘Abrupt change’ to climate scientists means climate systems changing over the course of centuries,” Bruine de Bruin says. “To a lay person, that’s not abrupt. And so that only makes it more confusing.”

The answer, she says, lies in providing more explanation or choosing words more carefully, so there’s no misunderstanding.

Bruine de Bruin says similar principles apply to visual communication, such as graphs and charts.

First, put less information in them, she says. Avoid trying to say too much at once.

Also, be upfront and clear. “Using the title to communicate the key message can be really helpful,” she adds. Rather than a vague title like “The Effect of Rainfall on Corn,” try something declarative: “More Rain Makes Corn Grow Taller.”

But even if communication is clearer, will it really change behavior? Bruine de Bruin thinks it’s a key part of the mix.

“Information alone does not necessarily change behavior, but having clear information is important,” she says. Policymakers, for instance, need to be able to understand and justify their decisions. “If they don’t understand the explanation, then they’re not going to be willing to change the policies.”

GETTING CHARGED UP But when they do understand, policymakers may opt to enact vital change. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, faced with the clear evidence that gasoline- and dieselpowered vehicles contribute more than half of the state’s carbon pollution, signed an executive order mandating that all new vehicles sold in the state meet zero-emissions standards by 2035. In practical terms, that mostly means turning to electric vehicles (EVs).

But this mandate, as Árvai’s perspective on decisionmaking suggests, gives rise to other issues, including an important question: As California — and the world — make the transition to EVs, how can they position themselves to get the biggest bang for the buck?

USC Dornsife’s Public Exchange is tackling that question. Public Exchange pairs academic researchers and scholars with public and private sector partners to identify, analyze and solve intractable problems. In this case, Public Exchange enlisted USC Dornsife economists to examine industrial policies and regulations to determine how the L.A. region can benefit as much economically as it will environmentally.

“We’re providing the quantitative analysis to say, you can spend your money in a lot of different places, but here’s what’s going to bring the biggest return to [gross domestic product] and regional growth,” explains USC Dornsife’s Kate Weber, executive director of the Academy in the Public Square and director of Public Exchange.

Their work suggests the benefits of moving to EVs may extend beyond cleaner air, that investing in electric vehicles not only won’t ruin the economy, but may actually boost it. After all, someone needs to manufacture the batteries or install and operate charging stations, and there’s plenty of room for innovation in vehicle technology and efficiency, to name just a few opportunities.

California has been an important leader in the transition to electrified mobility. If the nation’s largest economy can not only survive, but thrive in the transition to greener practices, it will send a powerful signal that what is good for the environment is also good for the economy. And that’s a beacon the other 49 states are bound to follow. “As California goes, so goes the nation,” after all.

A NEW DAY DAWNING? News like this is almost enough to make me drop my pessimism altogether. Indeed, it’s hard to remain completely cynical after speaking with people like Árvai, Bruine de Bruin and Weber.

It’s not that they’re extreme optimists. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s their sensible, reasoned approach to climate crisis issues — an approach blending research and know-how from disparate disciplines — that engenders more than a little confidence that there remains, at the very least, a good possibility of avoiding disaster.

I still ache knowing that the future will be tough, especially for coming generations. But as I watch the sun rise on another beautiful spring morning, I realize my sense of futility has to some degree faded. In its place grows a feeling of accountability. Each of us has a part — a responsibility — to do what we can, no matter how small.

As Wrigley Institute director Árvai says: “We know that we’re not going to solve the problem on our own, or today. But we’re at least contributing to viable, gamechanging solutions we can implement tomorrow and the day after. And, importantly, we hope that others will, as well.”