The 50th anniversary of Earth Day offers Planet Texas 2050 a chance to reflect on how defining moments can mobilize millions to envision more just and healthy futures. How crises, whether they be COVID-19 or climate change, can rouse us to redress inequities and ensure the vitality of all people and places as we plan for the days, years, and decades ahead.

Students and faculty at UT's College of Fine Arts came together to construct a fully operational escape room prototype that places participants in the shoes of scientists on an observational platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico during a devastatingly powerful hurricane that’s intensifying quickly.

It is imperative that we use technology to maximize the best and minimize the negative parts of the human condition. But in order to do this... companies must act sustainably. And in this case, ‘sustainable’ refers to ethical practices.

We're designing virtual reality simulations that will help people see what their city could look like in 30 years, given a massively increased population and a changing climate. Our aim is to make scientific findings accessible and relevant to people and to encourage informed discussions that can help us make better decisions about our future.

Planet Texas 2050 sponsored Seyi Odufuye, a UT studio art major, to join a 12-day ClimateForce expedition in the Arctic with environmentalist and explorer Robert Swan. His ClimateForce team is dedicated to significantly reducing carbon emissions in the next five years, and students from around the world join him each summer to see firsthand one of the planet’s most impressive yet delicate ecosystems. These are Seyi’s thoughts and experiences from that journey.

The Good Systems team here at UT aims to help technologists stop to think about what they are doing. We’ve embarked on an 8-year mission to design AI technologies that are driven by human values and that benefit society. We’ve done so because we believe it is ethically irresponsible to think about AI only in terms of what it can do; we believe it is even more important to consider what AI should — and should not — do.

Tim Hwang, a lawyer, writer, and researcher working at the intersection of emerging technologies and society, says this isn’t realistic; machine learning and AI aren’t as they’re portrayed in the movies. Hwang is the former director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance AI Initiative and has previously served Google’s global public policy lead on AI.

Paul Adams, a professor the Department of Geography and the Environment at The University of Texas at Austin, has met with farmers in the Panhandle and West Texas. He wanted to hear how they talk about things like the weather, climate, and the water they have available for their crops. If we don’t understand how people communicate about the ground they live on, we’ll have little success finding common ground to propel us toward a more resilient future.

Austin Community Design and Development Center (ACDDC) collaborated with the Planet Texas 2050 team to ensure that researcher/community relationships are established in a way that is socially and culturally appropriate while fostering long-term partnerships that benefit everyone.

Geology Professor Jay Banner, one of the authors of the federally mandated climate report released this past November, sat down with Spectrum News Austin’s Karina Kling to talk about what the climate and economic predictions mean for Texas and the southern U.S.