University Reforms in an Era of Global Warming

University Reforms in an Era of Global Warming
Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: Eco-Justice Press LLC
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2011
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0966037049

This book is especially timely for reasons related to the current efforts on the part of several national organizations to promote sustainability reforms in courses in all academic disciplines. The American Association for Sustainability in Higher education is in the forefront of this reform effort. Replacing an inefficient campus infrastructures was easy when compared to the challenges of engaging faculty in discussions of how the content of their courses continue to reinforce the deep cultural assumptions that gave conceptual direction to the individualistic/consumer-dependent lifestyle that that is now widely recognized as unsustainable. The chapters address a number of especially daunting challenges, with the main one being that many faculty who were graduate students in the last decades of the 20th Century continue to think within the same conceptual frameworks they acquired from their mentors. Their mentors were unaware of environmental limits, as well as the metaphorical nature of language that reproduces the ecologically problematic cultural assumptions that, in turn, have become part of today’s students’ taken for granted world. Several chapters address such limitations of these 20th Century conceptual frameworks as the way academic freedom in now being use by many faculty in the social sciences, humanities, and professional schools to justify ignoring not only the ecological crisis, and the failure to ask whether such traditional areas of inquiry, such as the thinking of Western philosophers and other abstract theorists, will be useful to students as they face the life-changing environmental impacts of climate change. Two other key issues that must be taken into account if sustainability reforms are to be introduced in courses across the academic disciplines include the need for faculty to understand the many ways in which the emphasis on print-based theory fosters abstract thinking, thus further strengthening the long-held myth of individual intelligence. The need to understand cultures as ecologies and the difference between individual and ecological intelligence are also discussed. The book also contains a discussion of the university administrators’ essential role in holding faculty accountable for engaging in extended discussions of the language issues such as the linguistic colonization of the present by the past, the recursive cultural patterns that are being represented as the latest progressive ways of thinking that are the basis of many of today’s conceptual double binds, and how to foster the students’ awareness of the different ways that ideologies, technologies, and silences are undermining what remains of the cultural and environmental commons. The critique of current misconceptions that underlie different disciplines, as well as the resistance of many faculty to taking the ecological crisis seriously, are balanced with extended discussions of alternative ways of thinking about language, the connections between print-storage (which is amplified by computer-mediated learning and communication) and the ways in which oral traditions foster awareness of contexts and patterns of moral reciprocity (and thus ecological intelligence). In effect, the book provides the conceptual framework that needs to be the focus of faculty discussions, if these discussion are going to help faculty avoid the misconception that adding a couple of readings by environmental writers or learning about ecologically sustainable community practices will enable students to make the transition to a post-industrial way of thinking.

The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus

The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus
Author: Mitchell Thomashow
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-02-28
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0262027119

When Thomashow became president of Unity College, a small environment-focused college in Maine, in 2006, he decided to focus his leadership on sustainability. Drawing on his experiences at Unity, Thomashow identifies nine elements for organizing a sustainability agenda: energy, food, and materials (aspects of infrastructure); governance, investment, and wellness (aspects of community); and curriculum, interpretation, and aesthetics (aspects of learning).

International Perspectives on Climate Change

International Perspectives on Climate Change
Author: Walter Leal Filho
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2014-03-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319044893

This collected volume deals with emerging issues related to climate variation, climate change and adaptation technologies, with a special focus on Latin American countries. Presenting a variety of adaptation strategies and projects currently being undertaken and implemented, the book showcases how Latin American nations are struggling to meet the challenges of climate change. Latin America as a whole and Central America in particular is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world and is severely affected by recurrent extreme climate-related events. This volume documents and analyzes the main challenges and lessons learned, serving to disseminate knowledge beyond the region and enhance international research and policy cooperation.

Sustainability and the Humanities

Sustainability and the Humanities
Author: Walter Leal Filho
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 610
Release: 2018-08-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319953362

This book explores the strong links between sustainability and the humanities, which go beyond the inclusion of social sciences in discussions on sustainability, and offers a holistic discussion on the intellectual and moral aspects of sustainable development. The contributions from researchers in the fields of education, social sciences, religion, humanities, and sustainable development fulfill three main aims: They provide university lecturers interested in humanities and sustainable development with an opportunity to present their work; foster the exchange of information, ideas and experiences acquired in the execution of teaching and research; and discuss methodological approaches and projects that provide a better understanding of how the humanities can contribute to the debate on sustainable development. Prepared by the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme and the World Sustainable Development Research and Transfer Centre, the book reiterates the need to promote integrated approaches to sustainable development. Including practice-based lessons learnt that can be replicated further, it is a valuable resource for scientists and practitioners working in the humanities and sustainable development.

Teaching and Learning Strategies for Sustainable Development

Teaching and Learning Strategies for Sustainable Development
Author: Enakshi Sengupta
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-05-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1789736412

This timely book explores the sustainable development goals, how well universities have been able to integrate them into their curriculum, and how universities can institutionalize the goals and sustainable development into their strategic plans and institutional culture

Dangerous Years

Dangerous Years
Author: David W. Orr
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2016-11-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300225105

A leading environmental thinker takes a hard look at the obstacles and possibilities on the long road to sustainability This gripping, deeply thoughtful book considers future of civilization in the light of what we know about climate change and related threats. David Orr, an award-winning, internationally recognized leader in the field of sustainability and environmental education, pulls no punches: even with the Paris Agreement of 2015, Earth systems will not reach a new equilibrium for centuries. Earth is becoming a different planet—more threadbare and less biologically diverse, with more acidic oceans and a hotter, more capricious climate. Furthermore, technology will not solve complex problems of sustainability. Yet we are not fated to destroy the Earth, Orr insists. He imagines sustainability as a quest and a transition built upon robust and durable democratic and economic institutions, as well as changes in heart and mindset. The transition, he writes, is beginning from the bottom up in communities and neighborhoods. He lays out specific principles and priorities to guide us toward enduring harmony between human and natural systems.

A People's Curriculum for the Earth

A People's Curriculum for the Earth
Author: Bill Bigelow
Publisher: Rethinking Schools
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2014-11-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0942961579

A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. The book features some of the best articles from Rethinking Schools magazine alongside classroom-friendly readings on climate change, energy, water, food, and pollution—as well as on people who are working to make things better. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth has the breadth and depth ofRethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, one of the most popular books we’ve published. At a time when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that life on Earth is at risk, here is a resource that helps students see what’s wrong and imagine solutions. Praise for A People's Curriculum for the Earth "To really confront the climate crisis, we need to think differently, build differently, and teach differently. A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is an educator’s toolkit for our times." — Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "This volume is a marvelous example of justice in ALL facets of our lives—civil, social, educational, economic, and yes, environmental. Bravo to the Rethinking Schools team for pulling this collection together and making us think more holistically about what we mean when we talk about justice." — Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Bigelow and Swinehart have created a critical resource for today’s young people about humanity’s responsibility for the Earth. This book can engender the shift in perspective so needed at this point on the clock of the universe." — Gregory Smith, Professor of Education, Lewis & Clark College, co-author with David Sobel of Place- and Community-based Education in Schools

The Great Derangement

The Great Derangement
Author: Amitav Ghosh
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2017-07-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 022652681X

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence—a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.

Digital Detachment

Digital Detachment
Author: Chet A Bowers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2016-01-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317286332

The digital revolution is changing the world in ecologically unsustainable ways: (1) it increases the economic and political power of the elites controlling and interpreting the data; (2) it is based on the deep assumptions of market liberalism that do not recognize environmental limits; (3) it undermines face-to-face and context-specific forms of knowledge; (4) it undermines awareness of the metaphorical nature of language; (5) its promoters are driven by the myth of progress and thus ignore important cultural traditions of the cultural commons that are being lost; and (6) it both by-passes the democratic process and colonizes other cultures. This book provides an in-depth examination of these phenomena and connects them to questions of educational reform in the US and beyond.

Undone Science

Undone Science
Author: David J. Hess
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2016-10-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262035138

Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion