Where Is Nature Going?

This week, we zoom out to the broader intellectual themes that shaped Decouple’s origins five years ago. I’m joined by Jesse Ausubel, a visionary in sustainability and biodiversity research and the Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University in New York City. In his long career, Ausubel pioneered the modern study of decarbonization and dematerialization in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He helped organize the first UN World Climate Conference in 1979 and spent the 1980s at the National Academies formulating U.S. and global climate research programs. In parallel, he has led major biodiversity initiatives including the decade-long Census of Marine Life, the DNA Barcode of Life project, and continues surveying ocean biodiversity using environmental DNA.In this conversation, Ausubel shows how the simple framework of logistic S-curves can illuminate fundamental trends across complex systems, including energy systems. Through this lens, we discuss the “environmental trifecta” of land-sparing, decarbonization, and dematerialization, and we explore whether apparent counter-trends challenge Ausubel’s framework. Suffusing the interview is Ausubel’s belief in the wisdom of long-term thinking and objectivity: simple, insightful frameworks are a starting point for admitting much-needed complexity into our worldviews. Join us in this rare examination of the mental models that claim to predict our environmental future.