UC Berkeley College of Engineering Dean S. Shankar Sastry will join a new United Nations Scientific Advisory Board that will provide counsel on international decisions regarding sustainable development.

Sastry received notice of the appointment Sept. 27, three days after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his intention to create the board in an effort to further integrate science into policy discussion.

The 26-member board, organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, will have two United States representatives — Sastry and Susan Avery, director of a nonprofit marine-science research institution.

“I’m honored, really honored,” Sastry said. “It’s humbling to be included in this group.”

Sastry said the appointment is in line with a long history of work on sustainable development at UC Berkeley. As examples, he pointed to his 2008 meeting with former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and the work of colleagues such as UC Berkeley professor of energy Daniel Kammen.

“There are a lot of people on campus who have a lot to say, and so I think it’s really a pleasure to sort of bring to voice a lot of what we’ve been talking about on campus,” Sastry said. “I do think it will help us get the Berkeley message out to an international forum.”

Kammen said Sastry has pushed for many sustainability research projects on campus. Sastry’s record includes his work on Berkeley-India Joint Leadership on Energy and the Environment and his position as faculty director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

The creation of the board, Kammen said, also fits with what he sees as Ban’s respect for science’s ability to inform policy.

“It’s really consistent with what I think the U.N. is doing right, and that is emphasizing what science and technology can offer in the process of sustainable development,” Kammen said.

Although Sastry acknowledges the extra time commitment joining the board entails, he sees the role as harmonious with his other jobs, calling them “synergistic.” Additionally, College of Engineering Associate Dean of Research Jeffrey Bokor noted that Sastry’s experience on the board can influence his work on campus.

“It brings him a visibility of what UNESCO is up to in a way that he could not otherwise have had,” Bokor said. “What Dean Sastry will learn from serving on this board will come back to the university.”

Other board appointees include Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate in chemistry and Linus Pauling Chair professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology, and Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to Sastry.

“(The board is) really a way to engage the whole world, because the planet that they have to save is ours — is all of ours,” he said.

Contact Melissa Wen at mwen@dailycal.org.

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The panel, which is commissioned by the United Nations, is considered the leading scientific authority on issues of climate change. The report is the fifth issued by the IPCC, and it expressed a 95 percent level of certainty regarding anthropogenic climate change, representing an increase of 5 percent from the organization’s previous report, issued in 2007.

The report, which will be released in full in 2014, is composed of three working-group reports and a synthesis report. Working Group I, the only part of the report to be released thus far, addresses causes of climate change. Working Groups II and III assess the socioeconomic and environmental effects of climate change and options for mitigating climate change, respectively. The report includes contributions from more than 830 authors.

According to William Collins, a UC Berkeley professor of climate sciences and one of the lead authors of Working Group I, the report’s three takeaway messages are that the climate is changing, mankind is causing the change and, if our society does not change its behavior, these patterns of climate change will amplify.

Collins said stopping emission of greenhouse gases, from fossil fuels in particular, is a top priority in mitigating climate change and acknowledged that recent breakthroughs in creating sustainable energy could allow that goal to be accomplished.

“The community has been absorbing and coming to terms with this information more slowly than climate scientists would advise that they do so,” said Collins. “But I am a technical optimist in the sense that we know what we need to do and have invented much of the technology that we need to do it.”

UC Berkeley Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy Daniel Kammen emphasized the importance of the report, calling it in an email statement “another nail in an already sealed coffin on climate change deniers.” He added that it is technically and economically possible for the world to meet an 80 percent decarbonization target.

While much of the report confirms information that was released in previous studies, John Harte of UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group agreed with its significance.

“We’ve seen a huge effort in the past month to put up a smoke screen of misinformation to try to divert the country from taking the next step,” he said. “What the IPCC report does is act as a counterweight to this effort. Without it, I think the forces at work trying to deny the science would completely win.”

Contact Chloee Weiner at cweiner@dailycal.org.

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The ASUC Senate’s University and External Affairs Committee approved a bill at its meeting Monday that opposes the construction of Keystone XL, an extension of the Keystone Pipeline, which is now pending approval of the entire senate.

The pipeline, which would transfer crude oil from tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas, is politically controversial and has raised concern among students due to its potentially detrimental effects on the environment. According to the bill, SB 11, the process of refining oil from tar sands requires more energy and water than refining oil from traditional sources and generates more greenhouse gases.

The bill also reflects concern that the extraction processes will occur near the homes of indigenous populations. Many indigenous communities, particularly those in Alberta, not only have been removed from their lands but also have seen increases in diseases such as cancer, the bill states.

“It is a major issue that is killing people and has the potential to kill even more people,” said CalSERVE Senator Caitlin Quinn, who authored the bill. “Clearly, it doesn’t stretch to California, but it is a major issue we should address.”

ASUC Executive Vice President Nolan Pack authored a similar bill last year that urged the UC system to divest its funds from fossil-fuel companies. He said he applauded Quinn for her work with the environmental community to author this bill.

“Fossil-fuel divestment and defeating Keystone XL are two parts of the same movement to free us from the chains of an outdated and toxic energy infrastructure,” Pack said. “Keystone is of particular importance because if built, it will enable the release of enough CO2 to guarantee catastrophic climate change — it’s been referred to as a ‘game over’ moment.”

Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline say it will improve the economy by creating jobs while ending the need for overseas energy imports.

“While developing cleaner sources of energy should be a long-term goal, today this country still depends on imported oil,” said Brendan Pinder, president of Berkeley College Republicans. “In addition to creating jobs, this pipeline would help shift our dependence from the volatile Middle East to Canada, a stable country with more responsible environmental regulations.”

If the full senate passes the bill, ASUC President DeeJay Pepito will write a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline for the reasons outlined in the bill.

“As a research institution that actually gets a ton of money from BP and Chevron, we should still have the autonomy to take stances on these issues,” Quinn said. “There’s been a lot of activism on (the Keystone Pipeline) recently, and I prefer to address things proactively instead of waiting until after Obama’s decision.”

UC Berkeley professor of energy Daniel Kammen agreed the tar sands represent more of an environmental threat than traditional sources of petroleum.

“The ASUC is correct in wanting to block this, because the pipeline will make the climate worse,” Kammen said. “If the U.S. was starving for energy, maybe I would understand, but the thing is, we’re not starving for fossil fuels.”

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Last Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors granted $1.5 million for the program, which aims to increase mobility for Bay Area commuters, reduce emissions and lessen traffic congestion in the Bay Area. The program partners City CarShare, a Bay Area nonprofit car-sharing service, with the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies.

During the pilot period, the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center will evaluate energy and environmental impacts of the service and test the electric bicycle’s influence on commuters’ methods. The pilot period will end in 2018.

“The idea is that (the electric bicycle) becomes a resource, very much like a Zipcar,” said Daniel Kammen, co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. “You can go shopping and do various things up and down Berkeley’s hills. You’ll need the electric feature to get back and forth.”

According to Susan Shaheen, co-director of the research center and leader of the electric-bicycle project, the project may be the first to be tested in the United States.

Participants can access the bikes from up to 25 locations, eight of which are in Berkeley — including areas on the Northside and Southside near campus in the city of Berkeley as well as in Downtown Berkeley, according to Ben Jose, spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The program will provide 90 bikes, and 22 of the 90 will be electric cargo bicycles.

“Given the hilly terrain of San Francisco and some of Berkeley, we think the electric bike might be an attractive option to many, particularly when transporting cargo,” Shaheen said.

According to Jose, studies show that for every car shared, up to 13 cars can be taken off the road, and the same concept can be applied to electric-bike sharing.

“Bicycle sharing has the potential to benefit the environment by reducing the need for people to own one or more personal vehicles,” he said.

Bikers will be able to ride at a maximum of 20 miles per hour with the electric bicycle.

To rent electric bicycles, which are provided and maintained by City CarShare, bikers have to be members of the organization and can sign up using their smartphones or computers. Bikers must make round trips with the electric bikes, said Anita Daley, marketing director of City CarShare.

Residents and UC Berkeley students and faculty members can take part in the program as members of UC Berkeley Campus Shared Services, which connects campus members to many administrative programs. According to Daley, the cost of sharing an electric bike is 40 to 60 percent less than the cost of sharing a car, and bikers will not be charged a mileage fee.

Contact Lydia Tuan at ltuan@dailycal.org.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article may have implied that electronic bikes will be accessed on the north and south ends of the UC Berkeley campus. The bikes will be accessible on Northside and Southside in the city of Berkeley near campus. A previous version of this article may have implied that the electric-bicycle-sharing program will be available to anyone. Only members of City CarShare will be able to rent the electric bikes.

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