Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Mitigation banks are a tool created to mitigate and compensate for negative impacts on the environment resulting from man made activities, especially damage caused to endangered wildlife, plants, and wetland ecosystems. The main objective of creating the system of mitigation banks is to achieve environmental equilibrium, meaning “No Net Loss” to all environmental functions. This means damage to one area is compensated for in another area of like-kind through restoration. There is great controversy surrounding this claim. There is a system of debits and credits to ensure ecological loss from development is preceded by restoration of a similar ecology and function. Wetland mitigation banks are the focus for the purpose of research. Background and benefits will be given first, followed by threats, issues, solutions and a personal experience with mitigation banks.

In 2019, the World Health Organization stated that climate change and air pollution is the greatest growing threat to humanity. With a world population of close to 8 billion people, the rate of population growth continues to increase nearly 1.05% each year. As the world population grows, carbon dioxide emissions and climate change continue to accelerate. By observing increasing concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, scientists have correlated that the Earth’s temperature is increasing at an average rate of 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit each decade. In an effort to mitigate and slow climate change engineers across the globe have been eagerly seeking solutions to fight this problem. A new form of carbon dioxide mitigation technology that has begun to gain traction in the last decade is known as direct air capture (DAC). Direct air capture works by removing excess atmospheric carbon dioxide from the air and repurposing it. The major challenge faced with DAC is not capturing the carbon dioxide but finding a useful way to reuse the post-capture carbon dioxide. As part of my undergraduate requirements, I was tasked to address this issue and create my own unique design for a DAC system. The design was to have three major goals: be 100% self-sufficient, have net zero carbon emissions, and successfully repurpose excess carbon dioxide into a sustainable and viable product. Arizona was chosen for the location of the system due to the large availability of sunlight. Additionally, the design was to utilize a protein rich hydrogen oxidizing bacteria (HOB) known as Cupriavidus Necator. By attaching a bioreactor to the DAC system, excess carbon dioxide will be directly converted into a dense protein biomass that will be used as food supplements. In addition, my system was designed to produce 1 ton (roughly 907.185 kg) of protein in a year. Lastly, by utilizing solar energy and an atmospheric water generator, the system will produce its own water and achieve the goal of being 100% self-sufficient.

As projections of climate change effects in the media persist, current research suggests that threatening climate change content circulating social media and knowledge of threats to the Earth system and human health may lead to the development of eco-anxiety. If social media exposure to climate change content influences eco-anxiety, there is a need for psychological interventions to help manage climate change-related negative affect. A systematic review was conducted 1) to investigate the relationship between the use of social media and eco-anxiety in young adults and 2) to explore methodological factors involved in eco-anxiety research, including measurements and potential moderating factors. The review included seventeen articles that studied the measurements of eco-anxiety, the relationship between social media and eco-anxiety, or negative affect related to climate change and potentially moderating risk factors. A thematic analysis of the included articles yielded four central themes: (1) The Operationalization of Eco-anxiety, (2) Climate Change Perceptions and their Effects on Impairments, (3) The Relationship between Social Media Usage and Eco-anxiety, and (4) Potential Factors Influencing Climate Change Perceptions. The results suggest that eco-anxiety is real and common, especially amongst young people, and that it may be reliably measured using the Climate Change Anxiety Scale. Due to the limited and heterogeneous literature on the problem, no definitive conclusions can be drawn about how potential factors influence eco-anxiety. Future research should further explore the relationship between social media and eco-anxiety. In addition, the problem of eco-anxiety should be studied in underrepresented, vulnerable populations at higher risk for weather-related events.

Out of all fifty states, Arizona boasts the greatest number of sunny days, which comes as no surprise to its residents. According to a CDC data report, Arizona has an average of nearly 286 total days of sun exposure. This sheer amount of sunlight could lead to the assumption that Arizona is also leading the way in harvesting this solar energy, but that isn’t the case. According to the S.E.I.A (Solar Energies Industries Association), Arizona is the fifth largest solar producer, while California comes in first by a significant lead. What happened in the history of California that caused this disparity in solar production that we see today and should Arizona follow in its footsteps? In this video essay, I consider the historical impact that climate change has had on California that directly led them to adopt environmental policies, such as wildfires, droughts, smog, and sea-level rise. These events threaten California specifically, due to its uniquely high population, geography, and climate, and they will continue to get worse as climate change subsists. Due to the persistent threat that they face, California was forced to pass environmental regulations that ultimately ended up developing them into a leader in environmental protectionism. Arizona, while also facing droughts, high heat, and poor air quality, has had its environmental progress greatly hindered by a lack of cohesive action at the State level. Based on information from the U.S Energy Information Agency, over the past 30 years, Arizona has been one of, if not the highest, carbon-dioxide emitters in the West. For a time there was some political response to this fact, but eventually, its momentum was halted in favor of economic challenges and continually stunted by mixed agendas, which polarized Arizona parties even more and left city governments to deal with climate change on their own. With solar being the cheapest means of clean energy production, it seems unavoidable that it will develop eventually. Solar becoming a topic of such polarization in Arizona makes it much more challenging, as it can only progress with bipartisan support, but climate change is inevitable so discourse has to be the first step towards meaningful change.