physics

Paul Raskin

Paul Raskin is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Paul Raskin rather than just read about it. In short: Paul Raskin is the founding president of the Tellus Institute, which has conducted over 3,500 research and policy projects throughout the world on environmental issues, resource planning, scenario analysis, and sustainable development. His research and writing has centered on propagating the Great Transition.

Key takeaways

Paul Raskin belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Paul Raskin to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Paul Raskin from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Paul Raskin is the founding president of the Tellus Institute, which has conducted over 3,500 research and policy projects throughout the world on environmental issues, resource planning, scenario analysis, and sustainable development. His research and writing has centered on propagating the Great Transition. Raskin has served as a lead author on a number of high-profile international reports, including the U.S. National Academy of Science's Board on Sustainability, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook, the Earth Charter, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report.

Background Born in Chicago in 1942, Raskin was raised in California, receiving a B.A. in physics and philosophy in 1964 from the University of California, Berkeley, where his senior thesis was supervised by philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University in 1970, and taught at the university level, becoming Chair of an interdisciplinary department at the State University of New York at Albany in 1973. In 1976, he co-founded the Tellus Institute, a non-profit research ad policy organization, where he has directed an interdisciplinary team working on environmental, resource, and development issues throughout the world. Raskin also founded the U.S. center of the Stockholm Environment Institute in 1989, the Global Scenario Group (GSG) in 1995, and the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) in 2003.

Research contributions Dr. Raskin's research has evolved through several phases: energy and environmental planning, integrated freshwater assessment, climate change mitigation strategies, and sustainable development studies. He conceived, developed, and disseminated widely used planning models, including the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) system in 1980 and the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system in 1990, both now maintained by the US Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute. More recently, he created PoleStar, a comprehensive framework for exploring alternative global, regional and national scenarios. Since the Brundtland Commission's seminal Our Common Future in 1987, for which he was a contributing author, Raskin's work has centered on developing comprehensive long-range scenarios of socio-ecological systems at different spatial scales: river-basin, nation, region, and globe. Toward that end, he organized the GSG in 1995 as an interdisciplinary and international team to examine alternative global scenarios for the twenty-first century. The GSG's work culminated in the 2002 essay Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead, of which Dr. Raskin was the lead author. This essay describes the historic roots of the contemporary global challenge and considers alternative pathways for world development, advancing a Great Transition path as the preferred route. Detailed simulation of contrasting scenarios integrates a large body of social, economic, and environmental data.

Great Transition The conceptual point of departure of the Great Transition essay is that humanity is in the midst of a profound transition: the Planetary Phase of Civilization. According to this perspective, some form of global society will consolidate in the coming decades, but its ultimate character remains fundamentally and inherently uncertain. The development of the global system can branch in different directions, depending on the ways ecological systems respond to anthropogenic stresses, such as climate change and how social institutions evolve and conflicts are resolved. Most fundamentally, the form of twenty-first-century society that emerges will depend on which human values become ascendant and the choices people make in the critical years ahead. The essay envisions three broad classes of twenty-first-century scenarios — Conventional Worlds, Barbarization, and Great Transitions — and considers a number of variations within each category. This framework has been used in numerous global, regional and national scenario assessments, such as UNEP's Global Environment Outlook. A recent comprehensive review of over 450 global scenarios found the GSG's framework to be the most useful and archetypal, "a testament to the original concept of the GSG scenarios and their development and refinement over a 16 year period."

Selected publications Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization. Boston: Tellus Institute, 2016. Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead. Boston: Stockholm Environment Institute, 2002. Contours of a Resilient Global Future. Sustainability 6 (2014): 123–135. The Century Ahead: Searching for Sustainability. Sustainability 2, no. 8 (2010): 2626–2651. World Lines: A Framework for Exploring Global Pathways. Ecological Economics 65, no. 3 (2008): 461–470. Scenes from the Great Transition[link removed]. Solutions 3, no. 4 (2012): 11–17. (Accessed 6 June 2013). Global Scenarios: Background Review for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Ecosystems 8 (2005): 133–142. Imagine All the People: Advancing a Global Citizens Movement. Development 54 (2011): 287–290. The Problem of the Future: Sustainability Science and Scenario Analysis. Global Environmental Change 14 (2004): 137–146. Global Sustainability: Bending the Curve. London: Routledge Press, 2002. Halfway to the Future: A Reflection on the Global Condition. Boston: Tellus Institute, 2002. Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability. Report of the Board on Sustainability of National Academy of Sciences. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999. Bending the Curve: Toward Global Sustainability. Second Report of the Global Scenario Group. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute, 1998 (Accessed 6 June 2013). Global Energy, Sustainability and the Conventional Development Paradigm. Energy Sources 20 (1998): 363–383. Water Futures: Assessment of long-range Patterns and Problems. Background Document of the Comprehensive Assessment of the Freshwater Resources of the World. Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute/United Nations, 1997.

See also Great Transition Stockholm Environment Institute Tellus Institute Global Scenario Group Planetary Boundaries Scenario analysis Sustainable Development

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Paul Raskin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Paul Raskin claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Paul Raskin before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Paul Raskin ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Paul Raskin

In research: Paul Raskin appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Paul Raskin in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Paul Raskin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1942 births, 21st-century American physicists, American environmentalists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Paul Raskin outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Paul Raskin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Paul Raskin means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Paul Raskin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Paul Raskin in simple terms?

Why does Paul Raskin matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Paul Raskin?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Paul Raskin.