What you'll learn:
- You will understand basic concepts, challenges and opportunities that relate to the concept of sustainable development
- You will understand how different paradigms of thought cause people to take differing views on sustainability issues
- You will be able to identify feedback loops in complex systems and describe their course of events using words and expressions from system dynamics
- You will be able to define, explain and use sustainability vocabulary and associated facts
- You will understand how Earth’s climate works and be able to explain challenges and scenarios of climate change
- You will be able to state the main components and a number of feedback mechanisms in the Earth's climate system
Sustainable development is a hot topic and one that is crucial for long term survival of our civilization. Still, views differ on what actions that are most efficient or even which that is the right course of action. Public debate on sustainability issues may be hard sometimes to follow as ideological perspectives are intertwined with systems understanding and strategies for concrete action.
In this course you will learn how to wrap your head around sustainability. Regardless of whether you are a sustainability champion that want to become a change agent in your organization, or you just want to comprehend what is happening in the world, this course will help you understand. We will discuss what people mean with ‘sustainable development’ and why some people think differently about this. We will also learn about systems and how everything in the world is governed by feedback loops. This will lead us to a deeper understanding of the challenges we face – whether they are environmental, social or economic. And finally, we will dig deeper into understanding Earth’s climate and climate change.
Understanding sustainability is really about taking a holistic approach on understanding the world, our society, and our place within. Join me on this tour through a truly engaging, important and potentially worldview-changing theme!
