A Systems Approach Towards a (More) Sustainable Future: An Invitation to Academia

45 thoughts on “A Systems Approach Towards a (More) Sustainable Future: An Invitation to Academia”

• The problem is Nate, you're not telling people what they want to hear – so they'll just continue to ignore you, I'm afraid. Drill, baby, drill. Dig, baby, dig etc. I've been following this stuff since the 70s – What difference has been made ?

• 54:00 – 5 Horsemen
  54:16 – 1st Horseman , Financial 54:55 – 55:07 – 55:15 – 55:29 –
  56:00 – 2nd Horseman , Geopolitics 57:55 – 2rd Horseman , Complexity
  58:31 – 4th Horseman , The Social Contract 59:11 – 5th Horseman , Ecological Damage

• Really wonderful presentation Nate! Wow. I mean that. Sincerely.

  Our species is going to lose all of its habitat because of temperature increase in the next couple of years no matter what we do.
  Unless you fudge the baseline yet again, we haven't seen +1.5°C in well over a year, and we never will again. The temperature increase is accelerating as we speak. Good Luck, Be Well.

• Excellent! Nothing will happen as the rich and powerful who could do something won't as they feel they will be the last to suffer and they are probably right.

• 🌞🤝🌞🤝🌞

• We have to get rid of Capitalism and create/adopt a new system, like Eco-Socialism.

• The Limits to Growth (1972) predicts a massive and sustained drop in human population starting around 2040, but it could probably start even by 2035, about 10 years away. Driven by resource depletion and collapse of food supplies, obviously aided by the infertility crisis, the global decline in human population will change the economy back to sun-based as many large scale productions of goods and services won't be worth it any longer. Already many countries have declining populations. Japan, where I live, declined by around 800,000 people last year, but roughly 200,000 foreigners moved in so net decline was around 600,000. It is happening in Korea and some other places too. It will start in America within a decade or so. The US govt forecasts by 2040 but could be earlier.

• Thanks so much, Nate! This was great!

• A very ambitious presentation–perhaps somewhat too much to take in at one go, but congratulations for putting it all in one place. Education at the university level, and especially in the humanities, needs to change so has to create communities of young scholars who bounce ideas off each other and their mentors while providing the community support needed for long, hard thought on the issues we face. It's time to junk the lecture as the main form of education at that level and turn to discussion within a community context.

• Nate, I've been following you for a long time and agree with your direction(s) of investigation. And I thank you for your kind efforts.

  My only comment is that you made reference to pretas more than once lately but I never heard a description of what a hungry ghost is. So are my ears deceiving me or are you assuming the world understands about the beings with huge mouths and tiny neck and tummy that can never be satisfied, the disease of more, ever so representative of our desire driven economy? or Are you still in India??? LOL

• Fantastic presentation. I hope there's no limit on YouTube "shares" because as I watched I thought of quite a few people I want to send this to as a "must" watch.
  One comment: I do want to re-listen, and I'm going on memory now, but it seemed that Nate was not keen early on about the use of "renewable." It is a "meme" and clearly (in my mind) a "feel good" word and too mushy to be of any use. Later in the presentation Nate did use "renewable" as a sort of normalized concept. I think we need to toss "renewable" into the dustbin of useless, and sometimes manipulative words, along with "clean energy" (it's not).
  That said, I think we need to use the word "nonrenewable" as often as we possibly can to remind people of the finite nature of what we extract. What we take and use is gone largely forever.
  As to energy sources for the future, I think we need to start express what we'll be doing (and what was done for most of the life of life on earth) is to "harvest" energy. In recent times, solar panels directly harvest the energy coming from the sun; wind and water derive their power that we convert because of solar energized processes; and of course plant life "harvests" solar energy through photosynthesis, storing that energy for it's own needs, and so much of life (we humans too), get our energy from the trophic chain. [The energy my brain and muscles, etc., are now using came not long ago from the sun!!]
  I can get excited about "harvesting" solar energy directly and indirectly. And the garden vegetables Nate talked about provide hands on participation in energy harvesting.

• Thanks, good talk. It was a little heavy on the patos, but maybe that's just a cultural thing. Jason Hickel has similar ideas, but he's less pessimistic.

  Btw,, a bit of gardening advice: If you allready have ducks, employ them, they are good workers. Let them graze the weeds in your potato patch. They won't touch the poisonus potato leaves, but they love the juicy annuals and the worst weed of all, grass.. This is a well proven method. they also work great as weeders in rice fields.

• I can't help but wonder if Nate is a fan of Isaac Asimov's Foundation. 🤔

• welcome academia and please start with first principals, be realistic, what are the requirements, what do we need?
  vs what do we want? currently our wants are obliterating our needs
  collaborate with existing models like Kailash Ecovillage, Third Act, Navdanya, etc.

• Did you hear? As of yesterday, the 50 year petrodollar deal has not been resigned…

• thank you!!!!!!!!

• Please Nate can you offer some advice i have a 17 daughter keen to do good work can you advise a good pathway shes never been in school and loves your work .xxxxx

• Thanks Nate. Really enjoyed the conversation. I never bought into Jevons paradox. If humans were actually intelligent and had a true conscience, they would understand the reason why they shouldn't travel any farther than they can walk.

• Well done, Nate. But, again, it's civilization itself that isn't sustainable. We have to work toward undoing that, not trying to build a new one (or preserving this one).

• Nate, as always, I am deeply grateful for your work — I believe it is vital to our shared future. 🙏

  Are your presentation slides publicly available? I often find myself longing to study them more closely and contemplate them more slowly.

• Go Nate!

• fascinating, yet at best obsolete, probably disorienting analysis, all the work condensed into exercise in high grade mental gymnastics… this is what happens if you talk about capitalism while desperately avoiding to talk about capitalism –

  all of this is thoroughly researched and well understood since like 100 years

  wtf is wrong with people

• I think a lot of people say they want to support the green transition but when they have to give up their travel to italy they are willing to wait to next year for saving the planet.

• treefrog3349 expressed my heart!

• This is essentially The Great Simplification’s Bingo Card. You really do cover so much of your work in this one presentation.

  I am making efforts to try and break these concepts up for folks in my area who have no background in environmental studies, and this presentation will be a massive help. I think a lot of “regular” people know something is wrong but can’t conceptualize it while they are also trying to survive in the modern world.

  Thank you so much for what you do, Nate. Your work inspires me to keep going in an increasingly depressing world.

• Hi Nate, great presentation again. And hopefully with a profound multiplier effect regarding your audience.

  You mentioned that our multiplier effects may be more important than our individual behavior changes. From my point of view, however, I only get the perspective of true mental health when my personal lifestyle (at least its basic building blocks) could principally be copied and pasted to 10 billion humans on this planet (Kant’s categorical imperative applied) . Otherwise you continue to exist in cognitive dissonance.

  So my advice would imply much more simplification in a much shorter timespan than most people in the West might imagine as „doable“ right now (e.g. no flying, no car, no fossil applications generally, small flat, vegan diet, no pets etc.). Yes, I know…….

  In my view the observable right shift in Western politics has a lot to do with the fact that academics (and other leading figures in society) present the global predicament but as individuals do not act according to their own analyses.

• Aww heeeell no! You didn't just dis video games!!11

• 1:18:40 . Biochar is not new, it has been used for thousands or years. Terra preta.

• every middle school and high school student should watch this at least once a year.

• Great audiobook. Can’t wait for the print edition! You’ve packed a lot of information & ideas into one presentation, but it never gets old. At its core is your conception of energy, which I find most compelling. In fact, it’s brilliant & original. The interdisciplinary systems approach is greatly needed in a world of specialists who remind me of the parable of the blind men trying to identify the elephant based on their respective experience with different parts of the animal's body. Your concept of simplification is much preferable to “degrowth,” but essentially you are advocating degrowth – at least as I understand your message. Your approach avoids ideological jargon that can be so off-putting & that is refreshing. Hopefully it means a larger audience will be receptive rather than defensive & dismissive. All in all, it’s a cohesive & compelling argument for fundamental change.

• At 4 horses a row, 100,000 horses pulling a plane would be about half a mile long.

• But if we don’t burn fossil fuels or have fossil fuels to burn then that’s industry gone. So then what of the aerosol masking effect?

• Don't forget the 500-600 dead zones in the oceans!

• Nate this was really fantastic. I am going to send it around to colleagues. My sense is they(Oceanographers, Atmospheric Scientists, Polar Scientists, Physicists, Engineers) know the problems well but are just like everyone else and live a business as usual life. Modernity is a subtle trap, and so is the hyper-competitive grant process. I often feel we are simply recording the decline rather than making real change or breaking free. Non-scientists may have suspicions of our work and see it as a WEF conspiracy to eat zee bugs. I do not know how to avail them of these beliefs but you have made significant inroads. You have my gratitude and thanks!

• Thank you, Nate! It's awesome to hear your lastest presentation of the big picture in one go! I love the clearer articulation of ideas on where to go forward. Please don't forget that self-care is community service!

• An excellent overview. Something I can share with those who are ready to hear the message. Namaste, Nate 🙏

• Here for it. Thanx Nate.

• Thanks Canada!

• A Swiss federal report on plastics in the environment, published on September 23, 2022, found that tire and road wear is one of the leading causes of microplastic pollution in the country. The resulting particles are made up of 60% rubber, 30% soot and 10% heavy metals. Over 13,500 metric tons of these particles are generated in Switzerland every year, and some 8,900 metric tons of that amount are released into our air, soil and water. (How many electric cars, which are heavier than conventional, are going to still generate more pollution than we are already. Its not exhaust but its still pollution)

• Thank you, Nate.

• What happens when we drain all the oil from the earth and we have an asteroid impact and the earth plates have no lubricant to bear the impact?

• Collectively, we need to care about the biosphere, the global environment that sustains ALL life, not just human life. The symbiotic interaction of every living species is what maintains and sustains this thing we call "life". Humanity's fatal flaw is its entrenched, quasi-religious belief that "Man is the center of all things". The totality of the Earth is a symbiotic miracle. Homo sapiens are merely on aspect of it. Considering the evident negative impact that homo sapiens have had on the continuing viability of life on Earth, I sincerely have to wonder if homo sapiens might be a pernicious invasive species. Remove homo sapiens from Earth's history, and today, at this very moment, the Earth would be a pristine wilderness of biological possibility. Just sayin…

• Please let us know how Academia RSVPs.

• Someone in Trudeau's office please dumb this down so he can understand this? He won't stay still for more than a couple minutes so you might have to trick him into listening … waving the right coloured flag every minute or so might work.

• Informative. Extremes are not the answer however, balance should be the aim towards sustainability.

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