How do you make a public liability into a public asset? According to Wayne Beyea of MSU’s Land Policy Institute, it’s first and foremost about informing the community.

Beyea believes a lack [of community understanding and consensus is the main hurdle for redeveloping Michigan brownfields, which could potentially “create 17,500 jobs and bring $15 billion in new investments to the state,” as reported by my esteemed colleague Andy McGlashen in January.

With only one-third of Michigan’s 260 brownfields being developed, there’s room for improvement.

“We’d like to see that higher,” Beyea said. “We also need more technical assistance to our Brownfield Authorities.”

The hot new option is using  brownfields as renewable energy sites. Solar panels or wind turbines on the land should eventually be profitable, Beyea said, though he couldn’t say when.

“That’s one of the big questions left out there,” he said.

Additionally, wind turbines require a fair amount of land. The average size of a Michigan brownfield is 10 acres: not big enough to support large-scale wind operations.

The connection between wind power and brownfield potential is still “up in the air” nationally, Beyea said, but a breakthrough is just around the corner.

“We need a few small success stories in Michigan,” he said.

Opening day of the 2009 Michigan Land and Prosperity Summit was aptly titled ‘research day,’ as university faculty and regional consultants gave presentations on the challenges facing Michigan’s economy. 

Keynote speaker, Land Policy Institute director, and land-use guru Soji Adelaja spoke with me about the summit’s intent and summed up LPI’s latest report “Chasing the Past or Investing in our Future: Placemaking for prosperity in the new economy.”

Alongside Adelaja was Bill Rustem, president and CEO of Public Sector Consultants, Inc., a Lansing-based private firm that helps businesses in the way of environmental, economical and technological assistance.

– Andy Balaskovitz

Sustainability, Christopher Peterson says, is “like playing chess while riding a bicycle.”

Peterson is a professor in the department of agriculture, food and resource economics and an expert in the bioeconomy.

He gave a talk last week, as part of the Office of Campus Sustainability’s UN Decade of Sustainability Speaker Series, on “The Wicked Problem of Sustainability.”  The lecture was also supported by the University Committee for a Sustainable Campus and the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project.

You can watch a video of the lecture and others in the series here.

Wicked problems, Peterson explained, are ever-changing, and the people concerned have very different views of them.  In fact, wicked problems are defined by the absence of a clear formulation of what the problem actually is.  There can be no solution to such a issue - it can only be managed to make the situation better.  Terrorism is an example, Peterson said, and so is sustainability.

It’s nice to say that sustainability means that our use of a resource today doesn’t constrain our use of it in the future, he said.  “But how do you do the thing?  How do you operationalize it?”

The key challenge to sustainability, according to Peterson, is the need to satisfy the three P’s: people, prosperity and planet.  That is, a policy that walks all over the poor, sacrifices the wealth of states or communities for environmental protection or degrades the environment in the pursuit of other values is unsustainable.

Creating sustainable economies will require a “transformational process” in which we change our thinking about nearly everything, according to Peterson.  Among those changes, people need to stop thinking of the environment and the economy as opposing values.  Instead, we need to look for win-wins (or win-win-wins) in which we can promote one P by working on another.

“To understand that the three P’s are tradeoffs is to say we’re stuck,” Peterson said.

-Andy McGlashen

Susanne Rust is having a heck of a year. She and fellow reporter Meg Kissinger have already won the Meeman, Polk and Oakes awards for their series on bisphenol A (BPA) in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and they’ve got a good shot at taking home a Pulitzer on April 20.

Michigan State’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism brought Rust to campus on April 2 to talk about the investigation, which revealed a stunning lack of government regulation of BPA, and drew attention to the health risks associated with the plastic additive.

Rust was a graduate student in biological anthropology before deciding to become a journalist. Given her educational background and her work as a science reporter, I thought it might interest ESPP students and faculty to get Rust’s take on how best to explain research findings to the media. Her comments are also of interest for journalists.

-Andy McGlashen

The science- policy interface received attention back at MSU , as well.

Too often, scholarly research isn’t used by policy makers, said Katherine Smith last week at a talk on MSU’s campus. Smith heads the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service; scientists there study diverse aspects of agricultural, food, and resource management, but Washington legislators often brush their findings aside.

When scientists conduct research and then hand it off to policy makers, such disconnect is likely, Smith said. That’s an approach that “relies on serendipity – that information provided is what’s needed and that someone will use it.”

Smith argues that scientists and those who will use their research need to co-produce science, talking to each other throughout the process. “Dialogue doesn’t mean scientists listen and then do the research and then give it back on a silver platter, but actually engage in give and take during the process of the research: ‘Here’s where we’re going, is that right?’”

Research emerging from this process is more likely to meet policy makers’ needs, Smith said. But it requires more effort: “It’s very time-intensive, very high transaction costs.” Spreading this model more widely requires change by grant making organizations, disciplines, and institutions, she said. Actions universities could take include facilitating connections between scientists and research users and encouraging students to take internships and courses that expose them to the policy process.

-Maya Fischhoff

It’s been almost a week since the Summit on America’s Climate Choices wrapped up, so our coverage of it probably ought to wrap up too.

For a clear and insightful recap of the summit’s take-home points, see this post from Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School at Duke University and vice chair of the Committee on America’s Climate Choices.

I also encourage everyone to check out these videos from the summit; I decided not to bother editing and posting the videos I took, because the webcast is a lot better (Don’t get me wrong, my Flip camera has become my sidekick/security blankie, but you can actually see faces on the webcast - my seat was near the back of the auditorium - and you don’t hear the clackety-clack of the laptops that surrounded me).

All of the presentations were chock-full of good information, and different viewers will most enjoy different talks, depending on their interests.  But for a generalist like myself, the must-see presentations came from Jane Lubchenco, Robert Socolow, Stephen Schneider, Eileen Claussen, Carter Roberts and Howard Frumkin.  (And, OK, I hate to play favorites, but if I were giving out an award for Best Use of Humor to Present Frightening Information, Frumkin would take the cake.)

And so, with hopes that the study helps Congress make climate choices soon and soundly, it’s back to reporting the many environmental (and sporting!) goings-on at Michigan State.

-Andy McGlashen

When laying the groundwork for a major study like America’s Climate Choices, it’s helpful to get folks with different perspectives in the same room.  So it was an especially welcome treat to have John Muir, Mahatma Gandhi and Gen. George S. Patton take the stage during day two of the summit.

Rhetorically, anyway.  R. James Woolsey, a man whose credentials are too many to list here but who is perhaps best known for his service as CIA Director from 1993-95, channeled that trio to argue for a less centralized, more resilient electric grid.

Woolsey used Muir as an ideal advocate for environmental protection, chose Patton for his obvious interest in national security, and said Gandhi was a strong believer in the importance of local economies.  Surprisingly, it turns out Patton and Gandhi have a lot in common.  (Muir is generally too busy rhapsodizing about cumulonimbi to care about national security or local economies.  To him, it only matters if a technology or policy is good for the environment.)

Both the Apostle of Peace and Old Blood and Guts detest our current grid - Gandhi because it relies on centralized power sources owned by few that pollute for the many, and Patton because, as Woolsey said, a reasonably intelligent eighth-grade hacker could bring down the whole thing.  Neither likes nuclear power plants or carbon capture and storage facilities, since they too are centralized, and make juicy targets for our enemies. 

All three men like smaller power sources, though.  Gandhi can envision once-poor communities revitalized by their profits from installing solar panels or small wind turbines.  He also likes cogeneration, and is all for energy efficiency.  Patton is fine with anything that keeps us from dumping boatloads of oil money on countries filled with terrorists.  And Muir is pleased to breathe cleaner air as he rambles through the woods. 

Woolsey wrapped up his talk by cautioning against pitting the Pattons against the Muirs or Gandhis when working toward a comprehensive climate policy.  Folks who care about national security may not give a hoot about climate change, but the solutions to those problems overlap, Woolsey said, and cooperative action might help solve both.  “We need a big tent,” he concluded.

One recurring and, I think, encouraging theme of the Summit on America’s Climate Choices was that business leaders are ready to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but not until regulations are in the books.

“We can’t move forward on other capital investments until we know what the rules are,” said ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO James Mulva, who urged President Obama and Congress to work together to quickly establish a bipartisan policy on greenhouse gases.  Mulva later claimed, though, that Congress could not address climate change easily or quickly.  Certainly it won’t be easy, but saying it can’t be done quickly contradicts the above-mentioned plea, and when energy company chiefs use such rhetoric, one wonders if they aren’t trying to plant the seeds of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Charles Holliday, chairman of the board at DuPont and a member of the Committee on America’s Climate Choices, echoed Mulva on the need for regulation.  “Once we all know the rules of the road for business, I think we’ll be amazed by how quickly things can move,” he said.  He also said building public support for climate legislation will require outreach efforts that make clear the scientific consensus regarding the urgency of the problem.  “People won’t act on a shaky idea,” said Holliday.  “We’ve got to put the work into communication that we’re putting into the science.”  Among other things, he said, that could include a series of televised debates between a climate change expert and a denier. 

Holliday said that to achieve significant reductions in atmospheric carbon, we need a “catalyst,” as he called it.  His point here was in line with another wider theme of the summit:  It would be nice to use the perfect policy instrument to cut emissions, but it’s more important to do something as soon as possible.  Once we get the ball rolling, many of the speakers said, we might be surprised at how quickly and cheaply we can make real gains in the climate fight.