Comment
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Before the big bang
I watched an engaging BBC4 Horizon programme last night which mostly involved theoretical cosmologists putting forward their own ideas and a few arcane diagrams, and being just ever so slightly, but fairly nicely, dismissive of those of others. Not all...
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Transformative learning – or is it transformative teaching?
In a discussion paper for the HEA, ESD and Inter-disciplinarity: focus and trajectories, written in preparation for yesterday's seminar: Inter-disciplinary Sustainability Education: Insights, Momentum and Futures, Alex Ryan writes: Following the work of Mezirow and developments by other educationalists, transformative learning processes generate...
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The road out of Durban
I posted recently on Saudi attempts to get hold of some of the green cash that's to be given to countries that are adversely affected by the world's carbon-reduction efforts. This, in the House of Saud's case, is to compensate...
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Transforming, reforming, or (merely) evolving?
In a brief, but aptly thoughtful, 'Thinkpiece' for the 2009 Universities that Count annual report, Stephen Sterling makes a distinction between universities whose sustainability-focused work might be seen as reformist in nature, and those where this might be viewed as...
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The Winter’s Come
Sweet chestnuts brown like soleing-leather turn, The larch trees, like the colour of the sun That paled sky in the Autumn seem’d to burn. What a strange scene before us now does run Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black and...
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School carbon emissions in England on the rise
I spotted this on the Taylor & Francis website Typical CO2 emissions from schools in England are rising, despite reductions to their heating demands, because of an increase in electricity consumption, according to new research published in the ‘Building Research...
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Responsibly sourced concrete
I'm grateful to Nick Jones for forwarding the latest newsletter from the BRE group which reports that 70% of UK concrete is now responsibly sourced, and covered by BRE Global’s BES 6001 Responsible Sourcing certification. Being curious as to what...
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Cradle to cradle to ... what exactly?
At the Management International Conference in Portorož, I listened to a confident presentation about cradle to cradle ideas by Albin Kälin, CEO of EPEA Switzerland. I suppose I should say Cradle to Cradle® as this phrase has been registered. Anyway. EPEA...
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Compensation please – we’ve far too much oil
Saudi Arabia is one of two countries that have declined to endorse a report on the Green Climate Fund, one of the few ideas, you'll recall, that was spawned in 2009 in the UN meeting that became known as Nopenhagen....
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Rachel Carson: a child's world
Now and then, I come across fragments of text which resonate. Maybe it's the thought of my grandchildren that provokes this: A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that...