5 Week Course

We're seeing so many different things converging on us from environmental degradation to financial crisis. But what to they have to do with each other? We'll explore the challenges we are facing as a civilisation, ranging from environmental degradation to financial crisis. We propose a unified 3-part model that connects nature to human activity and money.

How does nature work? It's much more complex than a predictable machine, so how should we go about understanding it? We go back to first principles and explore profound themes from energy, thermodynamics and ecology to understand the dynamics of natural systems as the basis of all economic activity.

How do human societies really work? How do the cycles in nature profoundly shape everything we do? We build on our analysis of natural world from the previous session, to explore how human societies work. We look at the energy basis for our society, assess approaches to renewable energy and critique the theories of peak-oil and energy budgets (EROEI) to understand the trends we see in our world today.

How can any one person really understand the complex area of money and its effects? Is our monetary system forcing constant growth to the detriment of our environment? How can we understand the financial crisis and the explosion of public debt? In this week we simplify the complex arena of money by examining the flows of the financial world. We look to see the causes of the growth and how the limits in the real world play out in the monetary economy.

So what can I do? What does this mean to me personally, and in the face of such large global trends can I really affect anything through my actions? This week we consider the implications of the insights gained from the previous weeks, both on society and also on ourselves at a personal level. What does this perspective suggest for a reasonable response? What are our next steps?