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Climate change messes with Texas
Our understanding of climate change and the polar vortex must be refined, but the relationships are clear. Continue reading Climate change messes with Texas
Category: Sustainability science
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Their money and your life - the clarity of climate change and COVID-19
There are several parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, but perhaps the most disturbing is the intentional disregard of the value of human life in favor of money. This is hardly the first time since the end of WWII that money vs. lives has defined our daily lives. From the institutionalized denial of the damage from smoking tobacco, to the utter failure of … Continue reading Their money and your life - the clarity of climate change and COVID-19
A confluence of crises in higher education
I am preparing to give a presentation at the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences annual meeting in Orlando in the spring. The following is an essay that will form the basis of my presentation.
Higher education is undergoing an accelerating transformation driven by financing and student demography. At the same moment in history, our species is facing rapidly cascading unprecedented crises of climate change and sustainability. Although considered by most to be part of the Public Trust, public colleges and universities are no longer funded as such. As budgets have become tighter, many states are experiencing a decline in available students. Although the challenges facing students today include traditional concerns such as preparing for a career, learning transferable skills, and getting good grades, over recent decades these changes have influenced the character and viability of the college experience. Career pathways have become more diverse, expensive, and confusing. Higher education has responded to our environmental imperative in a fitful and inconsistent manner. There are no common standards for ecological literacy. Continue reading “A confluence of crises in higher education”
Ecology, Loss, and Triage
Amazonia burning. NASA Earth Observatory 2014
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.”
–Anne Frank
On Sunday, 30 April 2017, the New York Times reported that global marine fisheries are being pushed to the brink. This and countless other imminent losses prompt me to once again point out that management of the global biosphere is necessary if we are to have any hope of controlling climate change and feeding ourselves. Human impacts on ecosystems are pushing the living planet into a new regime characterized by disrupted ecological relationships and accelerating extinctions on local, regional, and global scales. Ecological disruption causes ongoing positive feedbacks from widely-distributed natural sources of emissions, thus further disrupting the climate system. Globally, we are approaching a state of unmanageability on many fronts. Continue reading “Ecology, Loss, and Triage”
Keeping the Torch Lit: Higher Education During The Great Disruption
A condemned campus building.
“….the way we have structured research and organized universities is not consistent with how reality works…..the sciences and universities are stuck in the disciplinary status quo they have been in for centuries.” – Anders Wijkman & Johan Rockström in Bankrupting Nature. 2012.
“…..there has never before been a geological force aware of its own influence.” – David Grinspoon in Earth in Human Hands. 2016. Continue reading “Keeping the Torch Lit: Higher Education During The Great Disruption”
Higher education in the environmental century
For The Natural Resources Council of Maine
“….what we’re doing today with greenhouse gas emissions — which is just a moment when you look at the geophysical timescales — has consequences for decades, centuries, millennia.” —Ricarda Winkelmann, Climate Scientist, Potsdam Institute, 2016
“Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring its natural systems, eradicating poverty, stabilizing population and climate, and, above all, restoring hope.” —Lester Brown, Environmental Analyst, 2008
Planetary Boundaries (Image credit: Azote Images/Stockholm Resilience Centre; Wikimedia Commons) Planetary boundaries according to Rockström et al. 2009 (doi:10.1038/461472a) and Steffen et al. 2015 (doi:10.1126/science.1259855). The green areas represent human activities that are within safe margins, the yellow areas represent human activities that may have exceeded safe margins, the red areas represent human activities that have exceeded safe margins, and the gray areas with red question marks represent human activities for which safe margins have not yet been determined.
Two overarching imperatives have come together to provide the framework for my lifework. The first of these is the long emergency driven by the existential threats of climate change and biosphere transformation. As a scientist, I have felt compelled to make my academic life relevant to these threats, which are illustrated above as safety margins for human activities. My research on the ecology of tropical forests has been meaningful in this context, but in early 2000, I became increasingly aware that higher education is broadly failing to prepare generations of students to face the unfolding crises of the environmental century. Thus, the second imperative is the need to transform higher education to provide students and professionals with the understanding to respond to profound disruptions of our biosphere and civilization. This represents a new paradigm of relevance for higher education, and increasingly students are asking how they can be a part of a meaningful response to these challenges. Continue reading “Higher education in the environmental century”
Facing the rising tide in Florida
The sobering science
Yesterday’s stunning news about sea level rise means that Florida can no longer enjoy the beach with its head in the sand. Continue reading “Facing the rising tide in Florida”
Higher Education in the Environmental Century LLC
Gainesville, Florida, 9 February 2016.
Stephen Mulkey, PhD, principal
Today I am announcing the creation of an LLC dedicated to providing practitioners in higher education guidance for administration and curriculum development to support a sustainable civilization.
(Mulkey CV)
Continue reading “Higher Education in the Environmental Century LLC”
Curriculum for sustainability in the environmental century
This is the opening keynote address to the national conference of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education held in October 2015 in Minneapolis. Here I outline my argument for the curriculum reform necessary to meet the environmental and sustainability challenges of the coming decades. I don’t know that my recommendations are the only path forward, but I assert that it is high … Continue reading Curriculum for sustainability in the environmental century
Report from the sustainability meetings in LA: Why sustainability is THE mission
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is holding its annual meeting in the City of Angels this week. Jesse Pyles and I flew out to represent Unity College, and to network with principals from other institutions that share the goal of bringing sustainability to higher education. Without too much hubris, I believe that Jesse and I make a good team. He brings an understanding of state of the art operational sustainability, while I am an advocate for the integration of Sustainability Science throughout the curriculum. Jesse’s workshop for other sustainability coordinators was well attended and a smashing success. You may not know it, but Jesse is a rockstar among his peers.
In contrast, it seems that I have a steeper hill to climb. Continue reading “Report from the sustainability meetings in LA: Why sustainability is THE mission”
The Environmental Century 
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