This is a keynote presentation to the Canadian Congress 2024. Kira Cooper of Waterloo University, on behalf of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada, invited me to provide a long form overview of the constraints, challenges and possibilities as we head towards a (more) sustainable culture.

The talk is in four parts:
1) an explanation of the core drivers of the human ecosystem
2) a synthesis of how the emergent property of these is a (mindless) energy/material hungry economic superorganism
3) scenarios and implications for the future and
4) suggested interventions and responses at various scales (global, community, academia and personal).

This talk is long - at 1 hour 46 minutes, but is the most comprehensive outlining of the predicament/responses we've done to date.

To Learn more: About Environmental Studies Association of Canada (https://www.esac.ca/)

Congress 2024 | FHSS (https://www.federationhss.ca/en)

00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:45 - Welcome by Kira Cooper
00:03:01 - Overview of the Presentation
00:04:08 - The Human Ecosystem
00:07:25 - Energy
00:09:45 - The Story of Industrialization
00:13:37 - Energy Blindness and The Carbon Pulse
00:18:20 - Energy Fungibility and Properties
00:22:55 - Materials, Technology, and Money
00:29:20 - Pollution and Climate Change
00:36:12- Human Feelings
00:44:00- The Superorganism
00:48:48 - Implications and Scenarios
00:54:01 - The Five Horsemen of the 2020s
00:59:42 - Summary
01:05:38 - What To Do
01:09:14 - Four Scales for Intervention
01:12:22 - Beyond GDP
01:18:55 - A Life Ethic
01:20:50 - Redesigning Civil Society
01:28:46 - The Role of Academia
01:32:48 - Personal Advice
01:45:52 - Closing Thoughts
01:46:30 - Q&A