Integrating Paradigm & Action

The 8th Annual Urban Soils Symposium, titled “Metabolism of Cities”, had both in-person and virtual phases. In the video linked below, I co-presented a talk with Brian Fath for the December 1, 2023 virtual symposium day, and my portion was about “Integrating Paradigm and Action”. Our talk covered topics in our book, Foundations for Sustainability (Fiscus and Fath 2019).

All of the speakers and all of the videos in this group from the Urban Soils Institute are excellent, and I highly recommend viewing them all.

In my part of the presentation I address:

• Framing the global ecological multi-crisis (system of problems) and system of solutions
• Proposed root cause of ecological multi-crisis as the reductionist, objectivity-focused, analytical, mechanistic science paradigm
• Demonstrations to illustrate key principles of the Life-Environment system
• What should we do? Proposed action steps
• Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (ASTEM) Education 2.0
• GaiaSoil, green roofs, and more exemplary actions integrated with an alternative science paradigm
• Conclusion and collaboration ideas

Any comments, suggestions,, critique, referrals, pointers, ideas, or thoughts greatly appreciated.