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Sustainability And Systemic Change Resistance
The environmental sustainability problem has proven difficult to solve. The modern environmental movement has attempted to solve the problem in a large variety of ways. But little progress has been made, as shown by severe ecological footprint overshoot and lack of sufficient progress on the climate change problem. Something within the human system is preventing change to a sustainable mode of behavior. That system trait is systemic change resistance. Change resistance is also known as organizational resistance, barriers to change, or policy resistance. Overview of resistance to solving the sustainability problem While environmentalism had long been a minor force in political change, the movement strengthened significantly in the 1970s with the first Earth Day in 1970, in which over 20 million people participated, with publication of ''The Limits to Growth'' in 1972, and with the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Early expectations th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable living). Sustainability is commonly described as having three dimensions (also called pillars): environmental, economic, and social. Many publications state that the environmental dimension (also called "planetary integrity" or "ecological integrity") is the most important, and, in everyday usage, "sustainability" is often focused on countering major environmental problems, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution. Humanity is now exceeding several "planetary boundaries". A closely related concept is that of sustainable development, and the terms are often used synonymously. However, UNESCO distinguishes the two thus: "''Sustainability'' is often thought of as a lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and large oil and gas companies, many state-owned by OPEC and Russia. Human-caused emissions have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 50% over pre-industrial levels. The growing levels of emissions have varied, but it was consistent among all greenhouse gases (GHG). Emissions in the 2010s averaged 56 billion tons a year, higher than ever before. Electricity generation and transport are major emitters; the largest single source, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, is transportation, accounting for 27% of all USA greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation and other changes in land use also emit carbon dioxide and methane. The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Senge
Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning. He is known as the author of the book '' The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization'' (1990, rev. 2006). Life and career Peter Senge was born in Stanford, California. He received a B.S. in Aerospace engineering from Stanford University. While at Stanford, Senge also studied philosophy. He later earned an M.S. in social systems modeling from MIT in 1972, as well as a PhD in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1978. He is the founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). This organization helps with the communication of ideas between large corporations. It replaced the previous organization known as the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT. He is co-Founder, and sit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fundamental Attribution Error
In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational and environmental explanations for an individual's observed behavior while overemphasizing dispositional- and personality-based explanations. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are", that is, to overattribute their behaviors (what they do or say) to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. The error is in seeing someone's actions as ''solely'' reflective of their personality rather than ''somewhat'' reflective of it and also largely prompted by circumstances. It involves a type of circular reasoning in which the answer to the question "why would they do that" is only "because they ''would'' do that." Although things like personality differences and predispositions are in fact real, the fundamental attribution error is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Sterman
John David Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management, and the current director of the MIT System Dynamics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute. He is mostly considered as the current leader of the System Dynamics school of thought. He is the author of ''Business Dynamics, Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World''. Prof. Sterman has twice been awarded the Jay W. Forrester Prize for the best published work in system dynamics, won an IBM Faculty Award, won the Accenture Award for the best paper of the year published in the California Management Review, has seven times won awards for teaching excellence, and was named one of the MIT Sloan School's "Outstanding Faculty" by the Business Week Guide to the Best Business Schools. He has been featured on public television's News Hour, National Public radio, National Public Radio's Marketplace, CBC television, Fortune Magazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decoupling (organizational Studies)
In organizational studies, and particularly new institutional theory, decoupling is the creation and maintenance of gaps between formal policies and actual organizational practices.Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. 1977. "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony," ''American Journal of Sociology'', 83: 340-63. Organizational researchers have documented decoupling in a variety of organizations, including schools, corporations,Westphal, James D., and Edward Zajac. 2001. "Explaining Institutional Decoupling: The Case of Stock Repurchase Programs." ''Administrative Science Quarterly'', 46: 202-28. government agencies, police, and social movement organizations. Scholars have proposed a number of explanations for why organizations engage in decoupling. Some researchers have argued that decoupling enables organizations to gain legitimacy Legitimacy, from the Latin ''legitimare'' meaning "to make lawful", may refer to: * Legitimacy (criminal law) * Legitimacy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feedback Loops
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled carefully when applied to feedback systems: History Self-regulating mechanisms have existed since antiquity, and the idea of feedback had started to enter economic theory in Britain by the 18th century, but it was not at that time recognized as a universal abstraction and so did not have a name. The first ever known artificial feedback device was a float valve, for maintaining water at a constant level, invented in 270 BC in Alexandria, Egypt. This device illustrated the principle of feedback: a low water level opens the valve, the rising water then provides feedback into the system, closing the valve when the required level is reached. This then reoccurs in a circular fashion as the water level fluctuates. Centrifugal governors were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Root Cause Analysis
In science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ... and engineering, root cause analysis (RCA) is a method of problem solving used for identifying the root causes of faults or problems. It is widely used in IT operations, manufacturing, telecommunications, Process control, industrial process control, accident analysis (e.g., in aviation, rail transport, or nuclear plants), medicine (for medical diagnosis), healthcare industry (e.g., for epidemiology), etc. Root cause analysis is a form of deductive inference since it requires an understanding of the underlying causal mechanisms of the potential root causes and the problem. RCA can be decomposed into four steps: * Identify and describe the problem clearly * Establish a timeline from the normal situation until the problem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rio De Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a beta global city, Rio de Janeiro is the sixth-most populous city in the Americas. Part of the city has been designated as a World Heritage Site, named "Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea", on 1 July 2012 as a Cultural Landscape. Founded in 1565 by the Portuguese, the city was initially the seat of the Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro, a domain of the Portuguese Empire. In 1763, it became the capital of the State of Brazil, a state of the Portuguese Empire. In 1808, when the Portuguese Royal Court moved to Brazil, Rio de Janeiro became the seat of the court of Queen Maria I of Portugal. She subsequently, under the leadership of her son the prince regent João VI of Portugal, raised Brazil to the dignity of a k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Earth Summit was created as a response for member states to cooperate together internationally on development issues after the Cold War. Due to issues relating to sustainability being too big for individual member states to handle, Earth Summit was held as a platform for other member states to collaborate. Since the creation, many others in the field of sustainability show a similar development to the issues discussed in these conferences, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Issues addressed The issues addressed includes: * systematic scrutiny of patterns of production—particularly the production of toxic components, such as lead in gasoline, or poisonous waste including radioactive chemicals * alternative sources of energy to re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an international environmental treaty to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system", in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It was signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. Its original secretariat was in Geneva but relocated to Bonn in 1996. It entered into force on 21 March 1994. The treaty called for ongoing scientific research and regular meetings, negotiations, and future policy agreements designed to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. The Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and ran from 2005 to 2020, was the first implementation of measures under the UNFCCC ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
