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Revisiting the Challenges Facing Canadian Higher Education: The Limits of Crisis-Thinking

By Sharon Stein UBC Are our individual and institutional responses appropriately calibrated to the scale and complexity of the moment we are actually in? After all, we cannot “solve” planetary and geopolitical challenges at the level of curriculum, technology, or individual resilience. We cannot, and arguably should not, seek to extend an extractive system indefinitely.Continue reading “Revisiting the Challenges Facing Canadian Higher Education: The Limits of Crisis-Thinking”

David v Goliath :Community Flood Resilience in the Derbyshire Dales

Community Resilience

Battered by the storm, Cornwall was emblematic of our institutional systemic failure to confront a rapidly changing reality. In one of the richest countries in the world, entire communities lost power for weeks, and running water for days. Had the British government addressed climate change, and made contingency plans for these mega-storms, which will onlyContinue reading “Community Resilience”

Recalibration Climate Risk

This wide ranging and impressive report addresses two distinct but interconnected dimensions of climate impacts, each relevant to different decision-makers: (1) economic impacts affecting financial asset values and portfolio performance over investment horizons, and (2) broader social and human welfare impacts, including mortality, health burdens, inequality, ecosystem degradation, and quality of life. The first isContinue reading “Recalibration Climate Risk”

Planning and the Risk From Surface Water Flooding

The purpose of house building should be to increase the stock of homes for local people. If new developments cause flooding of existing housing stock, and this renders existing housing uninhabitable and uninsurable there is no net increase in housing stock (What if floods left your home unsellable? 2 January Guardian). Matlock repeatedly suffers fromContinue reading “Planning and the Risk From Surface Water Flooding”

The Coming of the Ecological University

“Universities have been with us on this Earth for at least one thousand years and will surely be with us in the future; perhaps so long as there is life on this planet that has any well-being. There is now something in not just the name of the institution but in the idea of the university that seemsContinue reading “The Coming of the Ecological University”

The Future is Bright

Solar Power Reviewed by Carbon Choices 22 August Falling Costs The cost of electricity produced by solar power has been falling for the last two decades. This trend is likely to continue due to the increased efficiency of panels, lower cost of silicon, improved manufacturing techniques, and economies of scale – the higher the demandContinue reading “The Future is Bright”

Economic growth and the search for abundance

Creating a world of plenty demands more radical ideas By Tim Smedley June 26, 2025 Illustration by Prospect. Source: S.E.A. Photo / Alamy A moment halfway through Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s recent book Abundance reveals something of their approach to building a net zero world. In 2023 a gasoline lorry exploded, causing Philadelphia’s I-95 bridge to collapse;Continue reading “Economic growth and the search for abundance”

CARBON CAPTURE -DAC

KATIE BRIGHAM • MAY 30, 2025 Technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the air — a.k.a. direct air capture — has always had boosters who say it’s necessary to reach net zero, and detractors who view it as an expensive fig leaf for the fossil fuel industry. But when the typical venture capitalistContinue reading “CARBON CAPTURE -DAC”

The Valley that Changed the World, and Could Do So Again.

Transforming the Derwent Valley for a Regenerative Future May 10, 2024 Image by Derwent Valley MillsAuthors: Jonny Norton, Stephen Martin, Chris Ives — School of Geography University of NottinghamNestled within the picturesque landscapes of Derbyshire, England, lies the Derwent Valley — a valley once pulsating with the relentless energy of the Industrial Revolution. From theContinue reading “The Valley that Changed the World, and Could Do So Again.”