Staff

As you go out into the world…

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[to the graduating class] I have been chosen to give you your very last bit of wisdom, something to carry with you into the future. So here is the sum total of that wisdom

“Everything you have been taught to expect is wrong.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t a joke. You have been taken in by a host of assumptions that are not true, and if you walk out of here believing what you have been told and taught over the last four years, you will leave woefully unprepared for you. The consolation, I can offer you, however, is that while what you have been taught to expect is wrong, the things you have actually learned may be of more use than you think.

Climate & environment – May 14

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Researchers predict that 100 million early deaths could be prevented by cutting global emissions by 50% by 2050
Bill McKibben in Australia (audio)
Kurt Cobb: Geoengineering the Climate: Bad for You and Our Energy Future
Mission to break up Pacific island of rubbish twice the size of Texas
Jeffrey Sachs on Taxing Carbon

The Reign of Error

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Some of us think humankind will be running low on exploitable fossil fuels in the first half of the 21st century. Resource depletion can change climate change scenarios significantly. I’ll briefly present my version of that story here, my confidence buoyed by the knowledge that such a narrative can not possibly be less reasonable than positions staked out in the global warming debate.