Universities' Role in Addressing Peak Carbon Emissions

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This chapter explores the potential role of universities in addressing peak carbon emissions, emphasizing the importance of energetics, bio-semmiotics, and thermodynamics in research and education. It suggests involving society in the formation of a new group identity that prioritizes taking care of ourselves and nature. The chapter also highlights the need to make emotional connections and help people feel the impact of these issues, as well as the importance of making connections between seemingly unrelated actions and their consequences.

On this episode, Nate is joined by biophysical analyst Mario Giampietro to unpack his decades of research on a wide-lens view of the challenges facing the human system. With current metrics that only optimize for one variable, increasingly reductionist academic fields, and scientific communication consistently falling short, researchers who look at how all the pieces of our predicament fit together and most effectively help others understand will become more essential. How does the scope with which we look at a problem affect the subsequent information we gather and decisions we make? In what way should we frame the narratives that we create to best inform our leaders and the public about the obstacles of the future? Will taking on these issues from a different lens help to create better, multi-dimensional responses that include biophysical, cultural, and social components as we move into the coming decades?

About Mario Giampietro:

Mario Giampietro has recently retired from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona. Until September 2023, he was ICREA Research Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He has dedicated his academic career to the integrated assessment of (uncomfortable) sustainability issues using concepts from complex systems theory. He has developed a novel methodology, Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), that integrates biophysical and socioeconomic variables across multiple scales, thus establishing a link between the metabolism of socio-economic systems and potential constraints of the natural environment. Recent research has focused on the nexus between land use, food, energy, and water in relation to SDGs. He has (co)authored over 150 publications, including six books.

For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/107-mario-giampietro

To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/HFZ3NPPPPS0