The dire warnings are everywhere these days about catastrophic climate change, particularly the perils of overpopulation and the burning of fossil fuels.

UTM’s Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak see it another way. In a new book, Desrochers, an associate professor of geography, and Szurmak, a research services librarian, caution that “population alarmism” and campaigns against carbon will stifle development, innovation and the creativity necessary to solve global problems.

At 3 p.m. on Friday afternoons, when many UTM students are daydreaming about the weekend as they study, Siobhan O’Flynn can look around her classroom and see almost a full house of attentive undergraduates.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, since O’Flynn, an assistant professor, teaching stream, leads an English course entitled “Video Games”, and she’s working with a generation whose lives are steeped in digital media.