viewing the past year - post holiday newsletter

18 January. Written over the Pacific enroute from Tokyo to DC

Dear Family and Friends,

This was a year of travels and the beginning of transitions. If I am to keep to my self- imposed 1 page length, I can do little more than recount events, with few reflections. As some may recall, I stepped down officially as Director, Center for Teaching Excellence and began a one-year sabbatical in July 2009. In early January, I loaded up books, electronic equipment and other necessaries for a 7-month stay in Singapore as of Visiting Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. The environment was welcoming. The Lee Kuan Yew School, located adjacent to Singapore’s Botanical Gardens occupies buildings on the site of what was once “Raffles College,” where the late Mrs. Lee Kuan Yew, Choo Kwa, ranked first in her class and “Minister Mentor” Lee ranked second as secondary school students. I moved into a spacious two-bedroom 10th floor apartment in National University of Singapore subsidized housing. Each day, I could view Singapore awakening from my balcony.

My principal projects were completing a paper drawing lessons from Singapore’s post independence history that would be relevant to global sustainability issues, deepening my knowledge of Singapore’s political economy and promoting the use of System Dynamics computer modeling as a planning tool to Singapore government officials. I pursued these while my wife, her horses and our cats were coping with mountains of snow in the worst winter Washington DC had encountered in years. My Singapore sojourn offered the advantage of easy, inexpensive access to Sri Lanka, where the project to translate Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Development and Terrorism into 16 pamphlet sized booklets (8 in Sinhala, 8 in Tamil) continued to progress. The second two were “launched” in January 2011, just a day or so ago. The summer concluded with presentation of a paper at the Annual System Dynamics Society Meeting in Seoul entitled “The Relevance of Urban Dynamics to Singapore’s Development: Lessons for Moving Beyond the Crisis.” This was co-authored with Lee Kuan Yew School graduate student colleague new friend, Elizabeth Ong Ling Lee.

Full time teaching was the fall semester’s principal agenda, including an undergraduate class “International Development” that was my first attempt and a graduate class “Quantitative Research Methods” that I can taught many times, but not for 10 years. Both classes were relatively large – 25 in the graduate class; 33 in the undergraduate. I had forgotten how long correcting papers can take, especially if one provides fairly extensive comments. Fortunately my students were both bright – and patient – which made things easier.

For Christmas, I drove to Kentucky to spend three days with our four grandchildren, my son, and other family members. Once retirement transition is settled, I intend to spend more time “grand parenting,” Its fun. Wife E… continues to live an intense and interesting life dividing full days and evenings between teaching, riding, caring for her horses and spending time with friends. She won the prize for “most helpful member” at the Old Dominion Endurance Riding Association’s annual banquet. Daughter H…. divides full days between her landscaping, restaurant serving and a new practice – mosaic murals, including an awesomely large and beautiful production in Tarpon Springs Florida. With friends, she has purchased property in Panama that she hopes to develop as a resort. Son J…’s broodmare nurturing business in Kentucky appears to be doing well; he continues to pursue a vocation he loves in some of the most beautiful country in the US. Son B…’s work as President of Shaklee International appears to be thriving. I attended events in Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and was impressed with his charismatic platform presence before what appeared enthusiastic cadres of salesperson-representatives… That’s all the news one page will allow – my love and best wishes to all in the New Year. Dormgrandpop.

Helping policy makers to view climate change as a system

In early August, I attended the Annual meeting of the System Dynamics (computer modeling) Society, held in Seoul, South Korea. My last visit to Seoul was many years ago when I attended the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, organized by the Rev. Son Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church. I was amazed at how city had grown and how much more relaxed and self-confident the Koreans I encountered in my walking about appeared to be. Among my conference roles was serving as Rapporteur for the concluding plenary session, focusing on environmental issues. I thought the two papers given and the issues raised, summarized in my notes, were of sufficient interest to merit a more general sharing. I do acknowledge this is a bit long for a blog posting.

RAPPORTEURS NOTES ON THE ENVIRONMENT PLENARY

John Sterman, Andrew Jones, Thomas Fiddaman, Elizabeth Sawin, Travis Frank, The Road From Copenhagen: Supporting International Climate Negotiations with the C-ROADS SIMULATION.

When John Sterman, spoke at the 27^th International Conference in Albuquerque, the Climate Interactive Group, which he leads, was preparing for the December 2009 Copenhagen Conference. The audience mostly comprised true believers, who accepted climate change as a manifestation of global overshoot and collapse. They respected – perhaps even revered – John’s work as the best System Dynamics modeling has to offer. Most were aware of the C-Roads Model. Some had used its findings as a basis for similar presentations, workshops or university courses. Yet John’s passionate delivery brought to mind the prophet Jeremiah’s vivid description of probable scenarios leading to the conquest of Israel and the privations its people would face. In retrospect, I believe John may have been using the Albuquerque venue as a warm-up for presentations he would be giving to less congenial audiences in the upcoming months.

John’s post Copenhagen retrospective delivered in Seoul highlighted many climate change projections that the Albuquerque audience had heard. (Many participants in the Seoul conference had not traveled to Albuquerque and were less familiar with C-Roads.) Temperatures were rising more rapidly than had been projected. The impacts that are already visible will become more severe. Coastal cities will be threatened, the ecosystems that support present agricultural production systems will be altered, the trend of more frequent extreme weather events will proliferate. “Runaway changes” with unpredictable, irreversible effects are becoming more and more probable. “We are playing Russian Roulette with a revolver in which nineteen out of 20 chambers are loaded,” John concluded this part of his talk. “The risks will be borne by our children.”

But vitally though this message was, it should not be the most important take-away for Seoul participants. The take-away should be about how difficult it is enact any significant policy change, requiring transformation of deeply held attitudes, where the status quo is reinforced by entrenched institutions, limited grasp of system complexity, myopic time horizons and self serving powerful actors. In 2009, John drew an analogy between reversing climate change and effecting meaningful civil rights policy. In 2010, his message was that effecting policies to reverse climate change is, for a variety of reasons, the far more daunting task.

Since the early days of the Club of Rome and the IIASA Global Modeling conferences, an aging generation of System Dynamics Modelers has grappled with the challenges of changing public attitudes and influencing policy makers regarding global-scale challenges. The work of the C-Roads team demonstrates how much has been learned, by at least some members of our community. The work is grounded in high-quality scientific research. There is a serious commitment to dissemination and recognition that dissemination is fundamentally different enterprise than research, with its own imperatives, technologies and pitfalls. There is recognition that raising public consciousness and influencing policy makers, too, are different, though interdependent enterprises. The work is being carried forward by a talented, multifaceted team with adequate funding and a commitment to the long haul. There is much to be learned from their experience. We can help forward their important work with our approbation, our support and our prayers.

Andrew Ford, Greening the Economy with New Markets: Lessons from System Dynamics Simulation of Energy and Environmental Markets

That I have less to say about Andy Ford’s fine paper and presentation should not be interpreted as a reflection on its quality. In fact, the two plenary presentations and the issues they raise are interrelated. Andy is grappling with climate change proposals under consideration at the national level. His paper “focuses on the CLEAR Act introduced by US Senators Maria Cantwell (of Washington) and Susan Collins (of Maine). It calls for the imposition of a scientifically based cap on CO2 emissions. The cap would apply to the upstream companies that produce or import fossil fuels. The higher prices of fossil fuels would then work their way through the US energy system, sending improved signals to al business on the value of avoiding CO2 emissions.” Legislation such as CLEAR, backed up high quality modeling work such as Greening the Economy… describes, will necessarily play an important role in reversing the process of climate change, if it is to occur.

Greening the Economy…, presenting a model Andy describes as “preliminary” is none the less an exemplar of how public-policy oriented System Dynamics modeling should be executed and documented. It is the sort of paper I assign to my students with the injunction “if your final project paper looks like this, will have met my expectations.” The model, of mid-level size, is presented with a stock-flow Vensim diagram that is easily understood. It illustrates a strength of System Dynamics modeling, the ability to seamlessly combine physical and financial stock-flow dynamics within a single structure. It provides the capacity to explore scenarios that fall within the CLEAR legislation’s purview and those that extend beyond it. Model results show that the “cap and dividend’ mechanism proposed by CLEAR shows promise, but that market volatility is a possibility under some scenarios, raising concerns that may need to be addressed in regulatory regimes that are implemented under the legislation. Further work at the University of Washington is envisioned.

Juxtaposing this model alongside C-Roads raises the evocative question of how the team at WSU should set its priorities. The next milestone in their project seems clear: refinement of the model and publication of results in one or more peer reviewed journals. But what then? The experience of the Climate Interactive Group and others in our community point to the challenges a commitment to dissemination poses, and the resources it requires. In academic communities, there is little agreement that the sort of dissemination C-Roads represents is an appropriate activity for university faculty members, especially those seeking tenure. Once this fine model has moved beyond the preliminary stage and results have been published, Andy’s team will face the challenge described so beautifully by Poet Robert Frost in “The Road not Taken.”

What one hopes for in professional meetings but rarely, if ever, encounters

July 30th

The occasion of my brief Korean trip was System Dynamics Society Annual meeting. The Society meetings are what one hopes conventions and association meetings will provide - high quality papers, conversations with colleagues sharing common interests, an opportunity to make new friends and a remarkable sense of community.

The field was founded by one of the great intellects of modern times - Professor Jay W. Forrester, now emeritus at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Since the field is new - the first papers appeared in the 1950s - most of the field’s leaders and founders are not only still living but attend the Annual Meetings regularly. (Tragic exceptions are MacArthur Genius grantee, Donella Meadows and creator of the first graphical user interface for System Dynamics Modeling (Stella), Barry Richmond). Most studied with Professor Forrester at MIT (as I did for a memorable year, but later in my professional career). In contrast to many fields, leaders and luminaries mingle freely and informally with newcomers and students. No other field, in my experience, is as friendly, welcoming and inclusive. The world’s most widely read book based on a computer model The Limits to Growth (the first report to the Club of Rome) uses System Dnamics theory/methodology. So do parts of other "global models."

The fact that all members share a common theoretical-methodological language (emphasizing dynamic behavior generated by feedback loops) also sets the field apart. Whether the topic of discussion is sustainability of the planet earth, urban development in Asia (my own present interest), efficiency in project management or improving product marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, all can understand the presentation and contribute. Discussions are lively, informed, respectful and collegial.

Even if you feel you have no interest in System Dynamics modeling or have never even heard of it, you should check out the System Dynamics Society website and even consider attending an annual meeting (the next will be in July 2011 in Washington DC). The experience will remind you of what you may have hoped for in a professional association but had - sadly - come to accept that attaining that vision of professionalism, community and collegiality was probably not possible.

The 27th System Dynamics Society Conference. What a gathered community of scholar-practitioners can - and should - be.

From a previous posting, readers will know that I spent the past several days at the 27th annual meeting of the System Dynamics Society, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Society now numbers about 1100 members and more than 450 were in attendance. I attended the very first Annual Meeting and had not been back since, though I have been a Society member for most of those years. Not attending at least a few of these meetings and participating more actively in the Society’s work has, I can see, been not only a failed obligation but a personal and professional loss.

As the Society’s name suggests, what sets members apart is their interest in and knowledge of System Dynamics. System Dynamics is a way of seeking to understand complex problems that emphasizes the importance of interrelated stocks (like water in a bathtub), flows in and out of stocks (like faucets and drains) and feedback loops. Examples of feedback loops include, for example the bandwagon effect that causes a politician’s popularity to soar or an economy to collapse (reinforcing loops) and homeostatic ‘thermostats’ that, for example, keep our homes and bodies at livable temperatures (stabilizing loops). Often - not always - practitioners build and/or use computer simulation models to help them better understand and remediate such problems. A book published in 1972, The Limits to Growth, described the most famous System Dynamics model, called World3. World3 raised important questions about the probability that the human race, following ‘business as usual’ practices, could live sustainably of planet earth beyond the middle of the 21st century. The book, which has been updated twice, with no significant changes in its conclusions, remains one of the best discussions of ‘sustainability’ issues ever written.

It is always hard to write about System Dynamics in a brief column or blog, because one must begin with a brief description, like the one I have attempted above, of what it is. One thing hat quickly creates a strong bond among System Dynamics Society Meeting participants is that such explanations are not necessary. Not only do participants share a common language, the fundamentally agree on the value of the approach Because the common language and shared agreement as to its value are points of departure, discussions can move quickly to matters of substance in which all can participate. This is true whether the topic is reversing global warming, managing large construction projects more efficiently, understanding the causes of terrorism or narrowing the gap between rich and poor in large urban megacenters.

Another distinction: the field is new enough so that most of its founding gurus are still active, passionately committed and were present at the meeting. Founder Jay Forrester, still vigorous and mentally incisive at age 95, rarely travels, but remains a living presence. Those who studied with him, all have ‘Jay Forrester stories’ to tell over meals and in other times of casual conversation. Two other field leaders who died prematurely and tragically, Limits to Growth principal author Donella Meadows and ‘Stella’ software developer Barry Richmond were known to many of us. References to them evoked bitter-sweet memories and stories to share with new and younger members.

Three other distinctions: the humility of field’s leaders, their active presence at the meeting at their obvious delight in mentoring newer members, old and young. Dennis Meadows was recently honored with the Club of Rome Lifetime Achievement Award and Japan for sustainability award. John Sterman holds the J.W. Forrester professorship at MIT. Peter Senge’s books on applying System Dynamics principles to create ‘learning organizations’ are widely read. The demands on his time to speak and consult are far more than he can meet and his contributions have improved the management practices of thousands. These luminaries and many others of near equal emminence could be seen throughout the five days, mingling with the crowd, taking time to mentor a new member, gathering around a poster session describing System Dynamics work of an elementary school teacher or high school junior. At the conferences ‘closing session,’ though it would continue for two additional ‘bonus days’ by popular demand, those who participated actively in organizing the event were asked to come to front of the hall. More than 100 participants gathered, and that did not include those of us who had reviewed papers for possible presentation. Had that group been included, more nearly half those in the room would have standing for acknowledgment.

I am so proud to have been accepted once again as a member of this distinctive community despite having been so long absent and done so little to contribute over many years. And, God willing , there is still time for me to contribute. At the heart of my sabbatical research project on sustainable poverty alleviation will be a System Dynamics model. I will be returning to active teaching in the field. And I intend to make attendance at future meetings of the System Dynamics Society a priority.