Climate Foresight 2025

Figure 5 - Causal Layered Analysis (Inayatullah 2008) Climate issues are inherently complex, with many possible mitigants and unintended consequences (Slaughter 2020; Wright and Meadows 2009). Environmental remedies are not straightforward financial mechanisms with clear supply-demand dynamics. As a market-based solution, VCMs must account for this. In this sense, Meadows (1999) posits the need for systems change to create a “pattern disruption” (Cairney 2012 a, 3 1) - disrupting path dependence, which is a symptom of organizational and systemic inertia and short-termism (Boulton 2010). To achieve this, environmental remedies require systems change (Wright andMeadows 2009). O’Brien (2018) also promotes the role of leverage points in achieving pattern disruption and systems change. O’Brien (2018) frames these leverage points as a series of practical, political, andpersonal levers that, in aggregate, can promote system s c hange for climate action. Similar to Meadows (1999), O’Brien (2018) emphasizes that personal factors, includingpersonal worldviews and beliefs towards VCMs, have the most leverage for systems change. Climate Foresight: Transforming the Voluntary Carbon Markets, by Roger Spitz & James Balzer 16 © Disruptive Futures Institute, March 2025