The PSU PIE Initiative hosts Professor Christopher Kennedy, University of Victoria, presenting "Transitioning Metabolism."
To address climate change and other global environmental challenges requires a major transition in socio-economic metabolism. This lecture begins with a review of the ‘metabolism’ concept from an industrial ecology lens, and then examines metabolic transitions through relationships between capital and energy. Capital can be interpreted from dual perspectives – both physical and financial. From a physical perspective, three relationships are central to growth and change in metabolism: i) energy is required to build capital assets; ii) energy is required to use capital assets; iii) capital assets are needed to produce and distribute energy. Example studies of capital-energy relationships from the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression and the 21st century show how energy transitions have played out.