2025 Archives
MULTISOLVING
with Elizabeth Sawin
Eco 777               January 7, 2025
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Our guest was Elizabeth Sawin, author of a fascinating new book from Island Press; it’s called Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World. She has a PhD in Biology from MIT and has a long career in working on sustainability and related issues. In 2010 she cofounded the think tank Climate Interactive to create tools for grappling with the complexity of the climate system.  And in 2021 she founded the Multisolving Institute to develop tools tailored for “multisolving,” which involves thinking and acting systematically on multiple issues and problems. She provided examples of multisolving at work in communities around the world and outlined its principal "ingredients": stocks (of goods, resources, human capital), flows (which result in changes of the stocks, and reinforcement loops (which help people understand and evaluate the success of their work.
She introduced us to FLOWER, an online program that guides people through the multisolving process. Learn more at https://www.multisolving.org/www.multisolving.org/

Listen to the program: Click below.
Happy New Year 2025
Eco 776    December 31, 2024
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We ushered out 2024 and welcomed 2025 with a program devoted to promising environmental news as well as resolutions for the coming year. Topics covered included electricity generation and storage, projects to save endangered species, restoration and recovery of land and sea, and declarations giving both people and animals legal standing in battles over the environment. We closed with speculation and optimism on the nagging question, "Do small scale efforts make a difference?"
Listen to the program. Click below.