Essay by Eric Worrall
“… forward-thinking universities won’t be measuring excellence using status rankings and H-factors. Instead, they will show their value through community-based metrics …”
Universities have a vital role to play in tackling climate change
Published: June 26, 2026 2.55am AEST
Sarah Elizabeth Wolfe Professor, School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University
Philip Steenkamp President and Vice-Chancellor, Royal Roads UniversityGovernments, corporations and other institutions must all play constructive roles in mitigating the impacts of climate change. Universities, too, can and must help with that effort.
…
The Canadian government’s drought assessment shows above-normal temperatures and lower precipitation across the Pacific Northwest this El Niño season. An early-season drought — which could affect Vancouver Island — will negatively impact farms, wetlands, wildfire risks and water demand from seasonal tourism. Higher temperatures, tinder-dry forests and already scarce water supplies are a lethal combination.
Given those climate realities, the most successful, influential and forward-thinking universities won’t be measuring excellence using status rankings and H-factors. Instead, they will show their value through community-based metrics: directly and persistently applying their expertise to help local communities deal with the risks they face.
This means an intentional, place-based approach to research and teaching that’s organized around a region’s unique and specific problems — its people, histories, economies, risks and opportunities. At a place-based or community-embedded university, excellence comes via a whole-institutional approach that goes beyond rhetoric to meaningful action.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/universities-have-a-vital-role-to-play-in-tackling-climate-change-284946
This is the same kind of absurdity which leads leftists and greens to regularly suggest we should judge national economies by measuring happiness instead of GDP.
This point is easily refuted by asking a question: Which helps students get a job? The skill to do the job, or the love of the community their university served?
If you were seriously ill, would you rather your brain surgeon was the absolute best he or she could be, or would their commitment to climate action and track record of good works for the community be more important to you?
I’m not dissing the value of endorsement for good works. Reputation and character are important, and love from your community might open doors. But ultimately if you can’t do the job, there is no point hiring you.
Finally the sequel to “Dumb & Dumber” as a reality show. No casting needed, just install some live feed cameras.
The proof is in the use of moronic phrases like “tackling climate change”
I had this weird dream in which I kept seeing nonsensical words, “adapting to climate change”, over and over. If only there was a way to figure out what they mean. 😉
I presume they do not mean rationally preparing for change or variation, such as ensuring dikes are sound.
Decades ago I lived behind the dike on the west shore of the island that Richmond BC is on. I noted how close water was to the dike height. Since then the city improved the dikes and added redundancy to pumps and power for them. (Diesel generator backup to electricity, requiring fuel tanks which need refreshing (fuel deteriorates with age, I expect the city uses the old fuel in its trucks).
Later I lived in the Ladner area of Delta BC on the other side of the south arm of the big Fraser River, in first winter there some basements on our street were flooded because pumps could not keep up with need. (Fortunately our somewhat newer house was a few feet higher. Basements in that area were concrete slab on surface of ground.)
One farm in the east end of the Delta built at least five feet above ground, to be more sure.
When the USMCA gets notice of withdrawl in July , the Canadian Unis will have 6 months to change or go out of operation.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/06/28/usmca-status-canada-in-recession-mexico-gdp-grows-double-expectations/
Hoping Alberta has the balls to secede! The socialists would fail if that happens.
Well, I don’t think Mrs. Smith the Premier has what you describe, albeit I think she is against succession. She’d just trying to produce and have rights.
That and unify the UCP. All of the secession talk all comes from small minorities within her own party.
Okay, now I understand Alberta and BC concerns.
I can see this question becoming an ever more important part of ANY job application…
How many Climate Protests did you participate in during your University Years?
They will all happily answer with a double digit number.
Then I would tell them that there are 10 more applicants to interview and that I would let them know “soon”.
Anyone who answers greater than Zero has Zero chance of being hired, especially if a University Degree is A requirement.
Thanks, a good excuse to check the place out, since the days when it was a military college. “Climate action, wellbeing and the environment” is one of their three research themes. In any case, seems pretty fluffy and not a whole lot of science going on there as far as I can tell.
re: “Royal Roads University: Canadian Universities Should Focus on Climate Action Rather than Academic Excellence”
WAS the movie Idiocracy actually shot in Canada?
(Viewable here, BTW: #Idiocracy https://archive.org/details/Idiocracy_201507 )
“already scarce water supplies”
Proof these idiots don’t live in the real world! Canada and especially British Columbia has some of the most abundant water resources on the planet. Activism is all they have left because empirical science left them behind.
Mother Nature has a timely sense of humor. 🙂
The Pacific Northwest is experiencing a week of cloudy, cool, and damp.
And where did Sarah get this?
“this El Niño season” Not, at the moment, happening.
It is not a “season” but occurs irregularly about every 2 to 7 years.
Check back in October.
I scrolled through their university programs of study on their website. After about six pages of scrolling, I had found only one legitimate degree program – business administration – and finally quit in disgust. Everything else was environment this, indigenous that, caring & community, transformational,, etc. It is a publicly funded university with only 2600 students and has only existed since 1995. What a waste of space and Canadian taxpayer money.
It’s the government of British Columbia who pays for RR. Universities are the responsibility of the provincial governments, not the federal government.
Folks in BC are Canadians / Canadiens.
This type of insanity infests a lot of education most likely as these types cannot get a job outside of the education community of like minds. They all need to be fired.
Do they mean focus even more on that? Because that is what ALL universities, even the supposedly rightwing ones, have been focusing on for better part of the last 20 years. lol
” *** forward thinking universities won’t be measuring excellence using status rankings and H-factors***”
With their DEI and dumbed down academic standards, I wasn’t aware that most universities were pursuing “excellence.”
They aren’t. The only excellence they are pursuing is how many non academic grifters they can employ for the maximum amount of their salaries.
Apparently Canadian universities have been dropping in the rankings of academic excellence, so focusing on climate action should guarantee to put them in free fall. Mind you, considering how useless many of these liberal arts faculties like psychology, philosophy, sociology, literature, history, political science, education, etc. have become, they might well as focus on climate change since it won’t get students anywhere anyway.
“this El Niño season. “
Oh.. so totally natural.. not caused by humans. !
Very jazzy.
Yet another glaring example of a top education wasted on lemmings. This is why what experts and professionals say is questioned time after time. It has gotten to the point that I question everything I don’t care who says what.
What a load of nonsense. This university is effectively admitting it cannot educate its students properly – ie critical thinking and a knowledge of facts. it should have it licence removed, or whatever Canada calls the university ‘s right to take student money and give them cr@p in return.
The real problem is that they do not understand logic.
Are they admitting that Climate Action is not Academic excellence?
Mitigate the risk by ending the seasonal tourism. Done.
No one cares what two communist academics think at a university this tiny. It has no significant programs in mathematics, or any of the hard or applied sciences. It has nothing in Law, Medicine or any kind of engineering. Royal Roads is simply a dumping ground for the useless offspring of rich parents who are otherwise incapable of any serious study program.
If they were serious they would close the university.
Reduced power use, student travel, boondoggles to conventions (by guilt-ridden air transport)
Return the land to Nature
All staff stay at home to grow their own food
Etc
But universities aren’t for turning out well-trained workers. They are to guide their students to expand their horizons and their characters. /sarc
Difference between “liberal-arts” schools and engineering and B-schools.
An analysis of the New York Democrat primary results, with “Democrat socialists” prevailing, stated that it was the result of the electorate having been indoctrinated over the last 2-3 decades in the schools. Clearly, the long march through the institutions is paying off.
“To fight the bug, we must understand the bug.”
— Starship Troopers (movie quote)
Hello everyone,
I would like to share a perspective on this post by Eric as I have not only graduated from Royal Roads University (RRU), but I have also interacted with a number of its professors, which includes the one whose article is critiqued here – Dr. Sarah Wolfe.
I am in agreement with Eric that the article being critiqued, which is reflective of RRU’s values and mission as an academic institution, is questionable. It is indeed ironic because the first course I had to complete as a student at the start of my Master’s degree program was Introduction to Academic Integrity. There is little doubt that academic integrity is conspicuously lacking on the topic of climate change, though this is not unique to RRU (as you are probably aware).
I think it is unfortunate that this university including its staff and faculty have succumbed to the faulty narrative of climate change because I have enjoyed working in an environment that was conducive to my learning – I probably would not be commenting on this website if it was the opposite! Yet, unlike some of the readers who have commented, e.g., “[the university] is effectively admitting it cannot educate its students properly – ie critical thinking and a knowledge of facts” and “[it] is simply a dumping ground for the useless offspring of rich parents who are otherwise incapable of any serious study program”, I do not share these sentiments.
In brief, I perceive that academic institutions such as RRU are capable of imparting knowledge, but within context of climate change, they have an apparent weakness.
Even I am surprised despite knowing that some perfessors at RRU are climate catastrophists. (Some are rational.)
(RRU was a military academy but military consolidated training in Ontario and gave/sold facility to locals. It recently started some courses for military people at RRU and another local university, probably to help them enter military as they local residents don’t need accommodation. (It may have some residence rooms on site, I haven’t spent time there for a while, I used to go to the library and cafeteria.)