Thinking in Systems

Thinking in Systems online exhibition

This is the 9th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“In the previous nine videos we explored the interrelated crises of the twenty-first century. As we saw, these are not simple problems, and they can’t be solved with simple technical adjustments. They are systemic issues. Understanding and responding to them intelligently requires us to think systemically. Well, systems thinking emerged in science during the latter part of the twentieth century. Previously, it was often assumed that we could understand systems simply by analyzing their parts. However, it gradually became apparent—in practical fields from medicine to wildlife management to business management—that this often led to unintended consequences.”

– Richard Heinberg

Collapse

WNFE Collapse online exhibition 02

This is the 8th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Historians have long noted that civilizations appear to pass through cycles of expansion and decline. Underlying the factors that appear to contribute to the collapse of civilizations, there may be a deeper dynamic: the relationship between the ability of a society to solve problems
and the amount of energy it has available to do work.
Unfortunately, most energy production activities are subject to the law of diminishing returns.
At what stage in the cycle of expansion and decline might our own civilization find itself today?”
– Richard Heinberg, an excerpt of the Think Resilience free Online Course, lesson 9: “Collapse”.

Biodiversity

Biodiversity online exhibition logo

This is the 7th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Most people are accustomed to thinking of the world only as it relates to human wishes and needs.
After all, the vast majority of our attention is taken up with politics, the economy, family,
entertainment—human interests.
It’s become all too easy to forget that nature even exists—as our communities have grown more and more urbanized, and the processes of growing food, making clothes and buildings, and producing energy are handled in large industrial operations far from view.
There are millions of kids in North America who’ve never seen the stars at night, visited a national park,
or picked a wild blackberry. […]”
Richard Heinberg, an excerpt of the Think Resilience free Online Course, lesson 8: “Biodiversity”.

Belief Systems

belief systemns online

This is the 6th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Seen in historical and anthropological perspective, the belief in progress and growth was a superstructure suited to a particular kind of infrastructure. As our energy sources—and hence our infrastructure—change throughout the remainder of this century, the most fundamental assumptions that gave meaning to life during the fossil fuel era may cease to do so.

We may then need a new superstructure to guide us—a new set of universally shared beliefs based on shared experience. If our future is tied to renewable sources of energy, if climate change is shaping the world around us, and if amounts of energy available to us are limited, it is possible that our new beliefs will once again be ones that place humanity within, rather than outside of, nature.

Instead of seeing our destiny in the stars, we may once again come to see our role as serving nature rather than mastering it. More than that, it may be too soon to say.”
– Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience course, lesson 7: Belief Systems (Full video transcript here).

Social Structure

social strucutre online exhibition logo

This is the 5th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

Every society has institutions for making decisions and allocating resources. Some anthropologists call this the structure of society. Every society also has an infrastructure, which is its means of obtaining food, energy, and materials. Finally, every society also has a superstructure, which consists of the beliefs and rituals that supply the society with a sense of meaning. In this lesson, we see how our current systems of political and economic management—our social structure—evolved to fit with our fossil-fueled infrastructure, and we’ll very briefly explore what a shift to different energy sources might mean for the politics and economics of future societies.”
Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience course, lesson 6: Systems of Political and Economic Management (Full video transcript here).

Pollution

pollution online exhibition logo

This is the 4th What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“In nature, waste from one organism is food for another. However, that principle sometimes breaks down and waste becomes poison. Humans aren’t the only possible sources of environmental pollution. But these days the vast majority of pollution does come from human activities. That’s because we humans are able to use energy and tools to extract, transform, use, and discard natural resources, producing wastes of many kinds and in ever-larger quantities.”
Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience Course, lesson 5: Pollution (Full video transcript here).

Depletion

depletion online exhibition logo

This is the third What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Today we consume resources at a far higher rate than any previous civilization. We can do this mainly due to our reliance on a few particularly useful nonrenewable and depleting resources, namely fossil fuels. Energy from fossil fuels enables us to mine, transform, and transport other resources at very high rates; it also yields synthetic fertilizers to make up for our ongoing depletion of natural soil nutrients. This deep dependency on fossil fuels of course raises the question of what we will do as the depletion of fossil fuels themselves becomes more of an issue.”
Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience, lesson 4: Depletion (Full video transcript here).

Population and Consumption

population and consumption online exhibition

This is the second What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

“Today we consume resources at a far higher rate than any previous civilization. We can do this mainly due to our reliance on a few particularly useful nonrenewable and depleting resources, namely fossil fuels. Energy from fossil fuels enables us to mine, transform, and transport other resources at very high rates; it also yields synthetic fertilizers to make up for our ongoing depletion of natural soil nutrients. This deep dependency on fossil fuels of course raises the question of what we will do as the depletion of fossil fuels themselves becomes more of an issue.”
Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience, lesson 3: Population and Consumption (Full video transcript here).

Energy

energy online exhibition logo

This is the first What’s Next for Earth online exhibition based on Think Resilience,
a free online course by the Post Carbon Institute.

We’re starting this series with the subject of energy and for a good reason. Energy is key to everything—it’s an essential driver of the natural world and of the human world, and it will also be pivotal to the societal transformations we’ll be experiencing in the 21st century and beyond. Energy is what enables us to live and to build civilizations and thriving economies. But it’s even more fundamental than that. Without energy, literally, nothing can happen.”
Richard Heinberg, Think Resilience, lesson 2: Energy (Full video transcript here).