Krugman/Planet etc.

[A.B.Thorpe]

Hello All,
I've been catching up with the Paul Krugman/Betraying the Planet thread as I've been away at the thoroughly thought provoking Leeds Festival of Design Activism.

It's very heartening to read through the lively discussion. I wanted to add that since many of us are based in Universities, it's worth a look at a book by my Canadian colleague, Professor Michael M’Gonigle of the University of Victoria.  He is the author (with Justine Starke) of Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University (New Society Publishers, 2006).

I heard him speak on this topic at UCL here in London and his point is that if you look at "higher education" as a sector, including employment, estates, pensions and so forth, it is huge--and widely distributed (eg most North American towns have or are nearby some form of college or university). As an example, if you're a research academic, no matter how alternative, humanistic or marxist your philosophy may be, your pension funds are still invested according to pillage and profit capitalist principles. And all that's before you consider the mind-shaping, "educational" role of higher education.  It's because of these broad dimensions that M'Gonigle and Starke see the university sector as central to leading a transformation to sustainability. For me this added a new and encouraging argument for the role of those of us in academia.

One interesting presentation from the above-mentioned day at UCL (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/environment-institute/News/sustainableuni.html) concerned the University of Brighton's community knowledge exchange, essentially using a community-focused help desk as a way to link anyone in the community with a question or problem to those in the university community that might have something useful to say about it. One of the aims of the program is, "To ensure that the University's resources (intellectual and physical) are fully available to, informed by and exploited by its local and sub-regional communities." The slides from that presentation are downloadable, along with a few others.

Best,
Ann

Ann Thorpe
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Dept of Design, Development, Environment & Materials
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom

Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
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ann@...
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book: The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability (www.designers-atlas.net)
& blog: http://designactivism.net
discussion list: SUSDESIGNTEACH


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