On climate change, are universities part of the problem or part of the solution? 

Despite 30 years of international climate negotiations, climate destabilisation is threatening the livelihoods of billions of people, and dangerous climate disruptions are becoming more frequent and extreme all around the world. The COP-29 meeting in Azerbaijan demonstrates yet again the ineffectiveness of our collective efforts to respond to the devastating injustices of the climate crisis. Another year, another COP where those profiting from fossil fuels continue to prevent transformative change. Although the science is clear that fossil fuel phaseout is the number one thing that is urgently needed, powerful fossil fuel interests have successfully captured the policy agenda. The fossil fuel industry is making higher profits than ever before and, rather than being phased out, global fossil fuel extraction is expanding. Within higher education, many of us are asking ourselves what is our role in and responsibility for the ineffectiveness of society’s attempts to confront the climate crisis? Have our universities’ efforts on climate and energy been sufficient?  Given how fossil fuel interests have been strategically investing in higher education for decades, has academic research and teaching been reinforcing and strengthening the climate obstruction agenda of fossil fuel interests, rather than resisting or weakening it? Many are also asking whether higher education institutions are effectively creating and disseminating knowledge on alternative regenerative economic and social systems, available to replace the extractive and exploitative systems that are causing so much devastating ecological harm, human suffering and climate injustice? In considering these questions, some may say that universities are part of the problem. Most universities are failing to prepare students for the disruptive future ahead, and many students complete their degrees without learning anything about the incompatibility between basic assumptions of economic growth and the Earth’s planetary boundaries. By continuing with business as usual, higher education institutions could be accused of normalising complacency about the rapidly deteriorating health of the Earth’s system, on which all of humanity depends. While many universities provide courses and institutional initiatives related to climate and sustainability, they’re increasingly being accused of greenwashing, as their efforts are rarely transformative. University research on climate and energy suffers from “academic capture” by industry interests, which partner and fund universities to legitimise and advance their profit-seeking agenda. But others are increasingly viewing universities as powerful institutions to be leveraged for the transformative shift toward a more stable and healthy climate-just future. New global networks of academics, dedicated to knowledge dissemination and co-creation for the public good, are resisting academic capture by industry and reclaiming their universities’ impact