I love Dr. Bezio’s point about the titanic being a system that people believed to be so big and strong it could not be sunk. But because many individual mistakes made by members of the system took place it did. We live in Systems surrounded by systems, we grew up in systems, we learn in systems, every part of my life that I can think of is some sort of system. And the things that go wrong in it are system failures. I feel as though I have no control over any of these systems, but I do believe I have an influence on them. The little things I do and say in my everyday life affect the systems around me, and while I may only be one person and have never felt like my voice could make much of a difference I do know that I affect the systems I am in.
Something that stood out to me in the podcast was Dr. Bezio’s mention of the ecological effects of the shutdown period last spring into summer. When I found out last year that our emissions had gone down by an extreme amount while we were all in quarantine I had very mixed feelings. I was glad that I could see that there are ways for us to slow down our emissions which are affecting the climate but discouraged to see (not realize, because I already knew this) the change that us not leaving our homes each and every day to go to work, or school had on the environment. Seeing things like this does not give me hope “that we can make a difference if we change” but discourages me to see that the systems we have in place are so detrimental that by fixing one thing we often hurt another. The changes it took to affect the environment in a good way (for a short time) were so bad for everything else. How tightly weaved our systems are make them all the more difficult to reform.
I like your point about the positive effects of the pandemic in the sense that the environment benefitted from the time that people were inside and using less energy, and polluting less. It made me sad in the sense that I realized the true damage our everyday actions are having on the environment, but I think it also goes to show how important small changes are. If more people made choices to reduce their carbon footprint each day, it could have the same positive benefits. Our society is so focused on moving forward that we rarely take the time to pause as assess our actions, and the pandemic put a pause on the world that brought light to so many issues. I can only hope that we now take the time to address these issues.
It’s a great observation that we live in a system of systems that stack onto each other to create the world we know. Any individual making a decision or mistake can affect the systems they are a part of, which can cascade up or down to a variety of other systems. However, safeguards are implemented into the system to prevent collapse as a result of one system failing (or one person doing something). Preventing collapse is a good thing but it also can sometimes limit what one person can affect.
I also had really mixed feelings about the positive environmental effects of the pandemic. Our society is always looking toward progress, but progress comes at a cost. With new technology comes new problems. It is relieving to see that there is a solution to global warming, and if we reduce carbon emissions, the planet can be healthy pretty quickly (such as the dolphins returning). At the same time, it makes me really fearful because currently, technological progress does not equate with environmental concerns. I was just reading a news article about how NFTS, which are a form of digital art, have huge carbon dioxide emissions. Its something that seems so simple, but has drastic impacts. We have the data to show us those impacts now, but I am scared for each new invention where we will not know its impacts until it is too late.