FEATURE
What If Sustainability
Doesn’t Work Out?
Bill Tomlinson
University of California, Irvine | wmt@uci.edu
Donald J. Patterson
University of California, Irvine | djp3@ics.uci.edu
Yue Pan
University of Indiana | yue@kno.com
Eli Blevis
University of Indiana | eblevis@indiana.edu
Bonnie Nardi
University of California, Irvine | nardi@ics.uci.edu
Six Silberman
Bureau of Economic Interpretation | Turkopticon |
silberman.six@gmail.com
Juliet Norton
University of Central Florida | julietnorton@gmail.com
Joseph J. LaViola Jr.
University of Central Florida | jjl@eecs.ucf.edu
November + December 2012
interactions
In a recent NSF-funded National
Academies symposium on Science,
Innovation, and Partnerships for
Sustainability Solutions, there was a
great deal of discussion about global
change. To offer a few concrete
examples of the kind of problems
that may result from global change:
Sea-level rise could displace tens
or even hundreds of millions of
people by the end of this century
[ 1]; similar numbers of people could
be subjected to increased water
stress [ 2]; and shifting climatic
zones could cause many farms to
cease to be viable with current crop
choices and farming techniques. As
we write this, the U.S. is experienc-
ing the worst drought and warmest
12-month average temperatures
since record keeping began in 1895
[ 3, 4]. Figure 1 details the key predic-
tions regarding global change made
by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel
on Climage Change [ 5].
