Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
This lecture will explore Napoleon‘s life through his interactions with the natural world and a series of gardens that were important to him during the rise and fall of his power. The point of doing this is to approach his life from oblique angles, exploring material that is often overlooked.
International negotiations concerning our environment such as on climate and biodiversity, often put the scientific case behind economic and political interests, with potentially disastrous consequences. What does that mean for human prosperity and even survival?
Climate change and the over-exploitation of resources now may mean that unless the current generation modifies its behaviour, generations ahead may either not be born or will inherit a world with severe problems.
There is a seismic shift underway in economics, hastened by the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Communities and countries around the world are beginning to adopt/consider adopting well-being and prosperity as major guiding principles.
The story of the deep, biogeophysical planetary connections and how these are intensifying the effects of climate change and economic development, is told through personal research and expeditions to remote locations across the world (including some that were previously unexplored).
Air pollution, the usefulness of trees, ideas for a green belt are not concerns we associate with the 1600s. But John Evelyn, writer, diarist and gardener, was unusual. His thinking in Fumifugium (1661) about air quality, and Sylva (1664) about trees, seems astonishingly close to our own today.
Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will examine how renewable energy systems, ranging from large scale hydroelectric dams, solar arrays and geothermal plants, to small-scale solar micro-grids can offer immense opportunities for climate mitigation and achieving a clean energy future.