Mario Giampietro: “Models with Meaning - Changing Social Practices”

Episode 107
January 31, 2024

(Conversation recorded on October 17th, 2023)  

Show Summary

On this episode, Nate is joined by biophysical analyst Mario Giampietro to unpack his decades of research on a wide-lens view of the challenges facing the human system. With current metrics that only optimize for one variable, increasingly reductionist academic fields, and scientific communication consistently falling short, researchers who look at how all the pieces of our predicament fit together and most effectively help others understand will become more essential. How does the scope with which we look at a problem affect the subsequent information we gather and decisions we make? In what way should we frame the narratives that we create to best inform our leaders and the public about the obstacles of the future? Will taking on these issues from a different lens help to create better, multi-dimensional responses that include biophysical, cultural, and social components as we move into the coming decades?

About Mario Giampietro

Mario Giampietro has recently retired from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona. Until September 2023, he was ICREA Research Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He has dedicated his academic career to the integrated assessment of (uncomfortable) sustainability issues using concepts from complex systems theory. He has developed a novel methodology, Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), that integrates biophysical and socioeconomic variables across multiple scales, thus establishing a link between the metabolism of socio-economic systems and potential constraints of the natural environment. Recent research has focused on the nexus between land use, food, energy, and water in relation to SDGs. He has (co)authored over 150 publications, including six books.

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Show Notes & Links to Learn More

PDF Transcript

00:00 - Mario Giampietro works + info,

Supplemental materials for the episode: Combining Biosemiotics and Post-Normal Science to Study the Formation and Adaptation of the Identity of Modern Society, The biosemiotic process: How to reproduce and adapt the identity of social systems by combining emotions and language

00:36 - MuSIASEM

02:43 - University of Valladolid 

03:10 - Joan Martinez Alier

03:40 - J.M. Naredo, Ramon Margalef

05:38 - Differential Equation

06:00 - The international division of labor and embodied working time in trade for the US, the EU and China

Additional resources: The profile of time allocation in the metabolic pattern of society: An internal biophysical limit to economic growth 

A becoming China and the assisted maturity of the EU: Assessing the factors determining their energy metabolic patterns

07:22 - Relational System Theory 

09:20 - How much energy do countries consume when we take offshoring into account? 

13:56 - There is a large variety of energy

14:20 - EROI

18:51 - Kozo Mayumi

19:20 - Scarcity

20:44 - Carbon Pulse

21:17 - The American Dream is a myth

28:05 - Adaptive Cycles

28:23 - C. S. Holling

28:59 - Herb Simon

29:10 - Ilya Prigogine

29:25 - Niklas Luhmann

32:40 - Biosemiotics

33:02 - Reductionism in modern society and academics

34:28 - Limits to Growth

36:05 - Dependence of modern agriculture on fossil fuels

37:15 - Circular Economy

37:43 - The issue with how science gets funded

39:15 - Jon Stewart daily show clip of presidents promising to fix energy issues

42:10 - Group identity and scientific communication

42:51 - Degrowth vs Post-growth

43:08 - Care economy

43:23 - Giorgos Kallis + TGS Episode, Julia Steinberger

43:50 - Quantitative Storytelling 

Additional resources: What is wrong with evidence based policy, and how can it be improved?

Knowledge claims in European Union energy policies: Unknown knowns and uncomfortable awareness

44:11 - Smoking and doubt narrative

44:44 - EU’s recycle cooked oil program

48:25 - Young people disenfranchisement and lack of agency

57:00 - The Leopard: A Novel - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 

59:37 - Nora Bateson + TGS Episode, Warm Data

1:08:58 - Intermittent limitations in energy production

1:11:47 - Europe scaling hydrogen/green hydrogen

1:2:42 - Germany investing a lot of money into hydrogen

1:12:55 - Complications of electrifying the energy grid

1:20:40 - Average age of farmer across countries

1:22:08 - Farmers are 1% of the american workforce 

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Steve Keen: "On the Origins of Energy Blindness”

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Alexa Firmenich: "Biodiversity, Beauty, and Being”