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Underestimating random acts of kindness

What was the last random act of kindness you were involved in? Was it something you did for someone else or something someone else did for you? Have you ever wondered how much that random act was appreciated? Based on new research by Kumar and Epley (2022), we tend to underestimate the positive impact our … Continue reading

Book Recommendation: The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

I have been listening to The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee over the past several weeks. I picked it up after hearing McGhee give a keynote at a sustainability conference last year. Despite this, I was surprised at how prominent the connections to sustainability are in the book. The range of topics McGhee covers … Continue reading

Perhaps it’s an equity issue?

What are your beliefs about aptitude? Can someone who isn’t naturally skilled at math learn and improve and reach the same level of expertise or even surpass someone who has a natural aptitude through time and commitment? What about time management, if someone submits an assignment a day late because they had to pick up … Continue reading

What temperature can you sleep though?

When we had an abnormal heat wave last year I lost sleep, as many others I talked to did as well. It made perfect sense then when I saw the article by Minor et al. (2022) that predicts that climate change will impact people’s sleep globally. Lack of sleep has been linked with many health … Continue reading

We could save 50,000 lives and $600 billion a year

You read that right, and no this is no get rich quick scheme. Air pollution from energy related industries in the US contributes to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and respiratory illness. Medical treatment of these conditions costs $600 billion annually and the conditions contribute to the deaths of 50,000 people. Mailloux et al (2022) … Continue reading

Does nature help everyone’s mental health?

Well, we don’t actually know. There’s a problem in a lot of research. We study who we have access to and forget that might not be representative of the broader world. Don’t get me wrong, efforts are often made to ensure generalizability but too often we overlook the lack of diversity completely. For example, I … Continue reading

What would make you choose a meat alternative?

In the past two years I have mostly switched to being a weekday vegetarian. I was able to do this largely because I also switched to using meal kits. The reason these two go together is that I didn’t have to do a ton of research to find tasty vegetarian recipes. So that’s the how … Continue reading

Which images of climate change would capture your attention?

I’m quite fascinated by how we use imagery to communicate information and inspire action. In previous projects I have analysed the photographs used in a textbook chapter on climate change – in short, anything negative was clearly foreign and everything positive was obviously local. I even used a photographic method to see how local outdoor … Continue reading

What are we actually importing?

When I think of imports I typically think of things that are positive. I would never have chocolate without imports for example. But new research shows that Canada, the USA, and a number of other countries are also importing extinction risks. This doesn’t mean that the imports are causing extinction at home, it means that … Continue reading

Collaboration for Caribou

The recent paper “Indigenous-led conservation: Pathways to recovery for the nearly extirpated Klinse-Za mountain caribou” is worth your own read if you have any interest in how we can decolonize conservation and follow the lead of peoples who have lived with the land rather than as abusers of the land for many generations. From an … Continue reading

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