Learning about and engaging with the environment involves the integration of many disciplines and combines the classroom experience with work in the field, fusing theory and practice. At The New School the nucleus of this engagement is the Tishman Environment and Design Center. It is a place for students and faculty from all colleges and schools to gather, interact, and explore shared experiences. It facilitates research, curriculum development, internships, and fieldwork opportunities. It stimulates critical thinking and builds relationships through lectures, public programs, workshops, and conferences.
The center is exactly that, a center of creative work and experience that allows students and faculty to explore the curriculum, share and interact on projects, and research and work with the community at large to explore opportunities for collaboration.
Our environment is the larger New York metropolitan area. There are many opportunities to work with towns, cities, states, non-governmental groups, corporations, other universities, and other organizations. Through the Tishman Environment and Design Center, we hope to connect students and faculty to this broader coalition to enhance learning, civic engagement, and research.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Visualizing climate change in Vancouver
Here’s a shot of the freshly painted columns of the Cambie Bridge stretching across Vancouver’s False Creek. The blue shading is meant to show the potential impacts of the melting of Earth’s major ice sheets in terms of sea level rise. Details here.
Related:
- ‘Sea level rise fastest in Pacific: report’ (Vancouver Sun)
- ‘Report illustrates toll of climate change in Vancouver’ (Georgia Straight)
- ‘Vancouver in the research spotlight as one of the world’s most vulnerable cities to rising sea levels’ (Adaptation to Climate Change Team - SFU)
- ‘Coastal Cities at Risk’
- ‘Sea level rise for the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington: Past, Present, and Future’ (National Academies Press)
WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. IT’S A SERIOUS PROBLEM AND CAN TAKE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF PREEMPTIVE ACTION TO EFFECTIVELY PROTECT FUTURE GENERATIONS.
WHY DON’T YOU POST SOMETHING ON TWITTER? YOU TOTALLY TOPPLED MUBARAK LAST YEAR WITH YOUR CLEVER HASHTAGS. I ERASED THE MESSAGE ON ACCIDENT BUT YOUR PRAYERS REALLY HELPED JAPAN, TOO. THEY ACTUALLY CALLED AND SAID THANK YOU; EVERYTHING WAS FIXED IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE OF YOUR TOKEN TWEET OF SUPPORT. BRITTANY MURPHY CALLED AS WELL. SHE WANTED TO THANK YOU FOR SPELLING HER NAME WRONG WHEN YOU POSTED YOUR HEARTFELT R.I.P.
TWITTER IS A POWERFUL TOOL.
I WAS JUST GOING TO SAY THE SAME THING ABOUT YOU. STOP TALKING AND DO SOMETHING FOR ONCE.
OK, you have fought hard to deny or challenge the realities of climate change, perhaps because you are afraid of the policies that might have to be put in place; or are afraid of the possibilities of increased government intervention; or you don’t think it will be that bad; or you think it will be too expensive to do anything about; or you don’t understand the science; or you don’t trust scientists, including, by the way, every national academy of sciences and every professional scientific organization in the geosciences […] or whatever.
You may not think the expected consequences of climate change are bad enough to do anything, despite what researchers have been telling us for years about higher temperatures, worsening frequency and intensity of storms and droughts, rising sea levels, altered water quality and availability, growing health risks from pests and heat, and much more.
Fine. But you are dragging the rest of us, who still believe in science and think that things can and should be done quickly, down into what increasingly seems like a future hell. […]
It now appears that on top of all of the other potentially catastrophic, costly, damaging, or dangerous impacts of human-caused climate change, there is a very serious risk that it will threaten the production of chocolate.
‘An Open Letter to Climate Change Deniers and Skeptics: The Final [Chocolate] Straw’ by Peter Gleick
No more CHOCOLATE?!
(via scipsy)
The Seattle Post Intelligencer’s Pulitzer-winning cartoonist David Horsey takes on climate change denial.
- # Seattle
- # USA
- # cartoon
- # choices
- # climate change
- # denial
- # economy
- # energy
- # fossil fuels
- # human activity
- # human behaviour
- # human systems
- # limits
- # news
- # oil
- # planetary boundaries
- # politics
- # renewable energy
- # science
- # skepticism
- # David Horsey
- ∞ Permalink
- Posted 1 year ago
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Photos of the day
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man is recreated by artist John Quigley on the Arctic sea ice, August 29, 2011. Greenpeace commissioned the work to highlight the fact that the Arctic is melting and the need for world leaders need to take urgent action on climate change. Photo released Sept. 7, 2011. This September could mark the lowest sea ice minimum on record. (Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace)
Texas, Gov. Rick Perry asks Obama for federal assistance.
Texas Blaze Destroys Hundreds of Homes — A Texas wildfire burns out of control in Bastrop State Park on Monday. The massive blaze — one of many that have popped up amid a severe drought in the state — has burned over 14,000 acres and destroyed nearly 500 homes.
see more — World in Flames: Major Wildfires
(Source: life)
Mark Bittman of the NYTimes: Profits Before Environment
Bittman nails the Obama administration today in this surprising (to me) piece on the current trend of profits over environment. He connects a lot of dots, but brings it together in the end. (I’d counter by saying that Obama was in a fix - he has had to choose jobs and stimulus over the environment).
I think this section is worth quoting in full:
Sacrificing the environment for profits didn’t stop with Bush, and it doesn’t stop with genetically modified organisms. Take, for example, the Keystone XL pipeline extension. XL is right: the 36-inch-wide pipeline, which will stretch from the Alberta tar sands across the Great Plains to the Gulf Coast, will cost $7 billion and run for 1,711 miles — more than twice as long as the Alaska pipeline. It will cross nearly 2,000 rivers, the huge wetlands ecosystem called the Nebraska Sandhills and the Ogallala aquifer, the country’s biggest underground freshwater supply.
If Keystone is built, we’ll see rising greenhouse gas emissions right away (tar sands production creates three times as many greenhouse gases as does conventional oil), and our increased dependence on fossil fuels will further the likelihood of climate-change disaster. Then there is the disastrous potential of leaks of the non-Wiki-variety. (It’s happened before.)
Proponents say the pipeline will ease gas prices and oil “insecurity.” But domestic drilling has raised, not lowered, oil prices, and as for the insecurity — what we need is to develop wiser ways to use the oil we have.
They say, too, that the pipeline could create 100,000 new jobs. But even the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union oppose the pipeline, saying, “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil.”
Sounds as if union officials have been reading the writer and activist Bill McKibben, who calls the pipeline “a fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent,” and NASA scientist Jim Hansen, who says the oil Keystone will deliver “is essentially game over” for the planet.
Game over? No problem, says the State Department (read the rest below:
Source: NYTimes
Help reverse climate change before it’s too late.
