Dana Meadows, Beth Sawin and 3.5% Emissions Growth

By Andrew P. Jones
October 18, 2008

Climate Sim force of nature Beth Sawin (in the picture to the left) recently wrote a really lovely blog post about our team’s effort to address climate change and global ecological limits through the use of simulations that are embedded in effective conversations about action. She thinks that our mentor and Sustainability Institute founder Dana Meadows would have loved this work.

Beth’s blog, Climate Teacher, is a great resource. It captures one of Beth’s great gifts to the world — she has the most range of anyone I know in this work. When I say “range” I mean the ability to move from sharing her deep understanding of climate science and policy from a systems perspective (she has a PHD from MIT and it shows when it is needed) to engaging people constructively on the powerful emotions that come up when working on climate change (grief and despair anyone?).

She understands that it will take** all of ourselves** to get the results we all want.

Beth also recently posted her reflections on some model runs from our simulation model, C-ROADS (formerly called Pangaea), exploring a possible future if we continue the recent 3.5% per year growth in CO2 emissions.

One of her graphs is posted to the left. Check it out.