Climate change is the ultimate systemic problem. It encompasses the entire planet and all the people in it. It affects every subsystem within it from water to food to finance to legal liability, yet the power of each individual actor appears vanishingly small, and is often constrained by variables seemingly beyond their control. This is particularly true of designers and builders working on the individual project level trying to balance project budgets, client desires, and the social and ecological impacts of their work.When an entire global economic industrial system is built on the ready and cheap access to fossil fuels and virtually no accountability for pollution and waste, we become systemically dependent on these technologies and lose the knowledge and means to provide resources and security for ourselves and our communities. When such systems are put under stress, fragility and vulnerability can suddenly seem glaringly obvious and overwhelming despite having been hidden only weeks or days before. Our dependence on individuals, governments and industries half a world away suddenly become painfully apparent. Houses of concrete and steel suddenly become houses of cards. Resilience is not just about energy storage or MEP systems built above flood waters; it is about finding any purchase within the existing economic and political system to avert even more catastrophic outcomes AND redesigning both socio-economic systems of support and built environments for a just and vibrant future in the context of climate disruption, and within the ecological limits of the planet. The ecologist, Howard T. Odum developed the concept of Systems Ecology. His concepts of “emergy” and “environmental accounting” were published first as Environment, Power, and Society in 1970. Meanwhile, at MIT, a team including Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, and Jorgen Randers, were commissioned by the Club of Rome to examine the effects of the growth of human populations and technologies. They developed the “World 3” Computer Model, and explored numerous scenarios of economic and material growth. An astonishing number of the modeled scenarios predicted that over-shoot of the earth’s carrying capacity was near, and collapse of the economic systems and the natural systems on which they depend was likely to occur within the lifetime of someone born that year. They published their findings in “Limits to Growth” (1972). Both approaches are based on the fundamental realization that all human prosperity depends on natural systems, and each devised concepts of energy, stocks, flows, sinks and the dynamic effects of limits, scarcity, information, perception, and the timeliness of response. Systems thinking can arm us with important habits of thought and analytical tools. This presentation will explore the potential practical applications of systems ecology in designing the most efficient and resilient structures and systems for social and economic networks as well as the built environment. In order to chart a course to decarbonization, we must understand the systemic forces at play, both ecological and economic. We need to carefully assess the value of each material and practice, in light of net carbon balance and look to leverage the inherent value in reducing carbon emissions for climate mitigation. We will explore examples of how systems ecology concepts can give us a more holistic approach to erasing our negative environmental footprint, such as being mindful of hierarchies of materials, energy and storage. We will ask how we can integrate an understanding of stocks, flows, limits, delays and feedback loops within and beyond the bounds of our building designs to create resilient, regenerative impact projects. We will explore Donella Meadows’ ideas of exploiting leverage points in systems to affect the greatest change with the least effort, whether it be in design, construction, or the larger contexts of organizing public opinion and finance around goals of decarbonization and equity. Systems analysis can teach us much about creating generative, healthy, and equitable life for humans and all creatures. By envisioning fundamental change in our culture and socio-economic system, we can then ground our practice in systems ecology to "de-grow" our material economy while delivering qualitative improvements to planet and people. At the very least, systems thinking will be the most essential skill set for anyone facing life after the societal collapse that these intellectuals and their models warn are immanent if we do not radically reform our interaction with the world around us.