GIP Event: Aaron Fyke

       On Thursday evening, members of the Poly community had the amazing opportunity to hear Mr. Aaron Fyke speak. Mr. Fyke is the founder or co-founder of six companies, which address sustainable solutions to climate change, a trained engineer, and an adjunct lecturer at USC. In his presentation, Mr. Fyke addressed both the problems stemming from climate change and the solutions and recent developments which can make a positive impact on those issues. To begin, he discussed the scientific side of climate change and its effects, which he himself acknowledged was quite depressing. He presented one shocking statistic after another, and that section of his presentation culminated a study which concluded that “the greatest direct cost for an average climate change greater than 2.5 degrees Celsius is the burden of excessive mortality.” In other words, if the temperature increases more than two and a half degrees, we’re doomed. Just as we were all losing hope for the future of humanity, Mr. Fyke began to discuss the progress we’ve made in the right direction and prospects for the future. He talked about everything from the exponential growth of sustainable energy due to plummeting prices to the fact that electric cars are on track to be more cost-efficient than their gasoline counterparts in the next five years. Mr. Fyke’s passionate excitement about the progress and innovation happening clearly had a huge impact on his entire audience. He truly inspired the students in the audience to choose one of the career paths he mentioned, which ranged from journalist to engineer and further enforced the fact that climate change is an interdisciplinary issue. Overall, Mr. Fyke’s acknowledgment of both the intimidating and downright frightening aspects of climate change made for a much more productive conversation and his extensive knowledge and passion for the subject engaged the audience extremely well. Mr. Fyke inspired us to take action by imploring that “we are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last who have the chance to do anything about it.” Thank you to Mr. Fyke and all the organizers of the event!

Aaron Fyke with Poly student Philip, photo courtesy Diego Jaime