The resistance to taking action on climate change is a classic example of what in systems thinking terms is called “bounded rationality,” where people act in their rational self-interest in the short-term yet together create results no one wants. “Bounded rationality” was a term coined by Herbert Simon, an economist. Donella Meadows, the late scientist,… Read more
Tag: Energy
The Math of Climate Change: Visualizing Energy and Carbon Emissions
A lack of “energy literacy” is one of the challenges of building public support for action on climate change and for implementing climate action plans within government and business. We turn on the lights and how the energy gets to us and the impacts of that power generation are essentially invisible. Equally challenging and critically… Read more
Collaborating to Enhance Energy Efficiency in Transportation
New Directions Collaborative, in collaboration with Sonia Hamel of Hamel Environmental Consulting and Pat Field of the Consensus Building Institute, helped to facilitate a cross-agency collaborative process to develop a framework for considering energy efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in transportation decision-making. The initiative was led by the Colorado Department of Transportation and the… Read more
Energy Smart Transportation Initiative
What does it take to make the transportation sector more energy efficient? The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) sponsored the Colorado Energy Smart Transportation Initiative to explore this question. New Directions Collaborative, in collaboration with Sonia Hamel of Hamel Environmental Consulting and Pat Field of the Consensus Building Institute, helped to facilitate a cross-agency collaborative… Read more
Collective Impact – An Idea Whose Time Has Come
In the Midwest, a group of foundations and non-profits decided to try an experiment – instead of individual foundations placing grants with individual non-profits, they came together to create a coordinated network to pursue the ambitious long-term goal of reducing regional global warming emissions 80 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2050. The Garfield Foundation, one… Read more