Systems Thinking and How It Can Help Build a Sustainable World: A Beginning Conversation

Humanity stands at a precipice. Overpopulation, resource scarcities, degraded ecosystem functioning from pollution and biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic climate change are damaging the life-supporting capacity of the planet. Diminishing returns on fossil fuel energy investments, combined with their dwindling availability and environmental harm, threaten industrial civilization. Many people recognize the need to transition to sustainable, resilient ways of living, but the prospect of such a transition is daunting, not only from a logistical perspective, but also because it requires new ways of thinking about and addressing complex problems. Widespread adoption of systems thinking represents one of society’s best bets for making real progress towards this daunting transition, but few actually understand what it is. This article is intended to introduce systems thinking into our common lexicon – to explain what it is at a basic level, how it can be used, and why it may very well be the key to humanity’s survival over the long run.

Read Systems Thinking and How It Can Help Build a Sustainable World: A Beginning Conversation by Megan Seibert at The Solutions Journal.