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Planetary limits
Learning to flourish within them
Blue Marble Photo
Dec 1972, Apollo 17







Brian D. Fath, Ph.D. – bfath@towson.edu
}
}Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
}Principal Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg,
Austria
}Fulbright Distinguished Chair, Dept of Environmental Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, CR
}

}B.S. Physics. B.S. Aeronautics (Miami University, Oxford, Ohio)
}
}Started M.S. program in Aeronautical Engineering, switched to Environmental Science with focus on
energy resources (peak oil modelling) (Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio)
◦During this time exposed to systems ecology (Patten, Odum, Jorgensen), ecological economics (Daly,
Costanza), environmental history and philosophy (Cobb, Rawls, Cronon)
}
}Ph.D. in Systems Ecology developing and applying network methods for whole system analysis –
direct and indirect effects. (University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia)
}
}Currently, applying these approaches on socio-economic-ecological networks, namely urban
metabolism, food-energy-water, regenerative economy, etc.

Course Goals:
1.To provide students with a basic understanding of the environment as a system including the
biological, physical, and chemical foundations of ecosystem services
2.
2. To understand how nature provides resources and constraints to socio-economic development and to
students’ everyday life.
3. To learn how human activities impact and interfere with this ecological functioning
4. To explore how human activities could promote sustainable, win-win, flourishing outcomes within
these limits
Course Outline: Arranged in 6- 3 hour blocks; specific readings (in bold) from Encyclopedia of
Ecology, Fath and Jørgensen (eds). 2019. Elsevier.

Feb 29 - 3 hours (virtual) 12:00–15:00 CET
Lecture 1: Systems thinking: Where it comes from and where it goes; Human Ecology; Energy resources
Readings: Ecological Systems Thinking: D W Orr; Human Ecology: Overview: F Steiner
March 7 - 3 hours (virtual) 12:00–15:00 CET
Lecture 2: Natural ecosystems, ecological succession, ecosystem services; Limits to Growth
Readings: Ecosystem Services: K A Brauman and G C Daily; Limits to Growth: B D Fath
March 14 - 3 hours (virtual) 12:00–15:00 CET
Lecture 3: Flourishing within limits
Readings: Flourishing within limits: Jørgensen et al. 2015 Chapters 1, 2 & 3
Student groups to lead the chapters
March 20 ???
March 21 - 3 hours In person 12:00–15:00 CET
Lecture 4: Flourishing within limits
Readings: Flourishing within limits: Jørgensen et al. 2015 Chapters 4, 5 & 6
Student groups to lead the chapters
March 28 - 3 hours (virtual) 12:00–15:00 CET
Lecture 5: Flourishing within limits; summary
Readings: Flourishing within limits: Jørgensen et al. 2015 Chapters 7, 8 & 9
Student groups to lead the chapters
April 4 - 3 hours (virtual) 12:00-15:00 CET
Lecture 6: A path to Sustainability
Readings: Ecological Footprint: M Wackernagel and J Kitzes




“The greatest discovery of the past century had nothing to do with nuclear physics, or computer
science, or genetic engineering.  Rather it was the discovery of the essential connectedness of
life and environment.”
Orr 2019
“It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of species.  We know now
what was unknown to all proceeding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with
other creatures in the odyssey of evolution.
Leopold 1949
Moving toward the Ecozoic!!

Professor David Orr
Oberlin College
Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus
Senior Advisor to the Oberlin College President
Systems thinker, writer, and orator.

Oberlin’s Environmental Science Building:
Adam Joseph Lewis Center, was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building
of the past 30 years,” and as “one of 30 milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S.
Dept of Energy.

}“There is no such thing as autonomy;
there is only a distinction between responsible and irresponsible dependence” p.116  - Berry 1977


}“We live in a web of obligations and relationships that transcend the conventional boundaries by
which we organize academic disciplines and bureaucracies” Orr, 2017, p. xv
}“humans have appropriated the majority of the planet’s net primary productivity” Orr, 2017, p. xvi

Environmental education – gaining Eco-literacy
should constitute a comprehensive lifelong education … and the provision of skills and attributes
needed to play a productive role toward improving life and protecting the environment with due
regard given to ethical values.
By adopting a holistic approach, rooted in a broad interdisciplinary base, it recreates an overall
perspective which acknowledges the fact that natural environment and manmade environment are
profoundly interdependent….
UN-sponsored Conference at Tbilisi, Georgia, 1978
the idea of interrelatedness has yet to take hold of us in a deep way.
We still live in thrall to a world created by Descartes, Bacon, Galileo, and their heirs who taught
us to dissect, divide, parse, and analyze by reduction but not how to put things back together or
see the world as systems and patterns.
Orr, 2019

What educational experiences have had the most effect on you?
How can the current educational system be reformed to focus on these items?
How will education be different in the future?

}Does four years at college make you a better planetary citizen?
}
}Does this college contribute to the development of a sustainable regional economy or, in the name
of efficiency, to the processes of destruction?

}Where does stuff come from?  Where does it go?
}
}“No student should graduate without understanding how to analyze resource flows and without the
opportunity to participate in the creation of real solutions to real problems.”

}Every student should graduate with basic comprehension of:
}the laws of thermodynamics
}the basic principles of ecology
}carrying capacity
}energetics
}least-cost, end-use analysis
}how to live well in a place
}limits of technology
}appropriate scale
}sustainable agriculture and forestry
}steady-state economics
}environmental ethics
}




Modelling Function
Complex Reality
Abstract Model

Patten - Systems Ecology lecture notes
The filter or “corruption”


System
(Self, Species, City,
State, Nation)
Environment
Environment is “out there”
Separation and fragmentation of the system from its environment

H
Input Environment
Output Environment
New perspective, system is focus of two environments
System
Environment
Old perspective, dichotomy between system and environment

Object
Hi
Hj
Hj
Hj
Hj
Hj
Hj
Hj
System
Environment
Feedback
Any object/system is inseparable from its TWO ENVIRONMENTS

}The concept of … place becomes simplified as ‘the environment’ that is, what surrounds us.
}Once we see our place, our part of the world, as surrounding us, we have already made a profound
division between it and ourselves.
}We have given up the understanding - dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought -
that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one
another;
}our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; all who
are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot
possibly flourish alone;
}our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other
and inseparably from each other, and so neither can be better than the other.
–Berry (1977, p. 24).

Homework – identify 1 mineral element that is used in the making of your smart phone, describe
where it comes from and the extraction methods to get it.
What happens to it when you are done with the phone?
Post your findings on the Blackboard discussion page.
The environment is not “out there”, but rather in you and on you, a part of you

}See how things are connected and interrelated
}Where does it come from?
}Where does it go?
}
}Complex – many parts, many interactions
}Adaptive – respond and change
}Systems – set of parts interacting together to function as a whole
}

In other words, the action intended to solve the problem actually makes it worse because unintended
side effects change the system & end up exacerbating the problem.


}Acid precipitation/rain
}Ozone depletion
}Eutrophication
}Global climate change
}Automobile dependency
}…
}All of today’s major environmental problems emerge from yesterday’s solutions.
}

Sea level rise
Soil erosion
Water pollution
Toxins and waste
Automobile dependency

}Humans are part of the biosphere;
}We are living organisms like other animals in many respects, but
◦we have an advanced social organization, and
◦the ability to extract and use energy and resources that characterizes us and our impacts on the
planet.
}That does not make us independent from the environment though

}Recognize physical, planetary boundaries and capacities
}Understand sustainable system design and function
}Act accordingly, in all things, at all times, as part of a routine with nature