MIT Systems Thinking Conference Provides Invaluable Lessons for Environmental Protection
Linda Sheehan
MIT
12/16/2010
Editor's note: MIT alumna Linda Sheehan is Executive Director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, an environmental advocacy organization. In this article, she reflects on the benefits of attending the MIT SDM Systems Thinking Conference in October.
MIT has consistently generated major, innovative advancements in system dynamics theory and applications. So I felt extremely fortunate to be able to attend the October 2010 MIT SDM Systems Thinking Conference—which focused on climate change, a major element of our program work at the California Coastkeeper Alliance.
As the director of this environmental advocacy organization, it is my job to push the envelope of law and policy toward improving the health of California's coast and waterways. Working closely with dedicated colleagues and members of the public, we have achieved significant victories for environmental health throughout California. Yet, even in environment-friendly California, our current system of environmental laws simply cannot protect us from ourselves.
Systems thinking provides a process by which we can begin to deconstruct the flaws in our current system of environmental laws and rebuild it from a mindset that acknowledges our deep connections with the environment.
At the SDM conference, presenters provided critical information that I was grateful to bring to the alliance's environmental advocacy efforts in California, and to the COP16 climate change discussions in Cancún from which I recently returned. I particularly welcomed remarks by Associate Professor Andrew Scott of Architecture, who highlighted some of the misconceptions around the term "sustainable." He appropriately noted that a "sustainable" community is one that is not only ecologically viable, but is also socially and economically viable. If implemented broadly, his key principles for a "flexible adaptable town"—including zero carbon buildings that can meet a variety of uses, "micro" energy generation measures, education and transparency of operations, and increasingly localized waste processing—would significantly improve both environmental health and human well-being.
