Putting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into perspective: the worldview approach
[see also this link here.] Global Sustainability 27 september 2019 (e18). The seven-plus billion human beings on the planet are increasingly connected through material and informational exchanges. Their everyday behaviour and their desires, emotions, aspirations and expectations are still very different and diverse, yet there seems to be a shared universal idea(l) about ‘the good life’. At least, that is [...]
Even simple systems can show complex behaviour: mechanics
Change is an elementary phenomenon in life. It is most visible in movement of matter. It is useful to look at a simple, well observable and controllable system: a mass m at the end of a spring. It is the classical model of linear elasticity, associated with the 17th-century British scholar Hooke. Change is in this case about potential and [...]
Colonists, Inuit, and the Church: a story of maladaptation
Danish colonisation of Greenland started in 1721, but a Norse colony in west Greenland had already been an outpost of Europeans throughout the period 985–1500 AD. There had been contacts between North American hunters and European farmers. It seems that the Norse community managed quite well for the first 150 years, with a maritime-terrestrial economy with small animal herds, seasonal [...]
The Relational Trend: Values, Knowledge and Worldviews Revisited
Values and knowledge are two important concepts in sustainability science. Recently, new framings for these concepts have been proposed, both of which place our social relationships at the centre of the discussions: one is the notion of relational values, the other one of relational cognition. One assumption is that it is our values that shape our aspirations for the future [...]
The lure of flying – and the flyprint
Living on a plane. "Ana-Maria P. is the president of Powerstorm, a US company working on sustainable telecom solutions focused on reducing CO2 emissions in emerging markets. How often do you travel? I basically live on a plane. I recently calculated this and in the last four years, I spent only three months at home…The upside of all this travel [...]
Meat in Europe: a worldview assessment
The consumption of meat is increasingly becoming controversial as a spectrum of activists point at the negative side-effects for animal welfare, human health, local pollution and climate change inducing greenhousegas emissions. The meat industry and its suppliers see their profits and expansion opportunities under threat, arguing that there are already many regulations in place and competition on the global market [...]