The Cost of Resiliency

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BASF is a chemical refining company and they make a whole series of products. But there was more than 200 separate process plants where outputs and inputs were optimized together. This site had over, get this 100 train stations to move staff and products around. So my question to you is, we have based an entire global infrastructure on oil as the hemoglobin that transports goods around a global transportation structure remaining cheap and plentiful. And when that starts to get more expensive, all of our focus on profits and efficiency, we have optimized efficiency at a cost of resiliency.

In this episode, Simon Michaux returns to discuss his new paper “A Resource Balanced Economy”, which outlines an alternative economic and social system. This conversation builds off of his two previous episodes on The Great Simplification, unpacking the ideas and tools that will be helpful in planning for an unknown future with more energy and material constraints. How can we be more intentional about the design of our technology to make products that are longer lasting and easier to reuse? How can we organize society to create resilient communities based around actual human needs, rather than endless efficiency geared towards growth? Can an ‘Arcadian Blueprint’ emerge, and at what scale, and by whom?

About Simon Michaux:

Dr. Simon Michaux is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. He has a PhD in mining engineering. Dr. Michaux’s long-term work is on societal transformation toward a circular economy.

For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/68-simon-michaux

To watch this video episode on Youtube → htt ps://youtu.be/bb801wdRULM