Industry and educators all agree that the world needs creativity. There is interest in the field, lots of urging but very little action. Everyone is a bit scared of what to do next. On the question of creativity and imagination, they are mostly uncreative and unimaginative.

Educators seek artificial ways to change imaginative activity into problem-solving models that end up compromising the very creativity they celebrate. Creativity is often reduced to problem-solving. To be exact, you need imagination to solve many problems and creativity is part of what it takes. But problem-solving is far from the whole of creativity; and if you only focus creative thinking on problems and solutions, you will fall into a trap.

For teaching purposes, problems are an anxious place to cultivate creativity. If you think of anyone coming up with an idea — a new song, a dance step or a joke, it isn’t necessarily about a problem but rather an opportunity for the mind to exercise its independence. This is the purpose behind the theory of scholars now called “Big C Creativity”, which is the breakthrough kind of thinking that benefits culture or science, such as Mozart’s Alla Turca and Einstein’s theory of relativity. But the same is true of everyday “Small C Creativity” that isn’t specifically problem-based.

Enjoying the independence of the mind is the basis for naturally imaginative activity, like humor or amusing answers.

Our contemporary education systematically damages creativity and unintentionally punishes students for exercising their imagination. Schools use grades to evaluate students, which is a passive attack to the imagination.

It might be indeed impossible to teach creativity but the least we can do for our students is to make school a safe place for imagination. My viewpoint is that learning outcomes are only good for uncreative study. For education to cultivate creativity and imagination, we need to stop asking students anxiously to follow demonstrable (可论证的) proofs learning which cause a burden to students’ imagination.

The world is going to have to start thinking seriously to save its coral reefs. Corals are comeback creatures. As the sea levels rose and fell over 30,000 years, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which is roughly the size of Italy, died and revived five times. But now, thanks to human activity, corals face the most complex conditions they have yet had to deal with.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a rise in global temperature of 1.5C above pre-industrial level could cause coral reefs to decline by 70-90%. The planet is about 1C hotter than in the 19th century and its seas are becoming warmer, stormier and more acidic. This is already affecting relations between corals and the single-celled algae (海藻) with which they live together, and which give them their colour. When waters become unusually warm, corals push the algae out, leaving res a ghostly white. This “bleaching” is happening five times as often as it did in the 1970s. Meanwhile the changing chemistry of the oceans lowers the abundance of carbonate ions (碳酸盐离子), making it harder for corals to form their skeletons (骨骼).

If corals go, divers and ocean biologists are not the only people who will miss them. Reefs take up only one percent of the sea floor, but support a quarter of the planet’s fish diversity. The fish that reefs shelter are especially valuable to their poorest human neighbours, many of whom depend on them as a source of protein. In the Coral Triangle, an area of water stretching across South-East Asia and into the Pacific which is home to three-quarters of known coral species, more than 130 million people rely on reefs for food and for their livelihoods in fishing and tourism.

Even for a civilization as advanced as the Harappan, a second drought was perhaps one too many. The climate disaster may be what drove the ancient society to disappear step by.

The Harappan started in the Indus valley around 5200 years ago, strongest around 2600 BC. Much about them is unknown. Yet archaeological remains tell the story of the people, skilled in trade and city planning, and particularly good at controlling water. Their huge cities, complete with excellent systems for underground water and public baths, existed long before the Roman Empire.

But by 1900 BC, their society seemed to be on the fall, and by 1300 BC, the Harappan civilizations had broken down. Several ideas have been put forward to explain the downfall, including invasion and climate change. One recent study refers to a major drought in the northern half around 4200 years ago. This event was recently considered as the start of the Meghalayan period. It is thought to have broken up climate systems around the world, including the summer monsoon rainfall the Harappan depended on.

Nick Scroxton at University College Dublin, Ireland, and his team are now challenging this idea after studying 10 ancient records. They found some facts of a sudden drought starting around 4260 years ago. The study suggests the Harappan faced a sharp decrease in winter rain. “The civilization suffered, that's for sure,” says Scroxton. But that wasn't the end of the Harappan. “Their politics might change, the crops might change, the location of their cities changes, but they adapt,” says Scroxton.

Some 300 years later, however, just as the winter rains were starting to recover, a hottest drought kicked off. This was a slowing reduction in the sum monsoon rains over several centuries. Scroxton and his team say this second drought changed the Harappan into a poor society that disappeared at last.