As Newsweek reports in its latest issue, Grist is launching a newsletter designed specifically for Arizona State University, which has built up an impressive rep on sustainability by doing everything from installing significant solar capacity to opening the nation's first School of Sustainability. Every two weeks the newsletter will go out to 60,000 students and interested faculty and staff, offering up a combo of content from our website and info about sustainability happenings at ASU and around the Southwest. It's the first deal of its kind between a university and a green news outlet.
ASU President Michael Crow tells Newsweek, "There is no way that we can attack [sustainability] issues without attacking the status quo from every angle in every way. Grist is a catalyst to stimulate thinking about the status quo."
[UPDATE: Here's Grist's press release about the partnership.]
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4.5 things I learned at my energy audit
Comments
View as Flat
Russ Posted 4:30 pm
07 Sep 2008
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LGT Posted 11:10 pm
07 Sep 2008
So long as you stay away from homemade tequila and moonshine, and don't mix your Southern Comfort with coke, everything else goes regardless of the numbers: Ethanol, electric cars, green Wal-Mart ...
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caniscandida Posted 11:54 pm
07 Sep 2008
As I have written a few times before, "Sustainability" is not one of my favorite words. Perhaps my friend Spaceshaper can come to the rescue of its usage even here, as he has so often elsewhere.
But right, Russ, there is something especially perverse about Arizona being a Center of Sustainability. As soon as more than a few dozen Euro-Americans moved into Arizona, there ceased to be much hope of anything like "sustainability" happening there.
ASU President Michael Crow may crow all he wants about "the nation's first School of Sustainability." But unless he is advocating that that monstrous experiment in hideous urbanization called Phoenix should cease to exist, and its residents go back to Michigan and New Jersey, all his sermons on how great "sustainability" is will ring very hollow indeed.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Steven T Posted 12:09 am
08 Sep 2008
My god, folks, here we're seeing substantive changes from the top and you complain about stuff that the university has no control over, such as local land-use management.
Look at it this way: Higher ed. is a national "industry." If Arizona State displays success in its initiatives, that could quickly spread across the country. Remember, higher ed. has often been a catalyst for social change.
Oh, never mind.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:11 am
08 Sep 2008
Anyway it'll be great to see an infusion of new readers and maybe even new participants here. Excellent news, great job Grist staff!
The momentum is building behind an energy re-evolution. Arizona is the perfect place to go solar, use ground source heating/cooling, and institute solutions to water problems, with water recycling bodigestion, low water use pressurized washing (bodies, dishes, and clothes), and grey water drip irrigation.
And who better to pioneer the design and use of hybrid bicycle, velomobile, electric mass transit, and plugin hybrids than students?
Very encouraging news, especially given the sharp turn to the extremist, fundamentalist, anti-environmentalist right this political battle has taken.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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jasonkotenko Posted 12:40 am
08 Sep 2008
If we can make Arizona sustainable, we can certainly deal with water issues anywhere in the country.
And besides that, Phoenix isn't going to just disappear. It's counter-productive to make the argument that cities should be disbanded in the name of sustainability. This is like going around saying that the world would be better off without humans. While what you are saying is, in a strict sense, true, it actually serves to hurt your own cause by turning people against you.
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caniscandida Posted 12:49 am
08 Sep 2008
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:58 am
08 Sep 2008
Just recycling all the stuff students leave behind at the end of the school year has got to be a huge task. Disaster victims could use all those clothes and other expensive consumer items.
Is the Salvation Army on to this?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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smuzzy Posted 1:49 am
08 Sep 2008
This is a high-visibility effort to address global warming by garnering institutional commitments to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions, and to accelerate the research and educational efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the earth's climate.
Currently 573 institutions representing all 50 States and more than 4.7 million students have signed on. This is a high leverage strategy that is being led by the higher education sector. I applaud ASU and higher education for pushing the envelope. It is time to stop teaching the industrial revolution and time to start teaching/learning sustainable development!
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globetrotter855 Posted 1:51 am
08 Sep 2008
http://asiaecon.blogspot.com/
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amazingdrx Posted 2:01 am
08 Sep 2008
The basic mating instinct of the young human animal, driving that partying, is the same thing that gives Salmon the fight to swim upstream.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Notsniw Posted 2:25 am
08 Sep 2008
Just a side note on growth politics: $3.50+ gas and the sub-prime crunch has led to a sharp decline in recent outward urban expansion/suburbanization; the growth paradigm of choice in recent years is urban infill, with Downtown Phoenix being a key focus of this change. For instance, the new ASU Downtown campus is a key impetus in this change - when you have 15k+ students living and socializing downtown, you have the prolonged demand for housing/services and subsequent reinvestment. Thankfully, the grim joke of Phoenix growing until it merges with Albuquerque & Tucson can be put to rest...for now.
And yes, we still are a party school and proud of it. Mill Ave. as a sustainable hotspot? You betcha :)
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Russ Posted 4:50 am
08 Sep 2008
I guess we'd need to modify the lines from Casablanca:
Rick: I thought there were no waters here. Aren't we in the middle of the desert?
Renault: Desert? What desert? We're in a bounteous watershed.
Rick: I was misinformed.
Seriously, I don't mean to be "snarky" about any sustainability initiative. We need all we can get, as long as it's not just empty talking.
But equally seriously, don't try to tell me there's anything remotely sustainable about Phoenix, Las Vegas, and similar mirages, or that it's not ironic having a sustainability initiative in such an unsustainable place.
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David Roberts Posted 4:52 am
08 Sep 2008
grist.org
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sunflower Posted 5:36 am
08 Sep 2008
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Russ Posted 5:47 am
08 Sep 2008
I was simply pointing out the (what should be obvious) irony.
Surely you agree people should be aware of the compromises they make?
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Notsniw Posted 6:14 am
08 Sep 2008
I don't get you. Are you trying to say that Phoenix, Tucson, LV and every other desert metropolis (Dubai, Riyadh and every Gulf state, Perth etc.) are, by your definition, unsustainable? Just because they are "mirages" existing in an area with limited water?
And if you do not wish to be "informed" about how these cities can be (and in Phoenix's case, are trying to be) sustainable...then my point about you being uninformed stands :)
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Russ Posted 6:39 am
08 Sep 2008
Not my definition. Nature's.
Ask her about the Colorado River which, even without climate change revoking the snowpack, does not in its normal cycle flow at the bloated 1922 level.
Ask her what's going to happen on those invasion plains of car-enslaved sprawl once Peak Oil bites and the exponential debt structure crashes.
And if you do not wish to be "informed" about how these cities can be (and in Phoenix's case, are trying to be) sustainable...then my point about you being uninformed stands :)
Sprawl isn't even sustainable in well-rained temperate zones, let alone the desert.
I won't even get into golf courses, humongous fountains, indoor ski mountains. I think the sustainability of those speaks for itself.
Now, it's possible you're working on a viable miracle, in which case yes, my information is incomplete.
And it's true I don't know how many Apaches (or whichever tribe lived in the vicinity) the land was able to sustain.
*
Like I replied to David, I'm really not trying to pick a fight with anyone interested in sustainability, and I wasn't here to castigate this venture, however utopian. (If you read my comments in general, you'd see I'm no stranger to utopianism myself, in what I hope will be the successor to fossil fuel civilization.)
It just struck me as incongruous.
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Notsniw Posted 10:36 am
08 Sep 2008
We're realistic and are not working on a miracle (although that would be nice!). We're just trying to look at ways to inform, educate & convince folks about what can be done in a "sustainable" way - see our website for more details - and believe me, people around the valley have been listening.
PS: Not Apache. Hohokam :)
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Notsniw Posted 10:38 am
08 Sep 2008
PS: I owe you some pictures from Salzburg.
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Pangolin Posted 11:50 am
08 Sep 2008
Sure we bicycle here in California at 105º F but I think 120º is a no-go for all but the absolutely insane. Short of a massive conversion to electric cars or a personal rapid transit system and water management that would put Dune to shame Pheonix is a ghost town waiting to happen.
Put the Carbon Back
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Russ Posted 4:24 pm
08 Sep 2008
Yet their physical impact was many orders of magnitude less than what we have today.
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David Roberts Posted 4:45 pm
08 Sep 2008
And I think the newsletter will just pull stuff from the rest of the site. Probably mostly straight-news stuff, so you're unlikely to see much of my unhinged ranting. Wouldn't want to scare the students ...
grist.org
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amazingdrx Posted 4:45 pm
08 Sep 2008
No need for modern tribes to dissapear due to water shortage. Tribes of organic farming students on experimental architectural coops?
That would be a revolutionary party atmosphere. Remember Taliesin West?
http://www.franklloydwright.org/index.cfm?section=tour&am ...
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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spaceshaper Posted 1:34 am
09 Sep 2008
Of course that's even before you look at the aquifer depletion issues. Good luck with the technofixes, DrX. Collect the exhaust drippings of a gazillion hydrogen cars perhaps?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:49 am
09 Sep 2008
Or composting toilets that elimnate flushing. And allow for water vapor to be recycled through the greenhouse, double distilling. With leaf transporation.
And air pressure/water showers that use one tenth the water, and likewise allow vapor collection and distillation. It's all pretty simple, solar panels, batteries, pumps, air and water, stuff students could work on in their next generation dwellings.
It's not brain science or rocket surgery. Just tinkering and innovation using already existing low technology.
Like low tech water metering devices for water conservation irrigation. Wick feeding water to plants from containers underground that use float valves to conserve water. These are great projects that could spawn whole new local small business type industries.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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spaceshaper Posted 3:40 am
09 Sep 2008
So should the desert rats give up and leave? Yes, it could come to that. Nothing human is permanent, much as we'd like it to be so, and there are factors at work here beyond our control. I've quoted this before:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
That "colossal wreck" could indeed be ASU, ca. 2108.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Pangolin Posted 8:46 am
09 Sep 2008
Yesterday's production of the glazed plant wells that keep moisture from straying from the root mass comes out of the solar furnace and today's firing loaded in to be ready when the sun hits the mirrors.
The gardens are groomed carefully, each plant, shrub and tree carefully sited in it's collection basin, shade wall and moisture conserving well as the days quota of prickly pear and napolitas are gathered for the morning meal to be eaten when full heat comes and drives everyone indoors till half-shade allows them out again.
The city transformed from suburban sprawl of tar roofed ranch houses to a whitewashed clusters of walls, domes and ventilation towers. Surrounding each cluster the palms and gardens marking the intervals where excess streets and houses used to be.
Everywhere the blue-black of the panels and shine of the mirrored dishes making the view from a rise a pointilists dream of white, green, blue, black and wicked glare from poorly tuned mirrors.
To be sustainable Pheonix would have to change into some bizzarre, appropriate-tech, arab architectured city with big chunks of Arcosanti thrown in for good measure. The transition would have to be slow enough so as not to beggar the residents before dividends were felt. Not going to happen.
Nice science ficiton though.
Put the Carbon Back
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caniscandida Posted 7:36 pm
09 Sep 2008
I rather resent the charge of "snarkism," by the way. (I think I was included in the "snark" bunch, following Russ.) Idealism is a fine and glorious thing, so by all means let the clever, energetic folks at ASU do what they want to do, and God bless them. And the land as "challenge" is a wholesome concept, I guess. But why should the rest of us be strong-armed to celebrate, so early on? Pangolin and SpaSh have written very nicely about the limitations of the region, limitations which were not recognized by Euro-American settlers in Arizona, and which seem not seriously acknowledged (at least so far in this thread) by the ASU project's defenders.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Russ Posted 8:14 pm
09 Sep 2008
-Eddie Haskell
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caniscandida Posted 8:43 pm
09 Sep 2008
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Tom Philpott Posted 9:59 pm
09 Sep 2008
I say this, at risk of sparking another spasm of righteous rants.
Victual Reality
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caniscandida Posted 10:21 pm
09 Sep 2008
But, why in the world should a high-school senior in well-watered Michigan or New Jersey want to apply to a college in Arizona, Mein Gott!, and take his/her showers in a country where water is hard to find, and basically stolen from elsewhere?
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 10:38 pm
09 Sep 2008
This should be one of the first lessons that ASU students might wish to learn as they plan their post-college lives.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:52 pm
09 Sep 2008
Exactly my point on showers though. What a place to experiment with air pressure substituting for 90% of the water use in a shower, then recycling it all through solar/greenhouse leaf transpiration green "distillation".
Motivated green revolution students would be perfect people to pioneer this stuff. Where there is still the illusion at least of plenty of water, NC and Wisconsin for instance, not so much.
We could use the technology forced on southwest desert residents here too, we are in a multi year drought pattern with lakes down 4 feet and wells drying up. Well drilling costs have quadrupled in the last 8 years with steel, fuel, and so forth driven higher by inflation.
Smaller diamter, low cost, low flow well/pump systems and water conservation have a potentially fast payback here. Garden watering is drying up wells too. Hard to be self sufficient without a garden! Hard to garden in a drought.
And again, adaptable students are good pioneers, ,ost so-called adults are too busy racing around like rats in a maze to go green. If green experimentation is part of the curriculum? Well that's real practical education.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Pangolin Posted 4:47 am
10 Sep 2008
Patching $15K worth of fancy plumbing on a black-roofed ranch house is all well and good but building with straw bales in the first place and whitewashing is more generally applicable. If it takes a shipping container full of gadgetry to make a 2.5 person household "sustainable" then we should all just quit now and seek our preferred neurotoxin to wallow in.
Teach them what balancing energy imports and exports would mean, right there, where they are. Maybe one of them will "get it."
Put the Carbon Back
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