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The total utilisable resources of carbon in the biosphere are enormous by any standards. In the atmosphere alone there are about 700 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide and in the oceans there are stored 35,000 billion tons of available carbon dioxide. These two reserves alone amount to about four times the estimated total reserves of carbon in the form of coal and oil. The essential difference between these alternative sources of carbon is that whereas the carbon in the biological cycle is being continuously circulated in a system in which the total amount of carbon remains sensibly constant (there is a further 30,000 billion tons of carbon in the form of biological organic matter), the carbon in the form of coal and oil reserves are being rapidly depleted with consequent escalating cost and the lifetime of this source of chemicals and energy is variously estimated as being between 20 and 50 years.

The long‐term future of the polymer industry depends on finding renewable sources of its raw materials. This is a pressing problem at the present rate of petroleum‐based intermediates usage and to allow time for this problem to be solved it will be necessary to utilise oil‐based materials more efficiently.

BRITISH SCIENTISTS ARE NOW CLOSE to solving the problem of oil pollution at sea, and have been given the go‐ahead to do similar micro‐biological research into an equally big environmental hazard—plastic waste.

AFTER some unsuccessful negotiations during the period when the first full‐time schools of librarianship were being established, the Birmingham School was founded in the autumn of 1950. Circumstances were not entirely favourable—the immediate post‐war generation of enthusiastic ex‐service students had already passed through other schools; the accommodation available was indifferent; the administrative support was bad; resources were weak, both in books and in equipment. There was, more importantly, a strong local tradition of part‐time classes in librarianship and little or no conviction that full‐time study was necessary or desirable.

The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the theory building of transformative university by delivering two conceptual models for legitimizing entrepreneurial university with a transformative role in quadruple helix for sustainability governance structures as being nominated as “responsible facilitator.” This chapter draws many theoretical insights sourced from Entrepreneurial University (Etzkowitz, 1988), Institutional Theory (Scott, 1987), quadruple/quintuple helix (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009a, b) and Responsible Innovation (Owen, Macnaghten, & Stilgoe, 2012) in order to frame the resulting conceptual models of transformative university for sustainability and quadruple helix for sustainability governance. The conceptual models offer a new paradigm discussion for the changing role of universities in knowledge economy and opens up for further investigation of quadruple helix actors namely as transformative university, society, industry and government for strategic capital, social capital, economic capital and culture–human capital interventions in sustainability governance. The second model illustrates the key interventions of quadruple helix actors in four pillars of capital delivering concrete examples of activities. The originality of this chapter lies in its discourse articulating a multilayered approach for the institutionalization of entrepreneurial university embedded in a responsible innovation ecosystem based on individual, organizational and macro-level perspectives. Quadruple helix actors are nominated as “responsible facilitator,” “hybrid hub,” “agile regulator” and “pressure beneficiary” roles for their relevant place in sustainability governance structure.

CANADA, until the last generation or two, has been basically a pioneer country but two world wars have changed all this and the economy has moved from an agricultural to a manufacturing community able to provide a standard of living second to that of the United States. (At the present time only 10.8 per cent of Canadians live on farms according to the 1961 census.) Natural resources, such as timber, wheat and mining, continue to play, however, an important role in the life of the nation. As in most developing and pioneer countries, learning has had to assume a secondary role compared with other enterprises and activities. This is gradually beginning to change as more people continue in school and the percentage of individuals attending university increases. Established organizations, like the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, catering to mass culture, have been strengthened and enlarged and new establishments, like the Canada Council and the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, of narrower function and appeal, have been set up. The Library movement, not the least of learning agencies, is gaining strength every day. In this paper some of the interesting new developments of the last ten years in the latter field will be discussed. Of necessity, much is abbreviated; a lot is ignored. Data selected has been based on the most recent sources; hence the variety in dates.