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As a recent New York Times editorial proclaimed, "The Global Order Isn't Working. It's Time for Something Different." To teach environmental history and environmental ethics is to reacquaint ourselves with the facts that we need to try to build, while there is still time, a new cooperative order that understands this: simple fact: that other people and other countries are quite literally "the air we breathe." Moreover, all who claim to be ethical persons must take seriously the notion of inter-generational equity and try to act upon it. This notion should, in theory, come more easily to countries whose traditions have built upon classical/ Confucian learning, for those traditions say that the most important marker of human behavior is working toward common ends (qun 群) while "learning what is enough" (zhi zu 知足). Put another way, many resources within the Chinese tradition may strengthen our resolve to act more constructively in less short-sighted ways.

Using UC Berkeley as an exemplar, Prof. Koshland gave us a distinguished lecture on ‘Lighting the Way with Interdisciplinary Research since 1868’.  One of the hallmarks of UC Berkeley has always been engagement of its faculty and students in research and education that expand in cross disciplines, joining on multiple approaches to address major challenges facing the world today, which is also what we are seeking to do at PAIR of PolyU. Moreover, Prof. Koshland shared with us the ways in which individuals and institutions can engage in interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research and education and how they can be creatively intertwined.