I highly recommend checking out the free video feed of the Arizona State University Sustainability Summit that took place this morning in DC. It's an hour and a half long, but well worth it (and if you stick it out you'll be able to see my bride use her brand new last name when asking a question :) There's a great line up including Bill Ford (Ford Chairman), Rob Walton (Wal-Mart Chairman), Michael Crow (ASU President), US Rep Ed Markey (D-MA), Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), US Rep Fred Upton (R-MI), and our boss Tony Cortese. Very exciting to see a cross-sector dialogue happening around the big issue of sustainability:
http://www.asu.edu/vppa/sustainabilitysummit/index.html
Stay going...
Showing posts with label reductionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reductionism. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Parachuting Cats
Here's a great 5-minute clip of Amory Lovins (Rocky Mt. Institute) talking about the need for a systems thinking and a whole-systems approach to the complex problems we face. RMI continues to do some of the best work in the field, and if you want to see some examples of that work in action in the green building space, check out their case studies, here. The numbers speak for themselves. This stuff is possible. Stay going.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
5 things for global warming
Check out this recent piece by NASA Climate scientist James Hansen - it touches on (once again) the gap between what the scientists know, and what the public and policy-makers understand.
This gap lies at the heart of why we need to move away from reductionism, where we study and address everything in isolation in separate disciplines /departments /silos / sectors / drill holes, to a whole-system approach where policy makers and scientists, engineers and biologists, economists and consumers, businessmen and school teachers, can understand eachother because they have a shared, relevant view of the whole-system. This is the first step in taking a strategic appraoch to sustainability.
But I digress, Hansen's article offers 5 things we need to do, now, to address global warming. I think there are more inspiring ways we could go about addressing the challenge - and people are starting to do that, finding synergistic solutions through sustainable urban planning, green building, sustainable product design, permaculture, and the like - but these would certainly help, and are straight forward, necessary actions, regardless if they come about through transformational change of global society or through regulation:
1) Put a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2
2) Put a price on emissions
3) Establish and enforce energy-efficiency standards (buildings & vehicles)
4) Study and report on ice-sheet stability (not sure how knowing more about the symptom helps us cure the root cause, but it's certainly important research, especially as we are forced to focus on adaptation as well as mitigation)
5) Reform of communication practices (so we can avoid the disasters of reductionism)
The full piece is brief, and available here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070507/hansen
Stay going.
This gap lies at the heart of why we need to move away from reductionism, where we study and address everything in isolation in separate disciplines /departments /silos / sectors / drill holes, to a whole-system approach where policy makers and scientists, engineers and biologists, economists and consumers, businessmen and school teachers, can understand eachother because they have a shared, relevant view of the whole-system. This is the first step in taking a strategic appraoch to sustainability.
But I digress, Hansen's article offers 5 things we need to do, now, to address global warming. I think there are more inspiring ways we could go about addressing the challenge - and people are starting to do that, finding synergistic solutions through sustainable urban planning, green building, sustainable product design, permaculture, and the like - but these would certainly help, and are straight forward, necessary actions, regardless if they come about through transformational change of global society or through regulation:
1) Put a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2
2) Put a price on emissions
3) Establish and enforce energy-efficiency standards (buildings & vehicles)
4) Study and report on ice-sheet stability (not sure how knowing more about the symptom helps us cure the root cause, but it's certainly important research, especially as we are forced to focus on adaptation as well as mitigation)
5) Reform of communication practices (so we can avoid the disasters of reductionism)
The full piece is brief, and available here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070507/hansen
Stay going.
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