Reflection on the metacrisis

Climate change, toxic forever chemicals, plastic pollution, mining, deforestation, fresh water over-use, ecosystem collapse, flooding soil run-off, drought, ocean acidification, rising and warming oceans, extinction rates, along with social malaise such as the population cliff, suicide rates, homelessness, rising cancers, auto-immune syndromes and autism rates, depression and anxiety, an accelerating schism between rich and poor – and the list of polycrises continues – are all compounding to create a metacrisis.

The concept of metacrisis illustrates how all these crises are linked by problems in our planetary time. The metacrisis emerges from those historical ideas that began with colonialism and the Enlightenment, and alienated communities from their lands, assumed humanity was more rational and powerful than nature and set Newtonian scientism as the apex of universal knowledge. These fundamentals create the ‘success’ of modern economics, and set up the conditions for all of the polycrises.

Those with power and capacity to make sense of the world, have capacity to do things differently – namely ourselves (collectively) and our governments. In an era of widespread failure of trust in institutions and authorities, an increasing sense of failure of purpose, meaning and ethics pervades. In these contexts, ever-intensification of the causes of the polycrises deepens and self-reinforces. For example, in Australia, Indigenous young people who are schooled in failing systems are incarcerated at increasing rates, perpetuating colonial injustices (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2025); epistemic violences at international, state-based and domestic levels escalate as dialogue fails (Brunner, Reference Brunner2021); fossil fuel extraction continues even in the face of well-known climate science (IPCC, Reference Lee and Romero2021).

In this Special Issue, authors such as Irwin (Reference Irwin2026, this issue) and Li Mandri (Reference Li Mandri2026, this issue) show how mainstream media ignores some non-Western ecological devastation and various types of planetary calamity so that the apparently smooth unfolding of modern consumerism can continue without inhibition. However, the metacrisis is not limited to the margins of a Western, neoliberal mindset, and increasingly the impacts of wildfires, flooding, ecosystem collapse, poverty and toxins on the health and wellbeing of Western populations are becoming clear to all.

This special issue “Beyond the Metacrisis; Educating for the Future World to Come” engages with the state of global modernity and the impacts of the polycrises. The global scale of the issues is one of the reasons the metacrisis is different from historical experience. While in the deeper past, some civilisations declined when they exhausted local resources, such as water, timber or soil – the impacts were generally limited to the particular places. The global impact of modernity has a very different character. Civilisations have been immutably changed as they battled colonisation and genocidal intent, often resulting in water shortage, soil salinisation, pestilence, plague, deforestation or a range of other calamities (Ghosh, Reference Ghosh2021). For global modernity, until recently many localised misfortunes were mitigated through an increasingly sophisticated transportation system that allowed markets to compensate for local shortages, giving local populations time to adapt to or address most short or medium term toxic contamination, or ecological crises.

This Special Issue investigates the underlying dynamics that are producing these various and compounding catastrophes. It is easy enough to point to rabid consumerism and extractive global economics as the root of the metacrisis. However, it is much harder to answer the question about why these tropes remain acceptable and unexamined in the face of existential threat, and how and why they are still taken to inform the systemic basis of modern capitalism, and even harder to say with certainty what environmental educators can and/or should do.

Metacrisis – a deeper look

The Ancient Greek term “meta” means a self-reflective analysis of the entire body of work. In films and literature, meta means to break the third wall and speak directly to the audience. Meta is somewhat related to mega, or large, fundamental, over-arching, but like the word: “crisis” itself, “meta” is also a turning point. This can be seen in words like metamorphosis, where the morphe or body shape is transformed, from a caterpillar into a moth for example. It is a turning, a transforming, a metamorphosis. The task is to identify what is peculiar to modernity, and how to nudge it towards metabolising into a more wholesome and healthier civilisation within, and intraconnected with, planetary ecology. At the outset of modernity, reliance on trade instead of localised lifestyle had a detrimental impact on specific communities. But over the last several hundred years the impacts of extractive capitalism are accelerating. From the 1950s and the commitment to economic growth and the welfare state, working class people also counted on progress and invested in the systems of globalisation rather than local community. But the failure of the ideology of incremental progress that benefits all strata of society has now become clear to all. The richest are rapidly becoming excessively wealthy, and at the other extreme, homelessness is impacting vast numbers of people and younger generations can no longer expect to buy their own house and sometimes, rent their accommodation. Innovative technology has failed to deliver improvements in climate emissions or reduction in environmental toxins and is also part of the problem (Irwin, Reference Irwin2024).

There are a range of responses to the metacrisis, from denial to outrage but many people in the West feel a mixture of guilt and complicity about modern ways of life, and their inability to overcome the toxic effects of consumerism and business-as-usual (Dillet, Reference Dillet2026; Nielsen & Gamborg, Reference Nielsen and Gamborg2024). Even the most dedicated attempts at technological or political engagement have thus far been unable to make more than a short-term dent in the acceleration of climate emissions, toxic chemicals, deforestation, extinction rates and so on. The metacrisis is an “invisible crisis” (Stein, Reference Stein2022) which is nevertheless impacting the psychology and wellbeing of human individuals and communities, along with the more-than-human. Despite desperate attempts at denial, invisibility, lack of media reporting and fake news, the metacrisis is increasingly shaping the political spirit.

The multiple malaises of the polycrises can be seen together as a metacrisis (Hedlund, Reference Hedlund2023). The μϵτά, or meta in metacrisis indicates a reflective, or higher order analysis of the massive scale and the deep and entrenched reach of the many elements of the polycrises. The polycrises take many forms. Each of them is complex and has different implications and time frames. The metacrisis is more than the sum of its parts, such that each crisis is entangled with the others, having either dampening or accelerating effects on each other. For example, peak oil is increasing the cost of EROI (energy return on investment), making oil more precious and expensive. But oil is seen to be so necessary to modern states, that governments are supporting the exploration and exploitation of more risky oil fields, including places like Antarctica, that are protected by international Treaty. There is also brazen flouting of international law for oil. For example, as is now well-known, on 3^rd January 2026, the US invaded Venezuela (Naranjo Caceres, Reference Naranjo Caceres2026); harking back to the Gulf War. Unfortunately, neither oil nor consumerism generally helps us flourish.

The metacrisis analysis is to delve into the philosophical and structural reasons that late modernity is reproducing the multiple elements of the polycrises. Other civilisational crises in the past have created one or two of these elements; over population, overconsumption of water, or salinisation of soil. Any of these issues caused civilisation collapse (Heinberg, Reference Heinberg2021). But in the past these calamities were location specific. The local ecosystem eventually recovered or transitioned but other areas were still habitable. With climate change, micro plastics, ocean acidification, ice melt of permafrost and so on, the devastation is planetary and exoplanetary in the sense of satellites, space junk and all the digital technology on earth that drives these crises. It might have specific effects in different zones of the planet but together, the turbulence caused by destabilised geospherical and biospherical systems are exacerbating climate variables, making longer droughts, faster evaporation, drier soils, harder rainfall, greater flooding, more landslides, atmospheric rivers, greater cloud cover, greater wind, ice melt in the permafrost, shortage of fresh water, ocean rise, changes of weight in tectonic plates, more active earthquakes and volcanoes. The metacrisis demands a metamorphosis away from the Anthropocene. But how that transformation occurs needs a better analysis of the drivers of economic growth (Irwin, Reference Irwin2024).

The trouble is, with a complex global industrial market system, no arena is left aside from the fate of the whole. The norms of “Business As Usual” maintains the dynamics that drive economic growth and the metacrisis hidden from view. As Irwin (Reference Irwin2026, this issue) and Li Mandri (Reference Li Mandri2026, this issue) explore in their papers, the enchantment of modernity continues to uphold existing norms and expectations. The paradox of modernity’s enchantment, and the pressures of the polycrisis have produced distorted discourses such as “net zero,” “decoupling” and “sustainability.” Unsworth (Reference Unsworth2025, this issue) includes education within the anthropocentric and economic assumptions of New Public Management. Savva (Reference Savva2026, this issue) argues that neoliberalism needs to be critiqued as a system of violences, on a continuum with colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, industrial and scientism. Reflection on the peculiarities of modernity (as opposed to other cultures) and why it is producing such existential crisis is urgent.

In the face of systemic collapse (Bendall, Reference Bendall2023), disruption to the system needs to hold safety for billions of people, as normative expectations and infrastructures are reconfigured. Everth (Reference Everth2025, this issue) regards the metacrisis as a monstrous Moloch, that is perpetuated by individuals, corporations and governments. The global nature of the polycrisis means there is no escape, no “outside” that will maintain life while a specific local civilisation implodes. The transformation towards postgrowth or degrowth strategies need to happen from within.

Alienation and neoliberalism

The most significant aspect of the metacrisis is the entrenched alienation of modern civilisation from nature (Merchant, Reference Merchant1980; Plumwood, Reference Plumwood and Irwin2010). This shows up in ontology, epistemology, science, economics and political discourse. Enlightenment ideology has placed significant emphasis on universal knowledge derived through rational and abstract procedures (Murphy & Mui, Reference Murphy and Mui2026, this issue). This epistemology banished embodied and emotional cognition, sidelined community and treated ecological objects as essentially unknowable objects (Jeice, Reference Jeice2025, this issue). Liberal political theory made a benefit from these ideas and embedded them in the Enlightenment morality of individual freedom, equality and fraternity (Savva, Reference Savva2026, this issue). Murphy and Mui (Reference Murphy and Mui2026, this issue) argue that risk is regarded with great aversion by policy makers. The regulation and surveillance of risk promotes control. But Murphy and Mui argue that risk can be embraced as an intrinsic part of authentic freedom. Instead of living small, frightened lives, we can embrace risk and overcome the anxiety and fear that is present in the metacrisis. Stratford et al. (Reference Stratford, Louverdis and Joy2025, this issue) argue this neoliberal approach creates “miserable pedagogies” that constrain members of education into stereotypical roles based on progress and wilful over-optimism about technological interventions. Mostly, these concepts have gone unchallenged in political discourse.

One of the most fundamental issues of modernity, argues Jeice (Reference Jeice2025, this issue), is the human disengagement from nature whereas in pre-modern times, people saw themselves as embedded within the more-than-human world. According to Jeice (Reference Jeice2025, this issue), ontological dualisms such as culture-nature and subject–object – needs to be addressed through sharing culturally embedded, storied social imaginaries; by valuing cultural contributions in environmental education (EE); by cultural critique; by valuing socio-political self-nature mediation in EE; and by addressing the intelligibility or sense-making crisis. Regarding this last point, the heuristic crafted by Cieri and Paradies (Reference Cieri and Paradies2026, this issue) also serves this purpose by emphasising belonging, becoming and knowing.

Anomie, anxiety, individualism

As individuals, most of us in the West are still embedded in the accelerating rat-race where job security, accommodation and “bare life” are increasingly tenuous for many people (Rivas & Bradley, Reference Rivas and Bradley2026, this issue). Anxiety, depression and burnout compete with narratives about progress, innovation and financial success (Moura & Campbell, Reference Moura and Campbell2025, this issue; Murphy and Mui, Reference Murphy and Mui2026, this issue). The systems that inform modernity, from architecture, infrastructure, institutions and language continue to be dominated by Enlightenment discourse (Ziethen & Paulsen, Reference Ziethen and Paulsen2025, this issue). The Enlightenment emphasises alienated individualism, rationality and entitled consumerism over relational, immediate, visceral, embodied and emotional awareness of ourselves, others, and the environment. Doom scrolling, virtual reality and curated AI research also serves to pre-fabricate our existence outside the dynamics of Earth’s ecology (Rivas & Bradley, Reference Rivas and Bradley2026, this issue). This alienation and busyness might include depression and withdrawal – but it does not fundamentally challenge the way modernity forges the multiple existential crises in the larger context.

To fully engage with the metacrisis, we need to be able to think both on a planetary and exoplanetary scale, and scale and pay attention to localised relationality. There are multiple ways in which relationality is showing up, from a resurgence in Indigenous modes of becoming, and a more embodied and emotional comportment towards knowledge. Different discipline areas are forging new modes of deep relational engagement, that is abandoning the alienation embedded in the Enlightenment, while retaining key concepts such as equity, fellowship and the integrity of critical thought (Ocriciano, Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue; Jeice, Reference Jeice2025, this issue; Murphy and Mui, Reference Murphy and Mui2026, this issue).

The metacrisis is pressing us towards a deep-seated transformation, a metamorphosis, that will need to return systems thinking to the muddy process that dissolves material culture – to break down and reorganise the structures of global society – in ways that respectfully engage with communities and their relationships with the more-than-human. There are multiple ways of progressing this transition, from confronting the epistemological negligence of the Enlightenment that silences the needs of the ecosystem and other species; examining macroeconomics and the levers that stimulate continuous exponential economic growth; examining the anxiety and anomie that is paralysing people in the rigid, massive and accelerating system of modernity; looking at the pervasive dynamics of colonial power, and considering modes of transforming towards a fairer and less anthropocentric future. One key is identifying the ways education relies on old tropes of individualism and shifting those to a more compassionate, Indigenous and relational approach to pedagogy.

Metamorphosis in education

“[E]ducation systems often reproduce and perpetuate the very conditions that threaten our shared futures” (UNESCO, 2021, 11). While noting that education falls short of aspirations, in their (2021) report UNESCO declares that to transform the future, a new social contract is needed that reflects the principles of social, environmental, epistemic and economic justice (119). UNESCO (2021) state, “We need new pedagogies, new approaches to curriculum, a recommitment to teachers, a new vision of school, and a new appreciation of the times and spaces of education,” while qualifying they mean to renew the best of current educational traditions, renew that heritage and add promising elements to help shape the “interlinked futures of humanity and the living planet” (2021, 47). For this, they say, process and dialogue are essential.

The UNESCO 2021 report calls for education systems to use decolonising knowledges, Indigenous and pluralistic ways of knowing, commitment to truth and to challenge development models and assumptions that produce current realities. They call for global solidarity, international cooperation and to build educational futures together to meet the needs of the planet and humanity. For authors of this AJEE Special Issue, the gap between these aspirations and the present conditions remains epic, while authors advocate deeply transformative ways to attune to and respond-with systems, places and all beings to meet these needs. Below we overview directions in futures education from the standpoint of authors in this Special Issue. Importantly, most of these educational projects are already underway.

Place as educator

Mass education originated during the industrial revolution, aiming to produce orderly workers for states and factories (Gatto & Slayback, Reference Gatto and Slayback2017). Until such time, learning as part of community was the norm. River of life, Carracher and Poelina (Reference Martuwarra RiverOfLife, Carracher and Poelina2025) show that a river in the Western Australian Kimberley is, itself, an educator. Have we forgotten the sacredness of rivers, and the lessons of these relationships for our lives and the lives of young people? Similarly, Ormond, Reynolds, Ormond and Ormond (Reference Ormond, Reynolds, Ormond and Ormond2026, this issue) shows how Māori young people learn to take care of all realms in land-sky-seascape settings. For these authors, the world is vastly more-than-human which requires Indigenous and place-based ways of being, valuing, knowing and governing. In these contexts, Cieri and Paradies (Reference Cieri and Paradies2026, this issue) ask, should there be such a category as environmental education at all? With learning in healthy holistic more-than-human communities, learning is life; the state of being encircled by caring cultures of the more-than-human place.

Wooltorton et al. (Reference Wooltorton, Stephenson, Ardzejewska and Collard2025, this issue) aim to transform universities beyond the current societal paralysis producing metacrises, towards a model of place-based, Indigenous-informed, practical, relational ways of learning, being and knowing anew – one of deep relationality with cooperative ways of governing, teaching, learning and leading. An Indigenous-informed learning journey towards regenerative cultures is offered. Recognising Country as partner with agency, they propose ways of learning together that value reciprocity, yarning with and through Country, pedagogies of care and leadership for regenerative cultures.

Similarly, Savva (Reference Savva2026, this issue) foregrounds intimacies and feelings that honour sacred practices and Indigenous traditions, bringing to life memories of a subsistence ethos. Utilising a type of historical storytelling to reanimate and cherish relationality of Land and people, Savva (Reference Savva2026, this issue) considers Cyprus’s Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia, noticing its embeddedness into its ecosystem to enable people to live with sun, cold and prevailing winds. The building techniques and architecture have clearly been maintained intergenerationally and remarkably, Savva’s grandparents’ house was built this way several millennia later, maintaining its subsistence ethic. Considering extinctions, genocides, slavery, consumerism, exhaustion and much more as components of metacrisis and changed climates of modernity, imaginaries of eco-relationality can nourish an “otherwise” education as grounding for a new ethics.

In theory, genuinely creative, responsive, critical thinking is still a goal of universities and there is an intention for universities to be active in meeting its UN sustainability obligations (UNESCO, 2021). In practice however, because of the commodification of education, co-authors Eames, Estelles, del Monte and Ulatowski (Reference Eames, Estelles, del Monte and Ulatowski2026, this issue) show that within the context of policies and established procedures, these goals are almost impossible, along with the intention to adequately respond to the needs of students, the community and staff. Rather, students learn in a system that separates them from the socio-ecological issues surrounding them. Eames et al. (Reference Eames, Estelles, del Monte and Ulatowski2026, this issue) explain that the university places most emphasis on performative regurgitation of information, rather than being genuinely responsive to the needs of society and environments. This is not to criticise staff or students, who often create and engage with compelling curriculum. Rather, radical institutional transformation is required by Management with new policy/practice applications.

In the contribution from Zeithen and Paulsen (Reference Ziethen and Paulsen2025, this issue), argument is made that the real metacrisis issue lies in particular ideas and worldviews connected with specific understandings of reality. They propose mundification as a process for initiating individuals (through education and culture) into the meaning of being in the world. They begin with Biesta’s (Reference Biesta2010) threefold purpose of education being qualification, socialisation, and subjectification and add a fourth domain being mundification. This neologism is a specific version of worlding that is inclusive of society and adults’ influence on the growing child – which delineates a pedagogical concept for understanding the human being of the world, thus enabling the education system to initiate students into it. In the light of current planetary crises, they draw attention to aspects of worldviews to weaken and those which the system should strengthen. The intent is then to find ways to apply this learning to practice in schools and lifeways.

Whitehouse, Larri and Colliver (Reference Whitehouse, Larri and Colliver2026, this issue) also engage with ideas and worldviews, problematising rising levels of heat resulting from insufficient response to fossil fuel emissions. They propose the concept of heat literacy, drawing full attention to the concept of heat and its impact on the more-than-human world, on human health, on water, soil and on life as we know it. As a literacy, it is expected to be an accessible concept for those who have difficulty with the language of climate change.

Resistance, and agonism

Popular resistance is being obscured by the enchantment of modernity, which offers no avenue for action. Critique and dissent are part of the democratic process, however this has been smothered, covered over and made illegal. The impact is failure to notice failure which results in an inability to learn, together forming the core of the metacrisis (Irwin, Reference Irwin2026, this issue). Societal metamorphosis is thus necessary, with serious critique and honesty needed in education for it to be part of the solution. For this to take place, Irwin (Reference Irwin2026, this issue) says, rather than colluding with the fetishisation of economic growth, we all need to look through the existing enchantment to seize the educational moment for transformation. Instead of being afraid about modernity’s imminent collapse, there is a planetary regeneration in place, intraconnecting humanity and ecosystems – enabling an embrace of the cyclic, and resurrecting traces of the ancient where being is no longer abandoned, but forms the ethos of the everyday (Irwin, Reference Irwin2026, this issue).

In the university context, it remains uncommon to think of education beyond the metacrisis. Stratford et al. (Reference Stratford, Louverdis and Joy2025, this issue) consider how universities are engaging with planetary and human misery. Predominantly, curriculum are based on the normative discourses that ironically, support the deepening metacrisis, including optimistic technocratics, faith in progress and economic growth. Universities are complicit in these tropes and continue to ignore planetary boundaries. This lends itself to authoritarian tendencies and performativity, that ignore youth mental health along with the failure of effective strategies to genuinely create sustainability. Stratford and colleagues (Reference Stratford, Louverdis and Joy2025, this issue) list four forms of miserable pedagogies, which are: those that contribute to the metacrisis such as economic growth; those which ignore the issues; those that are overly optimistic due to being based on techno-sciences and further modernising; and those that describe reality without supporting students to be action-based.

They say that an education for Anthropocene Intelligence, on the other hand, recognises biophysical limits; features multiple interconnected ecologies; is imaginative and leaps clear of the Western status quo to include Indigenous/place-based knowledges for example; takes place in actual localities; embeds agency, subjectivity and meaning; offers multidimensional care and wellbeing (as opposed to valorising economic and scientific approaches); and is ecologically pragmatic rather than politically acceptable. (Stratford et al., Reference Stratford, Louverdis and Joy2025, this issue).

Since universities embody the fundamental paradox of generating and then perpetuating the civilisational problems they are meant to solve, we see that the metacrisis is in fact an educational paradox. Ocriciano (Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue) advocates crack literacy as a strategy for when universities break. For this literacy, she articulates forms of attention that arise internally, within the conditions created and inhabited by university communities. Developing and using this new literacy, the breakdowns in categories, time disruptions and linguistic displacements characteristic of metacrisis, reveal invitations to understand universities anew.

Kintsugi is a Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. As a literacy, Ocriciano (Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue) uses this concept to re-engage traditions that modernity’s colonial practices have marginalised. In universities, crack literacy means to attend to institutional stresses and read these breaking patterns as simple information. For example, faculty burnout, student mental ill health or budget deficits are more than problems to immediately solve. Ocriciano (Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue) uses a slow process of careful attention that visibly holds pieces together differently. Crack literacy through the kintsugi idea can allow experiments previously considered unthinkable to shine through gold.

Although used earlier in organisational studies and the natural sciences, the term “simplexity” has been adapted by Moura and Campbell (Reference Moura and Campbell2025, this issue) to think about university practices. Moura and Campbell blend simplicity and complexity to show entangled histories and dynamic forces through simple narratives. The intent is to create openings to incorporate further reflection on practice, in ways that emphasise curriculum as lived experience. They offer five touchstones for this purpose to inspire teachers in their artistry. In summary: challenging nature – culture divides, metropolis-periphery power dynamics, ecological overshoot, postgrowth imaginaries, aesthetics and embodiment.

Curriculum for beyond the metacrisis

In these new contexts, what might curriculum look like? It needs to position humans as co-knowers, co-learners and as joyful participants in creation, say Fettes and Blenkinsop (Reference Fettes and Blenkinsop2025, this issue). These humans will reflect a radically different story to that built upon the myth of progress, one that reflects values such as sacred respect for life forms and forms and living relationships with Land.

Everth (Reference Everth2025, this issue) considers curriculum from the point of view of Thrutopia for disruption of and moving beyond the metacrisis. Thrutopia is a dynamic, adaptive world being returned to balance. It must be continually envisioned via the human will to build a better world using love, compassion, positivity, energy and dreams.

While education is currently trapped in the language of economic growth and progress, Unsworth (Reference Unsworth2025, this issue) argues there is insufficient time to linger, to slow down or properly consider complexity. Thus, rather than repeatedly attempting to cure dysfunctional ways, she advocates using the generative work of dissonance – the friction of contradiction – for authentic transformation. This can enable the cultivation of a stance of reconfiguring lifeways to co-create a world worth living in, structured by an underlying metaphysics rooted in ecological sensibilities. In other words, rather than ongoing argument about the meaning of sustainability, let us open a pathway towards sustainability as a mode of existence.

Campbell, Hoeller and Benkaiouche (Reference Campbell, Hoeller and Benkaiouche2026, this issue) consider two heuristics: first, limits to growth; and secondly, what’s happening? why me? and why now? Considering postgrowth and degrowth as markers of activism, theory and research they propose a curriculum beyond the metacrisis based on entropy. The authors consider high-energy vs low-energy technology in terms of sustainability, to find that low-energy tools with high ecological knowledge (EK) break down less calamitously and often more slowly than low-EK-high-energy tools.

To this point, we have presented meanings of and approaches to metacrisis drawn from the general literature and from authors featured in this Special Issue. We have reviewed commentary and directions in education as advocated by these same authors. As is commonplace in editorials, we offer article synopses for the purpose of introducing each author group and article. We hope these are of use to you and hope you will follow up by reading the papers.

Article synopses

Ruth Irwin’s article is Heidegger, the Metacrisis and the Enchantment of Schooling (Reference Irwin2026, this issue). She argues that the belief in progress and economic growth still informs Business As Usual in ways that are blind to the pollution and resource exhaustion of extractive economics. People intuitively understand that late modernity cannot keep up the acceleration of exponential growth. Responsibility for consumerism is aimed at individuals and ignores infrastructure and the need for systemic change. Following Heidegger, Irwin calls this focus on cosmetic solutions and refusal to address systemic economic growth the “enchantment of modernity.”

Education is caught up in the enchantment. We continue to teach students much the same curriculum that dominated the last several hundred years, since the beginning of universal education. Students are expected to gain maturity and rationality as though these were the same capacities. The emphasis on STEM subjects is designed to help people make rational decisions on the open market, enabling the Invisible Hand to allocate scarce resources through the price mechanism. Education – just like market theory – largely ignores environmental concerns as an “externality” to normal civic requirements, such as becoming job-ready. As such, confronting the metacrisis is an urgent necessity, as climate change, major shifts in the hydrological cycles of the planet, extinction rates and welfare concerns escalate.

Chiara Li Mandri examines Teaching the Uncanny: A Dark Pedagogy for Climate Disruptions (Reference Li Mandri2026, this issue). She argues that optimism and hope are misguided. Business As Usual is committed to turning a blind eye, not really noticing the devastating consequences of capitalist consumerism. Every event that demonstrates its far-reaching impacts are quickly noted and as quickly forgotten, so that the dreaming of modernity may continue uninterrupted. Li Mandri calls this a “fetishist disavowal.” Solutions tend to be minor sops, not systemic change.

Instead, Li Mandri proposes two types of pessimism, as a more realistic comprehension of what is going on in late modernity. Cosmic pessimism aims to reorientate the theoretical horizon. Entropic pessimism is a practical engagement and recognition of collapse. Pessimism is born out of a recognition that the metacrisis is real, the impacts are far-reaching and the consequences emerge from an entitled anthropomorphism that characterises the “Business As Usual” of modernity.

Ontological reality is unknowable. It is “dark.” The “world is not made for us, not centred on us, never reducible to our categories.” This realisation that nature is entropic, creating at once both order and disorder, makes the provision of fate in a different orientation than proposed by earlier modern sensibility. Rather than blind hope, dark pedagogy takes notice of feelings such as anguish, not as a symptom but as important information, that can inform the necessity for change in a time of metacrisis.

Ruth Unsworth has written her paper on Environmental Sustainability as a Mode of Existence and its “Crossing” with Education (Reference Unsworth2025, this issue). Environmental education is a complex and open-ended approach to humanity, the transhuman and the broader ecosystem. On the other hand, sustainability has been co-opted by neoliberal approaches. Their anthropocentric and economic assumptions advance New Public Management rather than the existential health of humanity and the ecosystem. With these ideas dominating the history of environmentalism, how do we discuss with students the collapse or sustenance of life on Earth?

Another way of thinking through the human relationship within the environment is to focus on thermodynamics, order and disorder. There are “crossings” between one linguistic or discursive regime and others that can result in new orderings, but also new disorderings. Nietzsche launches this approach with his deep-set critique of how subjectivity is not essential but rather discursively normative. Nietzsche considered flows of power and historical linguistic discursive tropes, rather than a universal truth. He initiated a respect for dissonance and dis-accord, as a means of broaching the historical constraints on what is considered possible. During the neoliberal epoch, sustainability as an economic concept seemed to have “no alternative.” But resonance and dissonance offer new cross-fertilisation in the relationality between society, individuals and ecosystems. Unsworth (Reference Unsworth2025, this issue) describes onto-epistemological transhuman approaches which open up wide viscera of what is possible – what is sustainable - avoiding the limited catastrophic approach of the metacrisis.

In her article (Reference Savva2026, this issue), Imaginaries of Eco-Relationality: Whirling Encounters, Andrie Savva advocates “whirling encounters” that sweep up and reorganise the assumptions of neoliberalism. She notices that we occupy the same world that is studied as if it were an alienated object. Savva notes that neoliberalism needs to be questioned as a system of violences, that embeds assumptions about mastery, development and economic growth. It still sees the world as a resource to be exploited. The “isms” of domination, such as colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, neoliberalism, industrialism, scientism are all driving the multiple parts of the metacrisis. The complexity of the entanglement of the metacrisis requires us to problematise the mindset of modernity and the Enlightenment. Modernity’s dominant metatheories, such as objective positivism and a faith in the Newtonian science of cause and effect have created a theoretical monism, which sets the tone for what is deemed worthy. Savva delves into her own Indigenous roots in the island nation of Cyprus, tracing the continuity of the mudbrick village of the early neolithic to her grandparent’s cottage and hearth. The feelings of connection and belonging give insight into how human endeavour evolved before, during and beyond the metacrisis.

Thomas Everth (Reference Everth2025, this issue) has written his text Toward a Thrutopian Metacrisis Curriculum exploring the idea of the monstrous Moloch, and its effect on free will. Everth considers that the metacrisis is not an agent that can be argued with but, a self-organising creature generated by current global socio-economic systems. It is a monstrous assemblage of individuals, corporations and nations with an exponential appetite for extracting limited planetary resources. The Moloch has over-run progressive and utopian discourse. But catastrophising the Moloch is too much for students to effectively counteract. Greta Thunberg made great inroads but even her student activism is running out of steam. Everth makes use of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of deterritorialisation to think about minor theories and place-based strategies, to align education in the here and now, allowing kindness and connection to provide an antidote of sorts, to the monstrosity of the metacrisis.

Spencer Jeice (Reference Jeice2025, this issue) puts critical theory to use in his text, Cultural and Socio-political Mediation between Self and Nature: A Concern for Education. Jeice’s critique is about the bifurcation of nature and culture. Subjectivity is not on one side of the subject versus object divide, Jeice argues. He makes use of Charles Taylor, Lukács, Latour and Gramsci to collapse the instrumental Enlightenment dualism between nature and culture. For education, Jeice (Reference Jeice2025, this issue) argues the importance, according to the canon in critical theory, to reject the bifurcation between dualisms such as culture and nature, subject and object, humanities-science and instead consider education through the lens of a continuum or spectrum with anthropocentricism at one end and biocentrism at the other. He argues, following the critical theory tradition, that humanity is firmly anchored in the materiality of the natural world and the natural world is understood through historical cultural and social mediation.

The title of Robert Stratford, Elena Louverdis and Mike Joy’s text is From Miserable Pedagogies to Anthropocene Intelligence for Universities in the Metacrisis (Reference Stratford, Louverdis and Joy2025, this issue). Miserable pedagogies fail to engage with the world’s metacrisis. Normative education simply reinforces the liberal and neoliberal assumptions about global consumerism. This failure to address the issues caused, creates the conditions for anxiety, depression and social malaise. Universities are committed to “sustainability” as touted in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a measure of sustainability that is in economic growth, not in ecological viability. Planetary boundaries are increasingly impacting Business As Usual, and students are aware of the ways this is already challenging political expectations, enabling the rise of dictators, refugee crises and increasing levels of violence around the world. Higher education takes a zombie like attitude to these profound shifts, relegating them to invisible tropes, hidden by the dominant and long held expectations of continuous progress and economic growth. Their text outlines how liberal and neoliberal concepts inform and reinforce miserable pedagogies in Higher Education through “active contributors,” “ignoring the issues,” “over optimism,” and ineffectual “describing reality.” In contrast, Stratford, Louverdis and Joy make the case for Anthropocene Intelligence. This is heavily indebted to Indigenous Māori knowledge, where education occurs in “actual places” rather than an abstracted and globalised supply chain. With a focus on real events and their entangled networks of influence, the more-than-human takes a tangible role in the educational project and misery is undone.

Virgilio Rivas and Joff Bradley (Reference Rivas and Bradley2026, this issue) have written their article called Towards metacrisology, challenging the neoliberal worldview and its narrow scope where the range of meaning is insufficient for dealing with the metacrisis. They say the language of care is missing. Whilst it is tempting for teachers to frighten students with tales of existential threat, that is not the ideal mode of educating about the metacrisis.

While the metacrisis first presents as an existential catastrophe, Rivas and Bradley argue that there is unhoped for possibility, an “anelpiston” of the unexpected that exceeds the territory of neoliberalism. The destructive aesthetics of hopelessness produces an excess beyond expected possibility. This complete unexpectedness requires a new language and new way of worlding. Following Stiegler, Rivas and Bradley make the case for knowledge emerging from “negentropy” or negative entropy, that reverses the passive failure of thinking that characterises hollowed out knowledge retrieved from the informatics of AI and IT. Being human requires a fully fleshed out mode of being. The metacrisis is both terrifying and an important existential pedagogical concept to realise that the kosmos is delicate and finite. Education is in the midst of the deterritorialising of neoliberalism. This period of transition is full of potencies, as the conditions for recognising the unexpected emerge.

Julien Murphy and Constance Mui (Reference Murphy and Mui2026, this issue) write about Reimagining Education in the Metacrisis with Sartre, Dufourmantelle, and Stiegler. The fear and catastrophe of the metacrisis is creating a stagnant, anxious, numb and avoidant culture that affects education, scholars and political leadership. The result is climate denial, the crippling inertia of despondency, hedonistic avoidance and addiction to social media and gaming. Murphy and Mui unpack the impacts of unaddressed fear, and come up with methods to address the alienation and anxiety at the core of the metacrisis. Authenticity and emotional cognition are necessary to genuinely address the havoc of environmental and social malaise. Gently addressing rather than avoiding risk leads to wise action. These methods can also activate the full scope of human capacity that is ossifying and decaying with AI and IT. Both avenues are necessary to properly transform the metacrisis.

Murphy and Mui (Reference Murphy and Mui2026, this issue) advocate wise risk taking and gentleness as strategies for recognising and coping with the anxiety of the metacrisis. Taking risks means people refuse to remain victims of circumstance but opens up unexpectedness. Gentleness fosters and intuitive awareness that we are part of the earth. Gentle risk taking in the face of extreme environmental threat has the power for revolutionary transformation.

Stiegler alerted us to how information technologies produce receptive and passive subjectivity, that fails to learn how to critique or actively think. Stiegler calls this the “proletarianisation of knowledge.” Further, the war for attention is distracting people from their real and immediate relationships, creating more and more alienation. Extractive capitalism is compounding and accelerating the physical and psychological impacts of the metacrisis. Alienation is usually seen as a “bifurcation” between humanity and ecosystem. However, Stiegler uses “bifurcation” in a new way, setting out a bifurcation in pathways, one that prioritises wellbeing of humanity and environment and the other that prioritises profit and greed for accelerating the consumer trajectory of technology, politics and economics. Murphy and Mui take the insights from authenticity, emotions and risk along with the bifurcation between wellbeing and accelerating technocracy to reimagine pedagogy and education.

Morten Ziethen and Michael Paulsen called their text Mundification, Arguments for a new Idealism (Reference Ziethen and Paulsen2025). They take seriously the new materialist critique that there is a schism endemic in Enlightened Idealism. Two strands of epistemology lead to two very different approaches. The first tends to see rational abstract “constructivism” as distinct from empirical embodied receptive appreciation. With both rationality and empiricism, certain “worlding” takes place. Ziethen and Paulsen argue that the peculiar characteristics of humanity produce a type of phenomenology that includes a profound impact on the environment. This is “mundification.” This is a responsibility not present for a lot of other species. Thus, despite being entangled with all the other elements of the ecosystem, humanity remains uniquely responsible.

Ziethen and Paulsen develop this theme with a distinction between the anthropocentric position which prioritises humanity as entitled to extract abundance from the environment, which they call scenic-humanist, from the second position they call the dialogical-zoëlogical. The second has roots in Romantic vitalism, which sees that all aspects of the environment have intrinsic and valid interests, and humanity is in relationship with other elements of the ecosystem. Other strands of thought in the European Enlightenment tradition hold within them important concepts of materialist relationality that help to situate, or “world,” the concepts of freedom and agency, so vital to the western tradition.

Michelle Ocriciano (Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue) When universities break: Metacrisis, kintsugi and the art of crack literacy directs attention to the paradoxes of neoliberalism within tertiary education. The university encourages cutting-edge research which engages with the polycrisis but at the same time proliferates the performativity and disciplinarity of neoliberal self-surveillance over staff and students. Ocriciano (Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue) argues the university is in a double bind and as such exemplifies the metacrisis itself. The university is the container for intellectual reflection and cutting-edge change, being increasingly open to posthumanism, Indigenous and other forms of knowledge, that exceed the modern emphasis on one universal truth. At the same time, the university is constrained by the neoliberal business model which surveils research and teaching according to performative measures. Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art that mends pottery, observing beauty in flaws and recognising the resulting crack as part of the pot’s own story. Using the kintsugi concept, Ocriciano (Reference Ocriciano2026, this issue) engages with the lines of fracture within the institution, aiming to trace fractures as information about the problematic and how it is pulling occupants and institution in different directions. Rather than fast science (common in universities) which removes possibility of being genuinely affected by the agency of the object of knowledge, she uses these ideas as the basis for slow science which gives time for contemplation, where the objects can affect the way the scholar thinks. These ideas can inform the structure of university knowledge production.

In Illuminating limits: educating for postgrowth in a time of polycrises and accelerating info-abundance, Cary Campbell, Thomas Hoeller and Marion Benkaiouche (Reference Campbell, Hoeller and Benkaiouche2026, this issue) explore the learning process needed for postgrowth ideas to materialise. Currently, in the planet is showing the strain of ecological overshoot, with multiple planetary boundaries already breached. This means that the modern acceleration which dominated the last 200 years is beginning to unravel. Climate change is one of the symptoms of planetary overload caused by modern extractive globalisation and economic growth. The authors argue that confronting this situation causes a great deal of anxiety, pressure and fear; made especially difficult due to the lack of effective measure to redress the processes of economic growth with viable alternatives. To begin to think through what changes are needed, they advocate a self-reflective learning curve, “What is happening? Why me?” in order to get to “What now?” The educative role is one of interruption and sustenance, first to critique and then to nourish students as they confront and think about necessary change. This is a transformation of values whereby mastery is rearranged from current industrial demands, towards a more relational ontology that aims at fulfilling ecological imperatives. They show that postgrowth and degrowth strategies require thinking outside the box, exploring ancient civilisations and creative concepts to disengage from the infrastructure and expectations of modern consumerism.

In Katitjin Bidi (Learning Journey): Universities as Places of Cultural Regeneration Sandra Wooltorton, Lauren Stephenson, Kathy Ardzejewska and Len Collard (Reference Wooltorton, Stephenson, Ardzejewska and Collard2025, this issue) follow an Indigenous pathway towards regenerating universities towards cultures of learning. Their paper looks at the existing instrumental complexities of functioning in Higher Education, where neoliberalism has captured the imaginary of management and informs the basis of funding and often, curriculum as well. Hierarchical management, patriarchal power strategies, competition and alienation dominate the requirements and relationships within the institution. Instead, the authors make the case for a different kind of knowing and a rehabilitated institutional culture that is place-based, Indigenous-informed, practical and a relational way of learning, being and knowing. This new ethos is a regenerative approach that forefronts co-responsibility for restoring ecology and the place-based cultures that care for them. Their article helps articulate the bigger picture of an Indigenous way of knowing in relation to the university system, and its existing model of competitive performativity.

Martuwarra RiverOfLife, Lachlan Carracher and Anne Poelina (Reference Martuwarra RiverOfLife, Carracher and Poelina2025, this issue) write about water management in their paper, Martuwarra Governance for Climate Justice & Water Justice and the Greater Good of All. In the context of climate change, Carracher and Poelina co-author with the Martuwarra RiverOfLife to make the case for a bicultural and bioregional governance model to improve scope for the future. The voice and authority of the river, the Martuwarra, is central to developing law, values, ethics and virtues to live harmoniously in the vicinity of the dynamic living water system. These three co-authors bring Indigenous wisdom and law, and settler environmental awareness together, to shake up and decolonise the settler state ideology in Australia. Rather than the divisiveness and competition of New Public Management approaches to water management; the nuanced wisdom of Traditional Owner accounts of water puts the First Law of the ecosystem at the forefront rather than the laws of humankind. This means that humanity would live in synergy with the waterway as it always has.

Karen Cieri and Yin Paradies (Reference Cieri and Paradies2026, this issue) wrote Growing out of the modernity metacrisis – a sensing heuristic for seeding alternative. Cieri and Paradies argue that modernity is characterised by separateness, linearity and abstraction. In response, they advocate a form of relationality and awareness that reverberates around three key concepts: belonging, becoming and knowing. The article dives into an Indigenous or “primal” mode of eco-social relationships and how they might make for fuller and more compelling lives. The atmosphere, ocean, soil, animals, rocks, plants dreams, stories, songs, emotions, histories all resonate together, in the dynamic fluidity of place-time. The more-than-human is a crucial part of the emergence of the human experience, and vice versa. These patterns, temporalities and manifestations constitute belonging, becoming and knowing. These ways of arising are quite different from the constrained, linear, causal and universal modes of knowing that continues to dominate late modernity. Cieri and Paradies (Reference Cieri and Paradies2026, this issue) advocate for an educational experience based on an illustrated sensing heuristic, for exceeding the current dynamics of the metacrisis.

Mark Fettes and Sean Blenkinsop (Reference Fettes and Blenkinsop2025, this issue) write Telling a different story: self-determination, consent, and sacred respect as foundations of education for the world to come. Their article offers a subtle encounter of nations; Indigenous, white, animal and plants; using Indigenous ideas to influence the dynamics of “worlding” for beyond the metacrisis. Some key concepts emerge; the concept of consent, the shared landscapes with other plants and animals such as the hoofed nations, and the concept of sacred respect. The essay forms a strong argument for consent in a post metacrisis world; one that goes against the grain of extractive economics. Fettes and Blenkinsop (Reference Fettes and Blenkinsop2025, this issue) make the case that the current mode of understanding sustainability and progress as the ongoing extraction of resources for consumerism would be impossible if Indigenous concepts such as consent were taken seriously. The essay shows how deeply integrated relationships within an ecological territory make the alienated consumerism that currently prevails, impossible to maintain. The authors show how sacred respect opens up a slower way of being and knowing that does not prioritise technology or progress as motifs to govern civilisation after the metacrisis.

Fettes and Blenkinsop make the case that the whole bodied intelligence that knowing entails in an Indigenous world is a necessary and important shift in educational ethos. Likewise, prioritising the role of consent, both at individual and species level creates relational bonds that inform education in ways that far exceed the shortcuts that underpin the normative premises of extractive capitalism. This is a different kind of sustainability than the neoliberal one that currently dominates the education system. Environmental education looks very different with a relational ethos of respect across ecological nations than does the capitalist regime of short-term extractive goals and easy wins.

Chris Eames, Mata Estelles, Pablo del Monte and Joe Ulatowski (Reference Eames, Estelles, del Monte and Ulatowski2026, this issue) wrote their text on changes in the Higher Education sector, called Higher education in the Metacrisis: A conversation. They argue that the performativity that prevails in the current university sector makes it almost impossible for education to meet its UN sustainability obligations, or adequately respond to the needs of students, staff and the community. Commodifying education has distorted the value of some vocational courses over others; wherein neglected courses might have higher value in critical and creative thinking about the dilemma of the metacrisis. This means students are inducted into a system that dissociates them from the socio-ecological issues surrounding them.

Eames et al. (Reference Eames, Estelles, del Monte and Ulatowski2026, this issue) held a structured, transdisciplinary conversation about the impact of performativity on pedagogy and the metacrisis. With the abundance of information now available on the internet, the way “expertise” is qualified is undergoing change, however the university now places most emphasis on performative information regurgitation, rather than its ancient role as the critic and conscience of society. The instrumentality, depoliticisation and performativity of the university is contributing to the downgrade of genuine creative, responsive, engaged critical thinking. While many educators are active researchers who are creating compelling curriculum, the neoliberal university is not the optimal vehicle for creative pedagogical responses. These conversations point to a need for institutional metamorphosis.

Mairi Gunn has interviewed Irene Hancy in their article, Common Sense: A Virtual Reality projection of Māori elder provides an opportunity to learn how authentic human encounters can help us face the metacrisis together (Reference Gunn and Hancy2026, this issue). In this deceptively simple exposition, Gunn engages with Māori kaumatua (Elder and leader), Irene Hancy about intercultural engagement and the tikanga or protocols that are about creating a safe convivial community within which to have sometimes difficult conversations. Hancy is a delightful and generous elder, who brings both tradition and compassion to open up better ecological and intercultural communication. Her point is that this kaupapa, or goal, is core to the Māori way of doing things. Hancy and Gunn have a long and respectful relationship, and this shines through in their work. Gunn is a film maker, and her exploration of cutting-edge camera work and three-dimensional images is put to good use by bringing the intimacy of the everyday life and openhearted wisdom of Irene Hancy into the public. Gunn manages to develop a technology of intimacy – which inverts the alienation of techno-culture versus nature that informs modernity. Both the subject matter and the technology are put to use in groundbreaking ways, with a humble focus on relationships rather than grandstanding “expertise.” These two women, one Māori and the other Pakeha are forging a new mode of educating; innovative, sharp, funny, loving and most of all, connected.

In Looking for hope in the metacrisis: Learning from the young and indigenous nature/culture, indigenous youth, relationality, Adreanne Ormond, Martyn Reynolds, Elizabeth Ashton Ormond and Kirby Lee Ormond (Reference Ormond, Reynolds, Ormond and Ormond2026, this issue) write about Indigenous youth culture, elaborating how youth are navigating the complex emergent stressors of the metacrisis. The modern bifurcation between nature and culture has set up an alienation at the heart of contemporary society which has ruptured connection with ecology. However, Rongowahine youth respond with a grounded awareness of the fragility and respect that prevails throughout their ancestral territory.

There is a huge emphasis on relationships, that help to recognise and mend the rupture created by modern rationalities and extractive capitalism. The relationships that the Rongowahine youth notice are both ordinary and steeped in very ancient cultural ways of understanding. Whakapapa recognises, and to a certain extent formalises, the relationships between plants, animals, rocks, ocean, atmosphere and stars. These formal relationships show up in multiple ways throughout the interviews with Rongowahine youth. The way they recognise and navigate the changes emerging in the metacrisis shows sensitivity, skill and resilience.

Cristiano Barbosa de Moura and Cary Campbell (Reference Moura and Campbell2025, this issue) write Navigating “simplexity” in the Anthropocene: environmental education for teachers in times of polycrisis. They consider techniques for teaching about the metacrisis to teacher educators. Moura and Campbell approach curriculum as lived experience, bringing abstract ideas to bear on real world events and concerns. Thus, the metacrisis is both complex, theoretical, detailed and quantitative which all bear on a worldly curriculum. At the same time, the “simplexity” of the impacts of economic growth on climate change and the metacrisis also has important implications for education as a discipline. For example, it implodes the notion of “progress” that has been so foundational to educational principles for well over a hundred years. The simplexity of the metacrisis creates openings to think about Indigenous and settler concepts, and posthuman relationships, from a fresh perspective.

To help facilitate this new orientation, as they percolate into the teacher education curriculum, Moura and Campbell develop a simplexity of ideas, around five key touchstones. Challenging the nature-culture divide, metropolis-periphery power dynamics, aesthetics and embodiment, ecological overshoot and postgrowth imaginaries forge the principles of simplexity in environmental teacher education. These five touchstones engage with thematic concepts which give student teachers access to cutting-edge discourse on the metacrisis. The Anthropocene is rich with controversial ideas, that stimulates debate about the impact of modernity on the geological epoch of the earth. From there, they raise the spectre of economic growth and debates in degrowth and postgrowth. Importantly, growth is resulting in ecological overshoot, the great acceleration, followed by the great unravelling. The Anthropocene has been saturated with inequities in power dynamics, and the ongoing consequences of colonialism.

In their text, Louise St. Pierre and Sean Blenkinsop write Designing Education for Eco-Social-Cultural Change: A Pedagogical Response to the Metacrisis (Reference St. Pierre and Blenkinsop2026, this issue). They recognise that environmental education that fully engages with Indigenous thought and deep relationality with the more-than-human world is deeply transformative. This paper explores the subtle and important shifts that take place as the design curriculum pivots to engage with the environment. Long standing assumptions about consumerism undergo important rethinking. But just as importantly, St. Pierre and Blenkinsop (Reference St. Pierre and Blenkinsop2026, this issue) investigate the changes in power dynamics, authority, voice and creativity, once the more-than-human is given space to show up in the design process. This throws light on the relationships with the more-than-human world, and within the dynamics of pedagogy and curriculum.

In this article, Educating for heat literacy: A material challenge for environmental education, Hilary Whitehouse, Lorraine Larri and Angela Colliver (Reference Whitehouse, Larri and Colliver2026, this issue) make a compelling case for heat literacy throughout the Australian curriculum. They write from parts of Australia which are already profoundly impacted by extremes in heat. It is already noticeable that Indigenous communities who have traditions of living outside will need to adapt as the heat becomes impossible for human bodies to withstand. Heat literacy engages with newly emerging health and safety awareness of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. It also recognises that heat exhaustion and water issues will increasingly impact other species, waterways and the soil itself. With a background in physics, Whitehouse unravels the scientific basis of thermodynamics, from which a heat literacy can emerge. Whitehouse, Larri and Colliver (Reference Whitehouse, Larri and Colliver2026, this issue) argue for heat literacy throughout the curriculum, to find ways to mitigate, adapt and become more resilient to carbon emissions. They argue that even a climate denialist can be receptive to heat literacy, as it impacts our bodies, and the ecosystem in tangible ways.

We highly recommend you, the reader, engage with these articles – and together, consider the changes we need to make to our lives, work and environmental education. Our planet needs action.