Dr. Elizabeth Sawin✨

Director of the Multisolving Institute - addressing #climate, #health, #equity, and #biodiversity as connected issues. she/her

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bethsawin_at_spore.social@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-08-19 20:28:22

Calling for a ceasefire while supplying arms.
Naming climate goals while extracting oil.
Declaring war on cancer while allowing novel chemicals & plastics in food, water and air.
Spending billions on vaccine against a global infectious disease but not sharing it.

2024-07-21 19:16:55

It's a noisy time. Good to breathe deep, be with your people, touch the earth, and aim for the world you really want to see, not the one you think you have to settle for.
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2024-07-21 14:12:04

We are, increasingly, in an era of discontinuities, where the future (if it ever was) is no longer a smooth interpolation from the past.

2024-07-14 01:56:23

My garden near dusk, a pocket of calm if you need one.
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2024-07-13 18:30:50

Moving at the speed of life.
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2024-07-12 21:17:41

Harvesting wild yarrow for winter salve-making. The first activity of my vacation. It's good to be reminded that almost always when I pull myself out of the petrochemical fueled economy the tiniest bit I also fins a delight to my senses and an easing of my whole system.
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2024-07-11 13:34:36

A snippet from my book Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World. And a snippet from my local news this morning. The patterns are clear. And I hate that they are.
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2024-07-06 15:04:07

It's 2035. You just walked out your door into a world that got through the shocks of 2024 -26 more connected, a little ecologically healthier, with civil and human rights strengthened & with commitment to actually being a just & ecological society. What's the 1st thing you see?

2024-07-06 14:51:31

When a system which is growing exponentially and which requires sacrifice zones as a matter of "normal operations", then eventually you reach the point where you have to decide which side you are on - is everything a sacrifice zone or is nothing?

2024-07-05 13:45:29

Anyone else have the feeling that people are asking the questions that they should have been 20-30 years ago, but not the questions we need to ask now? Lot of forecasting talk. Lot of transition plans with nice smooth curves out gently into the future.

2024-07-01 18:08:46

I needed to stop scrolling so I went for a run. Recommended. Along the ways there was a turtle in the middle of the road, and I moved her to safety. Also recommended. So much needs help! Find a little way to help and do it. I also had a few thoughts while plodding uphill...
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2024-06-27 13:06:14

It will never stop astonishing me how beautiful medicinal plants are and how medicinal beautiful plants are. Pretty good set up here on planet earth if we (re)integrate into it. What kinds of medicine do you see here? What kinds of beauty? (And there's some food too)
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2024-06-20 14:05:50

Page proofs! Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World is looking more and more like a book. Fitting, I guess, that a manuscript I began in a global pandemic is getting one last review in a heat wave.
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2024-06-20 13:20:40

Happy solstice, sun and beauty abounding. A reminder of cycles, that ups follow downs, and that there are as many ways to be of use as there are people to do so.
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2024-06-18 21:18:11

Parts of this article resonate with me. I do see in others and myself the instinct for denial and looking away. But the authors' remedies seem to me over simple. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weve-hit-peak-denial-heres-why-we-cant-turn-away-from-reality/

2024-06-14 15:33:36

The current economic system can't keep us safe, because keeping us safe from ecological disaster isn't the goal of the current economic system.

2024-06-13 12:28:23

Well, this morning there were strawberries from the garden for breakfast. The barn swallows were swooping as I picked arnica flowers and the showy lady slippers are plentiful in the fen up in the hills above our house.
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2024-06-12 12:35:25

When your vision exceeds current reality that creates tension - it hurts to see something that is not (yet) manifest. In that tension there are 3 options:
1. lower your vision to reduce the tension (which is part of how we get the the world we've got.)

2024-06-11 13:57:45

There's been great progress on linking #health and #climate, but further to go in putting together the even bigger narrative: How our ill health is a symptom overshoot of planetary limits.

2024-06-11 13:22:55

Our discourse is full of nouns (equity, justice, resilience) or adjectives to describe stuff (low carbon, climate smart) as though all of this may someday come to our future selves, instead of verbs, which we could embody in our actions in every moment starting now.

2024-06-06 19:34:26

Peonies - if you need a moment to soften and open, they've got that going for them.
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2024-06-06 12:12:18

Shoutout to my four year old neighbor who wants to open a restaurant for dogs that serves raspberry blueberry watermelon peach ice cream with dog treats in it.

2024-05-15 14:22:01

Just wrote my next "letter from the director" to come out in June. This one is about how this gardening project had me thinking about salmon, trains, justice & Joanna Macy's Great Turning. If that sounds interesting there's time to sign up to receive...https://www.multisolving.org/#newsletter
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2024-05-11 13:32:22

You know this planet with auroras and eclipses? It has orchids, grass snakes & mangoes too. Rainbow trout and diatoms and self-organizing college students and star fish. What are the odds of it all & how about a just and equitable economy and then living lives of awestruck peace?

2024-05-05 11:41:25

May your society grow food in a way that doesn't imperil the bird and mammal worlds with viruses, the insect world with chemicals, the climate with heat trapping gases, and the oceans with dead zones.
-- a wish for us all

2024-04-26 12:36:46

It may be that the college students, who learned in elementary school that the government wouldn't keep them safe from shooters or keep them safe from a pandemic or hand them a livable climate, also learned that they keep each other safe, and that no change is scarier than change. May clarity and courage be contagious.

2024-04-22 16:34:02

This #EarthDay2024 I'd like to introduce you a friend of mine. World, please meet "Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World" which will look more like a book & less like a binder in a patch of daffodils when it's released by IslandPress in fall 2024!
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2024-04-12 18:16:02

In an interconnected world we need interconnected people with the courage and the skills to span the silos that have chopped the world into pieces.

2024-04-12 15:46:37

🌱 countdown to ramps, fiddleheads and fresh asparagus! 🌱We love our root cellar, but it's been a long stretch of cabbage, carrots, squash, and potatoes!

2024-04-05 14:00:02

If you are someone who works at the intersection of two or more of these areas...climate, health, equity, biodiversity and well-being... I wonder if the idea below sounds like it could be helpful to you: 👇

2024-04-04 20:47:28

Our local science museum is collecting eclipse glasses (after the eclipse) for Astronomers Without Borders who will get them to the people wherever the next eclipse is. Eclipses for the people! Eclipses for the reuse economy!

2024-04-04 17:30:45

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Don't minimize the ripples of the healing work you do just because it starts small and humble.

2024-04-04 17:30:29

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It's not *just* a park, a food forest, a fair trade organic banana, a pre-school with free breakfast - it's also all the descendants of that one tired butterfly that needed that shrub in that park to lay her eggs. Etc.

2024-04-04 17:30:19

I believe this: Because life is self-organizing and regenerating, even the very tiny shifts we make away from harm and towards sustenance of life open up possibilities that compound upon themselves.

2024-03-07 22:55:14

I'm very grateful for an invitation to speak at a webinar organized by Elders Climate Action March 26th at 7PM ET. I'm aiming to make it super-interactive. If you've seen other webinars of mine, this one might be a little different. I think it will be fun! https://www.eldersclimateaction.org/event/nc_march24/

2024-02-07 13:36:41

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And now I have a new metaphor for all of us, individuals, businesses, communities, working so hard, running in place, trying to get systems that were designed for a different climate to produce some sweetness anyway and sometimes just not getting it. Exhaustion can be a climate change symptom.

2024-02-07 13:36:01

I learned from a beekeeper friend last night that they didn't get a honey harvest last fall because of the unusually high humidity all summer. The bees fanned & fanned & fanned, trying to evaporate the nectar to concentrate it into honey & they couldn't do it against all that moisture in the air.
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2024-02-01 14:30:14

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When a system gives you a result, over and over, across time and across sectors, and across geographies consider if it may be a feature and not a bug.

2024-02-01 14:28:42

Tools exist for peace making, for public health for ecosystem protection for community wellbeing. Often they are the least expensive, least technical option. They take time and care. But most of all they take leaders who are oriented to protection of life and away from mass death.

2024-01-31 22:33:17

Higher quality information declining as news outlets lay off workers or go out of business.
Lower quality information rising with AI generated torrents.
And yet...healthy systems require timely and accurate information, nonetheless.
Systems can not execute goal-seeking behavior (whether achieving a climate target or meeting the needs of population) with distorted information flows.

2024-01-29 19:09:11

Keeping fossil fuels in the ground applies to plastics too!

2024-01-25 15:35:47

What do you call that thing when you, a woman, point out in a meeting that the men are rushing to closure without acknowledging the concern multiple women expressed and then you get accused of attacking and then the next day you still feel shaky and sad?

2024-01-21 18:49:05

In the economy vs public health you can prioritize the economy only temporarily. In the economy vs the environment you can prioritize the economy only temporarily. The economy is an emergent condition of living systems: individuals, communities, ecosystems, and planetary systems.

2024-01-16 14:29:36

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In so doing the status quo dooms even those they supposedly center close to the heart of empire to more risk, more instability, and constant arms races (with other empires, with microbes, with feedback loops like climate change).

2024-01-16 14:29:24

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Because despite being supposedly "rational", supposedly focused on "efficiency", supposedly using markets to find best solutions, the status quo refuses to count everyone who could benefit, or take into account timescales that matter.

2024-01-16 14:29:11

The status quo is so resistant to systems thinking that they leave trillions of dollars of synergy on the table every year. Pandemic stimulus could have jumpstarted climate goals. Public housing could be zero energy. Health costs could be driven down by walkable neighborhoods.

2024-01-13 20:37:32

Rainy day puttering. Gluten free bread rising, soup veggie chopping!
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2024-01-12 22:34:37

What if we could decarbonize and detoxify at the same time? What would that look like? What would it require? Join me for this interesting conversation January 25th! https://www.healthandenvironment.org/che-webinars/96738

2023-12-22 16:02:51

Maybe 2024 will be the year that more and more people will grapple with the challenge that it is features, not bugs, in current dominant systems that give us everything from plastic particles in our tissues to a warming earth to sacrifice zones and poverty.

2023-12-22 12:03:50

I remember my early computer simulation teachers explained about "garbage in, garbage out" models and I think, beneath the hype and the marketing this fits most of the supposed AI I've tried.

2023-12-21 13:44:38

Happy solstice. The days have been short and nights long of late in the north, calling for rest, and stillness, and reflection. For being together and also for being quiet alone. A rhythm natural to us, and this home planet of ours, if forgotten in mainstream culture.
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2023-12-20 15:35:44

Thomas Berry said it so succinctly: The human is derivative, Earth is primary. Earth must be the primary concern of every human institution, profession, program and activity.

2023-12-17 19:49:43

Water gets in cracks in rocks, freezes, breaks them open. Maybe our grief - our covid grief, our genocide grief, our climate grief, our ecocide grief - is like this.
https://spore.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/597/491/526/689/310/original/1e045840a42323ec.png

2023-12-06 14:01:52

We don't get to choose whether or not to live in an interconnected system. We just do. What we get to choose is whether to work with that interconnection or to ignore and fight it. One of the ways to choose to work with interconnection (i.e. work with reality) is to multisolve.

2023-11-30 14:21:47

Today would be a good day to invest the trillions spent on war and violence (within and between countries) on ecological restoration, human development, and basic needs. Imagine squandering wealth (the temporarily captured energy of a nearby star, transmuted into human and ecological effort) on destruction instead of nurturance.

2023-11-10 23:21:41

I love direct air capture. The kind that's already been done. By living organisms creating hydrocarbons sequestered in the Earth's crust. Let's all celebrate direct air capture by not digging any more of them up....

2023-10-30 13:00:11

Reminder that we could frame addressing climate change as (1)deciding to leave fossil fuels in the ground and (2) taking care of each other as we figure out how to equitably meet human needs w/o fossil fuels.

2023-10-28 20:45:51

I was on the sidewalk today when I was sideswiped by a bat who underestimated her wingspan. She was about four years old and was headed to a park with a fairy and a devil. This - friends, imagination, holidays – is what childhood should be for all children, never bombs, shrapnel, and explosions.

2023-10-21 15:30:07

Look who's got fall colors
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2023-10-21 15:29:32

Still waiting for the day when its as normal to filter agents of disease out of the air as it is out of the water.

2023-10-02 13:06:23

When we moved to this valley 25 years ago, we always celebrated if we could make it to Sept 18 -20th without a killing frost. Today we will have tomatoes and basil with our lunch. All week we will have highs in the above 80°F and lows in the 50's.
One brain center purrs in delight.
Another tightens up in fear.
Nicelarming.

2023-10-02 12:42:30

A riddle from my systems thinking teachers: A pond starts out with a single lily pad. The lily pads double each day. If, on the 30th of the month the pond is completely covered with lily pads, on what day is it half-way covered?
Extra credit: what does this have to do with our current situation?

2023-09-25 21:26:43

Bringing the economy within the limits of the Earth is hard.
.
.
.
.
The alternative is harder.

2023-09-24 14:24:34

#Seed processing has gone vertical due to lack of flat surfaces in the house.
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2023-09-23 17:58:40

Tomatoes
Oh so red
Oh so ripe
Oh so many
September
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2023-09-21 14:27:07

People tell me don't have time to teach systems thinking to citizens and leaders of governments and businesses. But I tend to think we don't have time not to. Pretty much every crisis we face has, somewhere in it, a failure of systems thinking, and every ethical travesty too, because in systems thinking the moral and the practical are usually the same thing.

2023-09-21 13:57:40

📣 Exciting announcement from the Biden Admin about the American Climate Corps. (though wish it could me more $$$) Look at all these #multisolving opportunities. 🙏 to tireless advocacy from the Sunrise Movement and others. https://www.whitehouse.gov/climatecorps/
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2023-09-07 13:35:47

We need a word/image/metaphor for a wartime scale effort to deploy peacemaking, loving kindness, restoration, reparations & mutual support (when mutual includes people and other species). That dominant systems and the culture which created them don't have words, examples, and metaphors for this helps explain, I believe, why so much feels so stuck.

2023-09-05 21:20:48

I think Mastodon is rising to be my preferred social media place after some experimenting. Wondering how it is settling out for others? And why, if you'd care to share.

2023-09-03 17:46:42

I prefer my government to be grounded in the needs of people (as mediated by say epidemiology or climatology) not the needs of capital (as mediated by, say campaign contributions or gifted vacations). You?

2023-09-02 11:56:29

This current dominant worldview would be serving better if...
- earth were infinite
- people didn't feel pain at the suffering of others
- our bodies were not made of the exact same stuff as the world, flowing in and out of us
- other species weren't part of what keeps the world steady
But alas....
Easier to update a worldview than a world.

2023-08-23 01:59:27

Isn't it something that the beauty is part of why we fight, and also part of what sustains us in the fighting? And isn't is something that, by trying to protect places for the future, we get to be blessed by them in the present?
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2023-08-21 13:52:07

Welcome to one more day where there's good work calling to be doe in the space between "nothing is wrong" and "all is lost."

2023-08-19 01:01:35

Signs of collapse and signs of an ecological society emerging coexist right now, in my opinion. The news covers the scary parts, and we need to know, and not look away. But lets not miss the little shoots of a saner more connected ecological-social-economic system either. What's a hint of a life-sustaining society emerging you've seen of late?

2023-08-11 21:14:21

As #climate disasters pile up this summer some thoughts from me about ways to build #resilience for extreme events that pay off in ordinary, non-emergency days too. https://www.multisolving.org/multisolving-for-resilience-rita-summit-recap/

2023-08-01 12:36:26

There are two free online events I'm speaking at in August that I'm excited about. First on August 8th at the Resilience in the Anthropocene conference I will be part of panel Community, Reciprocity, and Sustainability. https://www.ritasummit.org/

2023-07-18 20:16:07

If you have to deal with disasters while you decarbonize and decarbonize while you deal with disasters, doesn't it make sense to try to do both together? https://themessenger.com/opinion/disaster-recovery-efforts-can-serve-more-than-one-goal

2023-07-16 23:58:53

There's not enough time to do one thing at a time.
https://themessenger.com/opinion/disaster-recovery-efforts-can-serve-more-than-one-goal

2023-07-15 15:15:39

This one's heartfelt. My new op-ed out today. Imagining a recovery in Vermont that would design for the future that’s coming, not the past we once knew and expand the idea of recovery to include nature and community, as well as bridges and roads https://themessenger.com/opinion/disaster-recovery-efforts-can-serve-more-than-one-goal #multisolving #VTflood23 #ClimateCrisis

2023-07-15 11:26:45

Floods say stop burning fossil fuels.
Storm surge says stop burning fossil fuels.
Wildfires say stop burning fossil fuels.
Heat waves say stop burning fossil fuels.
Hot hot ocean says stop burning fossil fuels.
Melting ice says stop burning fossil fuels.
Exxon says....

2023-07-14 12:17:31

You'll know we are treating climate change as the emergency it is when the pace of infrastructure change is faster than the escalation in the severity and frequency of climate shocks.

2023-07-13 14:05:14

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Taking that short trip by bike instead of car. Saving up for the induction stove. Helping someone else figure out the incentives for an induction stove. Eating a vegetarian dinner (make it fancy and festive). In that spirit, what's one small action you have taken recently that helped you feel a little less alone or a little less frozen? We can inspire each other by sharing our actions large and small.

2023-07-13 14:04:16

One antidote to climate paralysis and grief (in my experience) is doing small things. Making a donation to climate relief efforts or environmental justice campaigns. Writing a letter to the editor. Sharing your concern about climate change even when it's uncomfortable to speak up (almost always someone else will thank you for it though). We are (again in my experience) all less alone than we think.

2023-07-12 11:43:07

Don't look up.
Don't look at the flooding in Vermont.
Don't look at the flooding in Spain, India, or Japan either.
Don't look at the coral forecast
Don't look at the balmy water off Florida.
Don't look at the heat dome in Texas.
Don't look at the Antarctic ice anomaly
Don't look

2023-07-10 15:07:03

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Are you good at chatting and listening? How many people can you reach who just need a safe space for thoughts they might be thinking but haven't yet consolidated into conviction and action?

2023-07-10 14:59:05

If this is the summer you've decided #climatechange is here and it's bad", welcome to the movement(s). We need you. There's so much to do, and much that can be turned.

2023-07-09 20:48:52

The wealthiest industry in world history would be the most indebted if they had to pay the costs of climate damages.

2023-07-09 15:16:46

Cognitive dissonance is two headlines days apart:
Today was the warmest day on earth in 125,000 years.
Today was the day with the most planes in the air at one time ever in history.

2023-07-08 12:44:05

What if everyone thinks we are in an emergency but they think they are the only one?
What if everyone is waiting someone to send of the signal that it's OK to step out of emergency mode?
Check in with your friends and colleagues, and you might be surprised?

2023-07-07 21:07:30

I find I get this uneasy feeling in my belly every time earth system parameters hop outside of the limits of the last 125,000 years. You?

2023-07-07 13:23:12

All those curves of new growth in low carbon technology are exciting and hopeful. We need those possibilities.
But the curves of adoption of values like justice, sufficiency, and interdependence? How are those curves doing?

2023-07-02 14:59:39

"Our lungs, which don’t reach full maturity until our early 20s, undergo rapid growth in the first few years of life. Children also breathe faster than adults relative to their size and tend to spend more time outside, thus taking in more polluted air."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/opinion/wildfire-smoke-air-quality-kids-children-health.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2023-07-02 01:38:14

Hey new followers, welcome!
We can walk away from systems that don't serve us, including social media systems! We can experiment with reestablishing networks after they are disrupted too - that's a good thing to know how to do in these times.
Things you'll find me posting about:
#climate
#health
#equity
#resilience
#multisolving
#systemsthinking
#gardens

2023-06-27 18:41:51

We are getting pretty good at seeing the signals of climate change (maps, graphs, satellites images, stories from people on the ground). What about the signals of a life-sustaining society emerging? What would you look for, in the midst of the noise, the challenges, the collapses, and the crises? Would you know it when you saw it?

2023-06-27 11:51:01

If everyone realized that the atmosphere and ocean moved through their own bodies would we treat the ocean and the atmosphere differently? For that matter, would we treat our own bodies differently?

2023-06-26 19:49:07

We can respond to crisis with multi-layered responses. Heat waves demand emergency public health measures AND greening cities AND weatherization AND installing heat pumps AND investing in renewables and the grid to deliver them.
Also: each of those actions can address more than one goal. Cooling centers can also be literacy centers or health clinics. Weatherization's good when it's cold as well as hot. Same for heat pumps and renewables. All of it can create jobs and foster connection.

2023-04-10 20:37:46

Invention idea - food grade hot water bottle filled with very hot tea and equipped with an insulated straw. Like those camelback things but for the more sedentary.