How campuses engage with the climate crisis: a taxonomy

How might colleges and universities grapple with the climate crisis?

This question is the subject of much of my work now, as you can see from these posts. Researching answers can lead in a wide range of directions, not to mention down some twisty rabbit holes. Today I’d like to avoid those depths and instead look at a very macro, very ten-thousand-foot level. Let’s explore a schematic analysis looking at campuses as institutions and communities, facing perhaps the greatest crisis of the century.

(I draw the following from my forthcoming book on the topic, Universities on Fire.)

To start, let’s break down the different ways by which the climate emergency can hit academic institutions.

1. There’s the direct, environmental way, as storms strike, desertification and aridification expand, fire rage, heat rises, and waters surge through a campus. We can call this the primary impact vector.
2. Other campus impacts result from the ones crashing through the primary vector. Think of how temperature rises, the intrusion of salt into fresh water, and the arrival of new diseases can sabotage agriculture, which then leads to human misery and economic dislocation. This can reshape the area around some campuses, not to mention challenging a university’s ag programs. It can also injure campuses which enjoy appealing physical grounds in terms of mental health and outreach. Additionally, these ecological shocks can also strike academics…