 Good morning everybody. I am Ravas Govindaraju. I am the head of the School of Civil Engineering and it's my pleasure to welcome all of you to this panel discussion. The panel session is on climate change and human decisions and I'm looking forward to highly engaging and interactive discussion. To get us started, I want to introduce our moderator for today, Kendrick Hardaway, received a Bachelor's of Science in Biological Engineering from University of Arkansas in 2018. Following graduation, he spent time working for a small startup in Austin on neighborhood level urban sustainability. In fall 2019, he joined us as a graduate student in ESE and Tripoli. He was involved in the organization of produced climate strike alongside the global climate strike. His research interests include how engineered systems influence human decision making and how changes in those systems can improve human health, environmental well-being and societal resilience to climate change. So with that, Kendrick. Thank you so much. Good morning everyone and thank you for attending this panel discussion. I like like I was just introduced. I am a student in ESE in Tripoli and I'll be moderating today with Dr. Bond, Dr. Dukes, Dr. Philly and Dr. Marwade as our panelists. If you'd each like to take a couple minutes to introduce yourselves and your work and how it relates to our topic today, that would be beneficial for our audience. You want to start with me? Yes. Hello everyone and thank you very much for being here. I'm Tammy Bond. I'm currently at Colorado State University as Walter Scott, Presidential Chair in Energy, Environment and Health. My work started in mechanical engineering. I worked on combustion, air pollution, its connection to climate and most recently I've been interested in how human decisions are embedded in what we do with combustion and how that leads to the changes in the atmosphere and environment and then there are subsequent effects on well-being. Are you sure you don't want to come work for me? Perhaps, perhaps. Who knows? So my name is Jeff Dukes. I'm the Director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center and a professor in Forestry and Natural Resources and Biological Sciences. I work on how ecosystems respond to environmental changes like climate change changes in the atmosphere and try to understand their responses both in terms of consequences for the ecosystems and for people and in turn for the atmosphere as well and how the responses of ecosystems might feedback to accelerator slow environmental changes like climate change. Hi everybody. I'm Tim Filly. I'm a professor in Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Agronomy and I'm also the Director for Purdue Center for the Environment. My research really is also thinking about ecosystems but most of that below ground. I work on soil organic matter and how soil organic matter responds to environmental stress which includes land use change and also climate and I'm also very interested in how decisions that people make about how to use their land are impacted by those environmental stresses and how policy also intersects in that. Hi good morning everyone. My name is Venkatesh Merwade. I'm a faculty in civil engineering. My work mostly is associated with surface water hydrology and specifically I'm interested in flood modeling and flood processes and how we develop our land and how the climate is changing. How is that impacting the floods and flood occurrences and what can we do to mitigate impacts from floods. Thank you all. So as a reminder our panel topic today is climate change and human decisions and so as a format I've been given some questions that I'll be asking the panelists and then I've also developed some questions myself so about 15 minutes on each and then we'll close with questions from the audience but if at any moment there's just a burning desire to ask a question I'm sure we can we can answer that question itself. So to start Dr. Merwade what is the primary what is a primary challenge in your respective field with regards to the decisions humans are currently making. So as I mentioned I am mostly interested in flooding so there are two ways we can think about how human decisions are impacting floods. So one is again the climate is changing because of all the decisions and carbon emissions we are emitting so that's one way and I guess I'm sure other panel members will talk about that. The other aspect of that is how prepared we are. So what decisions humans are making in terms of how they are prepared to to face these floods and what they will do after the flooding has occurred. So a lot of people are moving to urban areas so that is impacting the impervious cover which means that more water is going to flow on the surface and will cause more flooding then at the same time more humans are directly impacted by all the flooding that is happening in urban areas. Once the flood takes place what decisions do we make after that. So a lot of people want to live close to water which means there are a lot of people who are directly living in flood plains and if you ask people do you live in flood plain only people who pay flood insurance they say yes and a lot of people say no but if you think about it all of us are living in flood plain in some way because at some point all of us are going to get impacted by flooding. So what we do now and what we do after the event I think both decisions again impact what will happen in the future. Right I think I recently read a paper where it said over 80 percent of humanity lives next to a river or a coast and so that falls right in the flood plains. Dr. Deuce what is another primary challenge that you face in your field with the way humans are making decisions right now. Well I think a lot of what I work on has to do with climate change and so there are maybe two primary ways that human decision making is affecting that and well there are a whole bunch of ways that human decision interfaces with that but if we if we think about the the causes of climate change there are decisions related to our societal fossil fuel use and and how much that gets promoted or suppressed by individual decisions but mainly by policies larger scale policies and then there's also decision making or the lack thereof related to deforestation and you know both of those are interesting and challenging problems that are intertwined with issues related to the status quo being difficult to change because of entrenched interests to some extent because of corruption particularly with the deforestation issue and in some tropical countries and you you rapidly get into just really thorny issues where it's sometimes it's easy to see some of the the first steps of how you get past this problem but but rapidly you start seeing challenges for for getting through the second third and fourth steps of of dealing with this. Sure so we've heard a little bit about like decisions of people living in flood plains and how that may not be the most resilient long-term decision but and and then as Dr. Duce just mentioned Dr. Philly what is technology potentially the solution or it could it be a problem for how it relates to your field? So from the perspective of soil perspective of carbon in general technology really has to be part of the solution but in the context of policy and how people adopt technologies you can have the best technology in the world and if humans don't want to adopt it or if there's too many barriers or if it's economically not feasible it just won't happen. I mean we know our things we have to do it we know that the population is growing rapidly and we know we're going to have to double our food production in the next 50 years but we have to do that without a negative impact on the carbon balance in the atmosphere we know that we can try agriculture that is actually more restorative. How do we get more carbon into the ground while also producing food but not cut down forests but not move into very fragile wetland areas and disrupt those as well. So we have a huge challenge and technology is really one of the ways we have to approach that with more precision agriculture thinking about different cultivars that actually have a wider range of climates which we can grow them on because climate is changing and so really technology is going to be and needs to be at the forefront but also with sound policy at the same time. Yes and a follow up to that I you teach a class science and society is that correct you teach a class called science and society correct. It's a great issues class in the college of science yes. So what are some things you mentioned policy and how it is integrated with any technology that we have or create. What are some things that maybe that you've learned or people that have come to your class and spoken said about this. Sure that class in particular thinks about natural hazards and how do we make societies resilient to existing threats and future threats and natural hazards but in terms of the context of I'll stick with my wheelhouse in terms of carbon and how policy intersects with that. One of the things we have to be careful about is basically enacting laws that might mandate let's say we accumulate a certain amount of organic matter and soil with a certain type of agricultural practice without having the ability to actually monitor and verify that. So that's one of the biggest challenges we have is being able to look into our soils and tell how much carbon is there at high spatial resolution and look to see how much of that carbon is vulnerable to climate change to land use change and then give the stakeholders the farmers the practitioners the tools to actually verify that for a mandate that might be passed down let's say in California about a certain type of community agriculture community has to increase carbon by x percentage per year if we don't have the technology to verify that and to do that then then we fall short and then there's a mismatch. Okay thank you Dr. Bond this is I feel like we've been moving slowly into what you've recently been researching and so what are your thoughts on how technology and human decisions play a role in addressing these environmental concerns maybe maybe first mention how much focus you feel like should be on how we're changing human decisions and how much of that focus should be on creating these new technologies or should there even be a split there? Right so I think your question is something like should we be developing new tech or should we be working on behavior change and I would say that one of the challenges that we have is that we've been doing those things separately we've been inventing technologies and hoping that they are a solution and sometimes they are but when they're not coupled with what people want to do then they are they cannot be a solution or they can even work against you sometimes we create technologies that worsen the problem like somebody made cars and now we have mobility but we also have a lot of CO2 emissions and so I think the problem is is not that we should work on one or the other but that we haven't taken a systematic view to how does that coupling of technology which amplifies our ability as humans with what humans do naturally and what they can be guided or suggested to do how does that then affect the environment which in turn comes back and impinges on humans I don't know if that's an answer to your question it's more of a it depends kind of answer which I hate but I think that the answer is that all these things connect together and we have not been looking at the connections as deeply as we could I feel like as researchers we can probably empathize with the it depends situation because there's so much nuance in these systems but maybe a follow-up question is how can we be proactive about making sure that when a new technology is coming on board that it's fitting within the system in a way that rather than exacerbating environmental impacts mitigates environmental impacts are there quick or ideas that you have in that area are there quick ideas nothing's quick right especially when you're talking about research so I think a couple of things can can help us there but I think there's still a lot of unknowns and one is the thing that a lot of earth system scientists work on and my colleagues here are in no exception which is that in trying to understand the science of the earth we're working toward a predictive capability of what the earth will do and if we're able to couple how technology fits in and how it would be taken up in that there's a lot of not just human but societal decision-making there if we're able to couple those into that predictive capability then we have some ability to to look ahead at what might happen now there are always unintended consequences and I don't think we should be afraid of that those just happen but I think that one area where we could improve both as as scientists and as members of society is learning to deal with those rather than saying you had a terrible unintended consequence and we are going to stop all that stuff completely and you did a bad job and your research will be discontinued I think we need to to bring that in as a moment of failure and learning and so it's also our our response to technology and and failure and learning that that we need to work on. Dr. Dueser doctor or any of the the panels panels do you feel like within your field there are proactive things we can do so that the way humans are interacting with your systems it's a positive impact when a new technology comes on board or or a new advancement is made. I think it's it's critical for government to function well to deal with that I mean I think this is a in a way a question about government you need something that's going to be thinking broadly about how to incentivize or mandate the the future you want or at least avoiding the future that you don't want and so I mean I can think of examples right now that might relate to that with something like solar panels so we've now dropped the price of energy generation from solar below that of everything else and we can expect that solar energy is going to proliferate across the landscape like crazy over the next few decades. Those panels don't last forever right and right now people are already bringing that up it's like what well what do we do with all these panels down the down the road and I think in a way often this comes into the conversation because people want to avoid the transition into solar panels rapidly right now but it is a real question that we need to think about is well what are we going to do how are we going to repurpose those how are we going to is there a way to recycle those and so you know government can be thinking long term about what is the future going to look like can we incentivize programs or technologies that will help us avoid future problems from the technologies that are about to be exploding today. Okay perfect do you two have comments? Well I just want to again go back to your question about technology so we are talking about technologies for mitigate climate change but there is also role of information technology so we are using a lot of data also in our work and information technology to provide so right now there is a lot of data but people don't have access to it in the in the form that they can understand so there is also a role of information technology to get all that data and provide information to public so they can understand and that may help them to be proactive. And we need to think about the broadest tool kits out there that we have if a goal is to remove carbon from the atmosphere and to slowly draw down what we've already put up but in all future activities either make them carbon neutral or carbon negative we need to be thinking broadly and innovative and so there's been a lot of papers out there thinking about you know what do we need to do in forestry what do we need to do in agriculture what do we need to do in industry for carbon drawdown and so there's technologies like direct air capture right that are popping up and the technologies right now are extremely expensive particularly with the cost of carbon per ton and they're not necessarily economically feasible and so government incentivization now thinking about how many of the department of energy could seed this research for direct air carbon capture from the air but then also industry thinking about well how what do we do with these monitors what we get them what can we make from them that will then ultimately produce high value products is very important so we need to be thinking downstream we need to be thinking upstream and in terms of policy in terms of industry but also in terms of modeling our climate modeling our environment that they're all intertwined but we need good government and good policy to actually do that we need incentivization of the research and closer public private partnerships and some of these things to make that happen thank you and so I think we've we've discussed a little bit about like okay we've got these systems we've got technology developing we need to be thinking about these things but then for just the the typical person I know this is a question that I've gotten from a lot of people what are things that Dr. Bond will start with you what what are things that the typical person can do right now to be more conscientious of their human decision making as it relates to technology or just in general trying to decrease their environmental impact so the number one thing you can do as a private citizen to make it possible to address climate impact is vote for people who will select good people in good programs so this does not mean that personal responsibility has no role I'll talk about that next but but we need people who can help our society do what it needs to do because the actions that you can take on your own are not enough and so we need to bring people along I find it useful to do the things that people are supposed to do in quotes you're supposed to use a cloth bag rather than a plastic bag if you think a little bit bigger you should think about your carbon footprint and how to offset it and I do those things not because I think they're going to save the planet because they won't but because they turn me into a consumer and they make me aware of where things come from and how difficult it is and that gives me a greater appreciation for the the big things that people have to do Dr. Philly your thoughts yeah so I have to agree voting is probably the actual best thing the average person can do to actually help with climate change be knowledgeable I mean be invested in the system and understand the struggle and make sure that you avail yourself of the resources that are out there if you want to know about climate change there is no excuse there are resources out there that can tell you everything that science knows and do so in a lay fashion our own government has the websites that are out there our universities teach in it try to take a class on climate change or try to restructure or demand that your university include climate change in basically all freshman classes so there's no excuse not to know about the impacts the the potential solutions and and your personal and collective responsibility so I think that a lot of it is your personal investment in the system in the political system but even in just the ecosystem that you're in now let's say as a student right you should demand that climate change is a fundamental part of how Purdue operates to follow I think a lot of the people here probably are environmentally they are aware of climate change environment but where so you mentioned some sources where some places maybe they could send their friends to or if they run into someone on the street that's picketing for not taking down a coal plant what where could they send them and and what could they also if the students are think that they are initiated and they're knowledgeable and they know about climate change go talk to your parents all right go talk to your cousins don't be afraid of thanksgiving to bring up climate change and talk about it and and talk about what you know because everyone at that table is a voter so bring that message home that's one big thing you could do Dr. Marwade do you do you have any sources that you yourself recommend as they pertain to climate change that people could access or use to educate themselves and educate their friends and family these days I I watch a lot of documentaries on Netflix there are a lot of good documentaries and maybe that's not the answer you're looking for but that's an easy accessible place that that you can get information on yeah and with regards to your earlier question on personal decision what can we do so again learning from those and my personal experience even if we reduce meat consumption just by one meal I think we can reduce more than 10% of carbon emissions so food consumption is a big plays a big role in in all these discussions absolutely and and if you are curious there there are a couple of resources that I know of one of them is called project drawdown it's a global modeling case study where they looked at what are the 100 solutions that are here today we don't have to wait on any technology these solutions are here today that we could what they call drawdown carbon from the atmosphere I recommend checking that out it's called project drawdown and they mention one in the in the top five there are two related to food and that's reducing food waste and reducing meat consumption can anyone guess the the number one thing that humans can collectively do to mitigate climate change yes refrigeration is the number one thing they decided that human society could do to reduce climate change impact um Dr. Dukes what with all of this we've talked about voting is important we've talked about individual actions we can do but when we're when we're voting what what should we be looking for in a in a platform or or in in policies that are realistic in addressing climate change what are some examples some enforceable examples for what we should look for in terms of policy related to climate change so I want to just back up for a second on that refrigeration point and just be just clarify that that's because some refrigerants are incredibly powerful greenhouse gases that are very long lived in the atmosphere and so managing those instead of just somehow letting them be released into the atmosphere at the end of the life cycle of refrigerants or during the production cycle is is particularly critical but I would say that it you know the the main thing that I would look at with a candidate who's if you're thinking about climate change is whether they talk about climate change a lot and seriously I mean there are many different there are many different proposals out there for how to tackle climate change but the political system means that many of the wild ideas won't actually get enacted but if someone is really serious about the issue and is pushing for the issue there are many possible steps forward that we could take that that have a chance for for succeeding and and you know I want to know that the politician that I'm voting for is going to push for many of those solutions and for them being implemented quickly you know it's it's one thing to say that you're going to ban fracking tomorrow that's you know you can make that statement but whether you can actually accomplish that is a another question and with any policy there's that same thing you want you're going to put in place a carbon tax so I think you know one thing is you can evaluate whether you think those policies are realistic excuse me but I think the other thing is just is the person really passionate about the issue and if they're passionate about the issue then you're going to hope that they're actually going to get something done whatever mechanism it is you know whether it's the exact thing that they're proposing or something else so I think you know right now honestly there are huge differences among politicians in how they're talking about climate change and and how I would perceive their motivations for for dealing with it and and I think that it's I wouldn't worry too much about the specifics of policies among the people who are who seem to be very serious about tackling it and are talking about it a lot I I would just want to choose one of those people who's at least talking about seriously doing things about this and dr bond what are your thoughts on when you're looking at politicians or representatives what are you looking for in okay that we want to vote but then who are we voting for what what are you looking for in terms of policy or positions so I'd have to agree with dr dukes if I was great at picking policies I would be running for office I'm not and it I am not able to predict what is going to worm its way through the political system it's going to take some pretty smart heads who understand the science and who understand policy to put something together that's acceptable and then moves forward a couple of things that I would look for then are not specific politics policies but who are they choosing to advise them are they thinking about not just policies now which are very important but long-term investments the the price of solar cells that we have now which is enabling people to to get solar energy at a reasonable cost came after years of research and development into solar cells and so in addition to needing to move quickly we also need to to think big and long because the things that will enable us to have lower impact in the future are just glimmers in somebody's eye right now and so I'm looking for smart choice of people willingness to move quickly but also not so quickly that you're not looking for long-term investments because some of what we would like is big infrastructure big programs things that help us do what's right thank you so and and I think a lot of climate change because it's a global problem but then every location is a little bit different with what issues they're facing or what what maybe they're contributing to climate change it doesn't need to start maybe at a local level and then and then work toward the top in terms of what we can do and how we're involved in our community so maybe Dr. Philly what's something that as people here at Purdue we could do to help the institution of Purdue reduce its environmental impact well sure I mean Purdue has the opportunity to make overt climate mitigation or climate adaptation statements and introduce those into its master plan we have large capital campaigns that are going on to increase 400 acres on the south side of campus and Discovery Park District and part of that is going to be heavily sensing the whole system to think about water use water recycling energy use and the conversations are about how to actually talk about carbon use with that as well and so getting involved in that process and knowing about what Purdue University is doing in its plans and then asking you know overtly well how is that going to either enhance or you know detract from a solution to climate change those are very fair things to ask of all the administrators of all center directors on campus how are you engaged in that process are you educating Purdue's facilities about climate change we have a sustainability program on campus in facilities and they actively talk about climate change and energy as well but the students can actually ask well what are you actually doing tell us about it and we should be able to answer Dr. Marwade do you have thoughts on something that faculty or students could do to help do as an institution reducing its climate change impact so I I agree with everything that Dr. Philly said but as an institution and again this is something simple I have seen over the years and I find this on every campus whenever there is a conference during the summer you go to that conference and you sit in that room and you're freezing cold and I see that even on Purdue sometimes I come in the summer when it's too hot I come in my office and I feel like I have to wear a sweater so maybe somebody has done some studies can you just raise that temperature by one or two degrees and see how much carbon you will reduce so one of things I also think about if I was back in the last question a little bit is that because of our entrenchment of our political parties talking about climate change across the aisle is often difficult but sometimes they're talking about the same solutions and if they're talking about efficiencies in industry or if they're talking about how to basically capture CO2 out of a coal fire plant with technologies that are also the same technologies of direct air capture and they work actually together sometimes but more also behind the scenes but talking about the same solutions that can be applied and so that's also something to look for because our system is such right now that again climate change is a very difficult thing for one of our political parties to talk about but they do talk about actually things that actually can improve our ability to mitigate climate change right and it hasn't always been that case I think it was the 70s and 80s that it was both parties were very on board with climate change and energy efficiency and even now if it's framed in energy independence energy security way reducing energy use and finding renewable ways to produce energy here in the US crosses the aisle potentially for Dr. Dukes and Dr. Bond what are the ways that a publicly held company that that is bound to their shareholders what are things that we can reasonably expect them to do as it pertains to climate change while answering to their shareholders I can start I guess it depends on the company and what their mission is but let's let's take the case that people like to think about which is oil companies and some of them are investing in moving toward being energy providing company and I would say that that that's not 100% true some of them are still reaping the benefits of course of the fossil fuels that are that are in the ground but nobody here is goes out in the morning thinking I really want to burn oil I really want to turn it into CO2 and put it into the atmosphere they just want what comes out of that combustion and so if you recast yourself as somebody who's providing a service and you reframe the support of that service which usually needs energy to something that is more secure that you can get from the sun and not have to rely on digging things out of the ground then you're doing well for your company not just for the people of the earth which is not a bad thing either so I would say that on the financial side companies should be disclosing their climate risks to shareholders they should be really honest about and like legally I think they must be very honest about what are the implications of climate change for the value of the resources they hold for the value of the services they provide what are the unexpected changes that could be coming down the road and that would include what happens if there's a price put or some sort of penalty essentially put on on releasing carbon into the atmosphere that's you know these are really important risks and I think this is going to be happening more and more in the near future and then another thing is just they should be releasing some sort of transparent sustainability plan that that's going to make it clear to their employees and their shareholders what they're trying to do to solve solve these environmental problems as opposed to create them right yeah I really appreciate that answer I think one of the the first organizations to be aware of climate change and its impacts were insurance companies because they they always want to know about your risk as a company or as a as a person and then one thing before switching topics a little I wanted to touch base with you all both from a produced situation publicly held company situation there's a currently a divestment movement occurring at a lot of universities or large institutions to divest from fossil fuels or divest from banking establishments that are giving loans to fossil fuels what is the role of boycotting or divesting from people that maybe aren't or companies or or organizations that aren't transparent about their environmental impacts doctor marwade do you have thoughts on the role of boycotting groups I would pass that question to my colleagues were more qualified I think okay yeah I actually haven't given that a whole lot of thought to be honest and but the role of of public pressure on a company to do what is socially responsible is the right of every consumer and so if they if they want to speak with not actually buying that product that's that's their right and if a company looks at how it operates and decides that enough of the society will think that what they're doing is not in the regional national or global interest and people will not buy their products I think that then they will respond but but I haven't actually given the thought about actually active boycotting too much thought and I maybe Jeff has I have a bit I mean I think that the the boycotting the stock is something that for the most part starts out as being symbolic unless it snowballs if it does snowball then that that can have a real effect on the the company but it also having that symbolic pressure out there that suggests that people want you to stop doing something you're doing I mean the case that's brought up is typically the case of apartheid where that you know boycott of South South African stocks and companies really did start to put pressure on a on a country to change but I I think that the you know initially there are it's mostly symbolic but it can build over time and then you can see companies like BlackRock saying we're not gonna we're not gonna be engaged in these businesses going forward and that has a that has a real potential impact so so I think that you don't know where it can lead typically one university's holdings within an industry like coal or fossil fuels in general is if you're talking about university boycotts that's a tiny slice of the overall pie but it is a an important symbolic gesture and it says something to the whole student community the whole university community and and to some extent to the larger investment community Dr. Bond one thing that a student had asked previously was what do you feel like the way the media is currently portraying climate change so I'm pivoting a little bit from from governance into maybe less in governance and more of a media do you feel like the media is accurately portraying what the reality is surrounding climate change well you're kind of asking the wrong person because I don't really watch television or get my news from those sources and and if I want to read about climate change I don't go to the media so I'm a bad test case I would say that we're not really present to the reality of climate change we either we either hear about it as a political event it's talked about when there are extreme events in the weather and then people don't know how to relate those to climate change and what I would like and I'll just tell you on my secret longings here is that we'd have movies that were set in realistic climate change settings and you would know as an audience member that this was the year 2050 and it was in the business as usual scenario so people kept burning fossil fuels so the kind of climate change movies we have now are like the day after tomorrow which is pretty old now but it's also pretty extreme but I think that people know a fair bit more about weird alternate realities and then they actually do about our realities so I don't know what the media is doing but I I think it would be great if the if the arts and entertainment community got on board with sharing with the public what climate change was going to be like so quick question uh thank you how many of you have been uh seeing news about the coronavirus recently sure see so would it be fair this will be the last question before I open it to the audience would it be fair Dr. Deuce to expect media to provide maybe uh almost like updates like they're doing for the coronavirus for climate change uh well I would say that it would be nice to have regular updates on climate change or at least regular discussions about climate change in the media even I don't want to hear about climate change every 20 minutes that's fair that's fair a little depressing but but yeah I think I mean what did the the number just came out that I think and I'm going to get this completely wrong but there was something like four hours of total coverage on the networks on climate change the last year I think uh maybe somebody else saw this news story and can give me the exact number but it was something around around that so a whole year across the networks four hours of coverage on climate change this issue deserves a lot more time than that yeah and and I think that's that's where I'm getting at is uh climate change part of what makes it this insidious problem is the fact that it's so easy to put out of mind and so if if there's a way that we as a society can put it in front of ourselves more often to help our human decision making uh perhaps that would I think one of the things that also makes it hard sometimes to talk about is differentiating the things people feel locally with what climate change reality is and and often it's even hard for the scientists to say what is the effect of land use change let's say climate change and urbanization on the local community and so again I think the impulse is to say it's one or the other but but they're intertwined for sure and so to to basically not talk about it because well it's a little complicated because we have a complex system where we actually influence it and and and then climate change is trying to influence us we'll basically want to wait for something that's a big splash that says climate change um but talking about it as this is an evolving complex system I think has to be started too thank you so now I want to open it up to the audience any questions that you all might have about two for our panelists or yes we have a microphone for you harsh furs and heaps I have a question for Tammy I know you've been involved with promoting distributed energy systems such as solar cookers and lamps and so on and so forth my question basically is if we sorry oh did I get that one if you promote these distributed systems and poor societies hunt me just committing these societies to perpetual poverty wouldn't it be better to invest in centralized renewable sources and have a grid and so on and so forth okay let me summarize your question and perhaps give a little context for the for the rest of the audience who doesn't have as much familiarity as this with this issue as you and I do and so one of the things that I have been involved in is not necessarily distributing devices to poor communities but I've been involved in assessment of delivery of technological solutions to to people who don't have a lot of resources particularly abroad and solar cookers were mentioned that's that's actually not a thing I've been involved in but I can talk about your question which is aren't we just condemning these people to poverty by saying here's a solar cooker rather than giving them electricity that is a really good question and I think a couple of things there first I think that anything that we get involved in should be about enabling people whether it means that they want something to cook more conveniently or they want something so they can create a livelihood I think that that should be the question are we enabling people um the second question is how did we decide that they should have that how did we decide what's best for a community and so I think that's that's something that we should all think about whether we're engineers or not as we think about changes that we would like to make technologically we might think about climate change as something that we're acting against but are we also enabling the people who are using these technologies whatever it might be whether it's a solar cooker or a grid connection there are communities here in the United States that that also don't have resources where we might take action and and bring in something like a new a new program or a you know low-carbon technology and so this is something that's kind of at the core of what I'm looking at in research now is yes we need energy solutions but we also need enabling solutions and I didn't really answer your question I fully acknowledge but thank you but if I could add a little bit I mean there are so we have a large team across Purdue that is working in Peru and a number of these teams are working with small indigenous communities up in the high Andes that were very stable productive great agricultural output with with indigenous grains but in the last 40 years have felt basically their system move out of equilibrium the rains have changed the type of rain is more intense deeper freezes more frost and so their lifestyle which was stable and productive and they enjoyed for millennia basically has shifted and they live on such severe climate natural climate and geographic gradients that there's no place for them to move really unless they want to emigrate to a completely different region of the country and so they are those communities are asking for how do we basically adapt we want to stay where we are how do we adapt can we use micro grid technology to have a combined solar wind to power our system so we can so we can dry our grains because they get wet so we can heat our animal buildings basically for agriculture so they don't freeze the llama don't freeze at night and so I think part of that adaptation is also thinking about what the communities want as well I think we have a question over here so a larger chunk of human population lives in developing and developed underdeveloped countries but most of the technologies that we have are developed in the developing countries and in the present world with so many climate change treaties say the Paris agreement put a lot of stringent actions or carbon emission limitations on these developing countries but the developed countries are a lot reluctant on sharing new technologies with those areas so how important do you think is sharing new technologies for our shared environment because when the technology reaches a larger chunk that's when it will be more efficient as compared to discussing about smaller companies in the bigger countries so maybe if two of you want to take that question it's what what responsibility do potentially industrialized countries have toward countries that may not have as much research and technology well I can say something but it's going to be a terrible answer because that is the thing that we as a society have not figured out and we need to grapple with earlier on the panel somebody asked what can we do proactively the question that you raised about the responsibility of people to develop technology who developed technology to deploy it for the benefit of mankind is and womankind is a question that we should grapple with as engineers and as as world citizens and we don't know how to do that yet because it sounds great in the context here of talking about global change to say that we should benefit everyone but I can guarantee you that if we were in a panel with industry members they would say I am not doing anything that is not going to deliver a profit for my company and that is where that division comes from technology is a solution only if it is broadly applied and this is true again not just of so-called developed versus developing but also within our own country that the technologies that are helping us with climate change electric cars are available to the wealthier citizens and yet it's the poorer ones who tend to be impacted more that notion of division and benefit is something that we should take head on as engineers if one of you want to comment for the next question I could turn it a little bit and talk about the role of developing nations or in middle income nations and how they're actually thinking of they need to transform within to actually generate those those solutions homegrown all right so I go back to the project we have have in Peru one of the reasons why Purdue has been contracted by public universities in Peru is because the nation of Peru itself has actually mandated that the public university system transform itself into research one like universities so they basically gave them a mandate and in 2014 that said you have these eight milestones and the goal really is to transform from a simple teaching universities where you collect knowledge and redistribute it to be ecosystems for innovation but but Peruvian innovation and Peru's economy 70% of it is really just exporting its national basically wealth in terms of or not transforming it not turning it to high value goods not actually applying it to its own country's innovation it's sending it to America to China to other places and so Purdue University as being contracted to help transform the universities to become research universities to solve their own problems and so it's not just that new companies outside the world should be giving their tech it's that a lot of countries need to develop their own tech for their own solutions and the research universities are one of the ways to do it so I just want to add that many of these innovations start at universities so coming back to your questions on what can students do so we have global engineering program on campus and that program is dedicated to developing technologies and solutions for developing countries so for students who are interested and want to do something maybe you can get involved in the programs is that i2d i2d yes i2d do we have maybe one last question he had his hand up all right hi so when talking about climate change a lot of the talk is around climate change mitigation but a big effect of climate change is uh i guess how will affect people and you need to think about how are we going to make people resilient to climate change and in the coming years and even now we're already seeing these effects of climate change so when making decisions about how we should best support people uh what kind of things should we think about when determining whether our technology should be working towards climate change mitigation versus climate change resiliency and especially in areas where things like you can have heat waves where you would actually want to use fossil fuels in a sense to create air air conditioned spaces so that people don't die during these extreme heat waves sure good question so we need to be doing both now um the the the actions we take now on adaptation are going to be important and in use and uh relevant very soon you know right away essentially there's the there's a whole bunch of climate change baked into the system and over the next three decades we're going to see a lot of that change and and so we need to be preparing for that immediately at the same time um you know the carbon dioxide that we're putting into the atmosphere today a reasonable fraction of it is still going to be in the atmosphere in thousands of years um assuming we don't suddenly start sucking out carbon really cheaply from the atmosphere somehow but but basically it has a really long residence time in the atmosphere and it's going to be warming the planet that whole time and so the actions that we take for mitigation today are really important for what the climate's like later this century and and so I think the answer to your question has to be both we have to be working on both as aggressively as we can um you know starting decades ago and and going into the future and um and I I think there are um there are going to be occasional trade-offs perhaps as you as you implied but um but I think that's a much smaller part of the issue than just finding the political mechanisms and political will to be doing um both adaptation and mitigation full bore um from here through the end of the century and I think that we are at time so I want to thank you all for coming and and encourage you to attend Dr. Bond's lecture right after this uh thank you for everyone that also helps set this up Evan, Joe, Steve, Maria, Marsha, Doc and all everyone that's been involved um thank you for coming and thank you for helping set this up Dr. Robinson uh and if you have questions I'm sure you can come up and and potentially have a conversation with the panelists before they run on to helping solve climate change