What will change for academic institutions as the climate crisis is increasingly not some far-off future, but happening now? And are we preparing our students for these uncomfortable conversations?
@renordquist@bryanalexandee@academicchatter Thanks for sharing Rebecca! Those of us drafting new criteria worry that the climate crisis will make many academic subjects obsolete—but animal welfare will likely be more relevant than ever.
@bryanalexandee@jonippolito@academicchatter Agreed. There is a big diversity in these effects across disciplines for academic institutions. Just to name an example from my field: we now increasingly have heat stress in summer in cattle in the Netherlands. This means we need to think about how to design our ved med education but also our physical spaces (barns, fields) for animals involved in education. That requires quite a bit of planning.
Well, generally the best cooling shelters for cattle (and sheep, and just about any living being for that matter) are trees ;) This is why agroforestry is one of the fields that I think we should be investigating- or one of the reasons, there are a lot of good reasons to stimulate agroforestry in terms of sustainability. It is gaining attention in the EU (though still very niche by comparison to intensive livestock farming).