Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

2016 Sustainability Summit live on Pratt’s Video Site

Posted 01 Dec 2016 / 0

Here are a couple of videos from the Sustainability Summit Panel that I participated in last October. The first is Josh Fox’s talk following the screening of his movie How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change: The second is the panel discussion, which features Fox and my colleagues Read More

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Envirolutions, Environmental Justice, Green Design, Marine Ecosystems, My publications, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Resilience, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Pratt

Want to know where NYC’s water supply stands? There’s a DEP page for that!

Posted 02 Nov 2016 / 0

I recently discovered this page on the NYC.gov Environmental Protection site. It’s pretty cool: if you are worried about NYC’s water supply, you can get up-to-date information on where our reservoirs stand. When I ask my students to cite sustainability issues, they often point to how water is wasted in NYC on things like spraying Read More

A Minor Post, Ecosystem Services, Green Design, Public Policy, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Ecology, Water Supply, Web

Wars on climate change versus revolutions to address climate change

Posted 31 Oct 2016 / 0

The New York Times “We Don’t Need a ‘War’ on Climate Change, We Need a Revolution” I am excited about this opinion piece by my friend and colleague Eric S. Godoy. He and his co-author Aaron Jaffe are absolutely right: as much as we might “fight” to “capture” the right metaphor for the “battle” against climate Read More

A Major Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Climate Change, Cooperation, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Mismatch theory, Philosophy, Public Outreach, Public Policy, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Social Dilemmas

An inspiring summit, but big challenges at home and afar…

Posted 22 Oct 2016 / 0

A still of Josh Fox in Beijing from his newest documentary, How to Let Go of the World. All in all it was an ambitious evening. I am not sure of how it came that Pratt was able to host a visit from Josh Fox, documentary filmmaker, after a screening of his newest movie How to Read More

A Major Post, Activism, Cultural Evolution, Envirolutions, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Film & Video, Film, Television, & Video, Population Pressure, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Talks & Seminars

Where’s the world’s biggest solar-electric power station going to be located?

Posted 14 Apr 2016 / 0

One of the great things about teaching students in Pratt’s Undergraduate Architecture program is that so many of them come to Pratt from abroad. International students bring with them a wealth of knowledge and experience that greatly broadens the dialogue in our classroom, and are especially important members of courses with an international world view. Read More

A Minor Post, Deserts, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy

Science & Sustainability at the Green Meadow Waldorf School

Posted 22 Mar 2016 / 1

On Monday, March 21st I had the pleasure of visiting the Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, New York to discuss the role that science plays in helping people to achieve the goal of a sustainable society. In a talk entitled “Pulling Humanity Back Inside the Boundaries: How Science Serves Sustainability“, I gave students some Read More

A Major Post, Belief, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Closed Loop Systems, Community Ecology, Conservation Biology, Ecology Education, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Eutrophication, Food, Habitat Destruction, Hypothesis Testing, Methods, Philosophy, Pollution, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Resource Consumption, Science (General), Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Harvesting, System Stability, Teaching, Water Supply, Wild Foods

Great conversation at my Columbia University Population Biology Seminar talk

Posted 14 Mar 2016 / 0

It was a great honor to speak on this past Monday, March 7th, 2016 as part of Columbia University’s Population Biology seminar series. I gave a talk entitled “Breeders, Propagators, & Creators: Culture, Biology, and the Future of Human Evolution” to a small group of biology faculty and students from a nice diversity of different Read More

A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Uniqueness, Kin Selection, Parenting, Population Pressure, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction

“This is the Nature of Cities” podcast on urban bees and civic ecology

Posted 25 Feb 2016 / 0

As you may have noticed, I have been using a tedious task that I have to complete this month in order to broaden my podcast experience, particularly in the area of urban ecology. Today I found an interesting site that includes a podcast, The Nature of Cities (TNOC). Predominantly the work of ecologist David Maddox and Read More

A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Pollination, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainable Urban Design

“Science: A Candle in the Dark” podcast on Urban Ecology

Posted 18 Feb 2016 / 0

In my search for good podcasts on urban ecology I ran into a real gem in Madhusudan Katti‘s Science: A Candle in the Dark. The podcast is an accompaniment to a science café series that happens monthly in Fresno, California. I love the idea of a science café as a hub of public-academic interaction and a place Read More

A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Birds, Citizen Science, Conservation Biology, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Urban Ecology, Urban Planning

“In Defense of Plants” podcast on Urban Ecology

Posted 18 Feb 2016 / 0

Today I listened for the first time to the In Defense of Plants podcast. I have been looking for good podcasts on urban ecology, so I checked out Episode #14 (Urban Ecology!). In this episode, host Matt interviews Dave Spiering of the Tifft Nature Center in the City of Buffalo. Spiering discusses about how urban brownfield recovery Read More

A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Community Ecology, Ecological Restoration, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Invasive Species, Pollution, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Ecology