Malthus

Thunberg put her finger right on one of the key drivers of the problem: the fairytale of eternal economic growth. Many of us mistake that problem as a problem with capitalism, but really it’s more of a malthusian dynamic than that: you simply cannot and should not assume that population and industrialization can ramp indefinitely. Usually when I say something like that, someone will swan in and declare that Malthus was wrong and that we can handle a much larger population, if we’re smart about it and use resources wisely, etc. But the problem with that is that the larger your population is, the more damaging it’s going to be when something goes wrong and breaks those assumptions. I’m speaking here from my history as a descendant of Irish migrants who fled to the US because there was too much dependence on the potato. Potatoes were what brought my Norwegian ancestors over, too. Potatoes were a miracle food at the time and allowed some parts of the planet to expand their carrying capacity. not accounting for what might happen if the carrying capacity suddenly dipped because of British greed and airbone fungus. We can grow the population much larger than it is, sure, but what are the failure modes when the feedback loops get tighter and tighter. During WWII, the Bengal Famine [wik] was not a result of a drought (as it has been whitewashed to be) but rather a supply-chain management problem where the British thought they’d do well to hedge their bets against a nazi blockade by taking Bengal’s rice crop. 2.1 million people died of hunger, probably not realizing that it was Winston Churchill who had knifed them. As the population goes up, the catastrophic results of that sort of hiccup goes up, too. -- Marcus J. Ranum

The Long Descent

Where nearly all of the carbon goes, in turn, is the earth’s atmosphere, where it messes with the delicate balance of the global climate. [...] The Earth’s climate, reduced to simplest terms, is a heat engine that runs off the difference in temperature between the Sun and deep space. Back in 1772, James Watt launched the industrial revolution by figuring out that he could boost the efficiency of the crude steam engines then in use, and so get more work out of them, by reducing the rate at which heat was lost from the engine to the environment. Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere does exactly that, and the work that the Earth’s climate does is called “weather.” Thus the result of greenhouse gas pollution isn’t a steady increase in temperature—it’s an increase in all kinds of extreme weather events, coupled just now with a shift in climate bands that’s warming the poles.

Does that mean that sometime very soon industrial civilization is going to crash to ruin because of some climate-related catastrophe? No, though you’ll hear that claim made at high volume in the years ahead. Does it mean that solar and wind power or some new energy technology will save the day? No, though you’ll also hear those claims being made at equally high volume. Here again, those same claims got made during the previous energy price spikes of the 1970s and the 2000, with equally dubious results.

No, what will happen is that the annual cost of weather-related disasters will move raggedly upward with each passing year, as it’s been doing for decades, loading another increasingly heavy burden on economic activity and putting more of what used to count as a normal lifestyle out of reach for more people. With each new round of disasters, less and less will get rebuilt, as insurance companies wriggle out of payouts they can’t afford to make and government funding for disaster recovery becomes less and less adequate to meet the demand. [...] That’s the shape of our future.  It bears remembering, too, that fossil fuels aren’t the only nonrenewable resources that are being extracted at a breakneck pace just now with no thought for tomorrow. For that matter, the global climate isn’t the only natural system on which we depend that’s being disrupted by human pollution in ways that are already circling around behind us and kicking us in the backside. As Kenneth Boulding pointed out a long time ago, the only people who think that you can have limitless economic expansion on a finite planet are madmen and economists. In the real world—the world the rest of us, willy-nilly, are constrained to inhabit—actions have equal and opposite reactions, and trying to push the pedal of economic growth all the way to the metal all the time simply means that you run out of gas sooner. That’s the logic of the Long Descent: the slow, ragged, unevenly paced, but inexorable process by which a civilization that’s overshot its resource base winds up in history’s compost bin. -- John Michael Greer

Maintenance

In any operating system whose goal is homeostasis, departures from the current steady stale caused by change in the energy fluxes or their response times will tend to be corrected and a new optimum sought which incorporates the changes. A system as experienced as Gaia is unlikely to be easily disturbed. Nevertheless, we shall have to tread carefully to avoid the cybernetic disasters of runaway positive feedback or of sustained oscillation. If, for example, the methods of climate control which I have postulated were subject to severe perturbation. we might suffer either a planetary fever or the chill of an ice age, or even experience sustained oscillations between these two uncomfortable States.

This could happen if, at some intolerable population density, man had encroached upon Gaia's functional power to such an extent that he disabled her. He would wake up one day to find that he had the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer. Gaia would have retreated into the muds, and the ceaseless intricate task of keeping all of the global cycles in balance would be ours. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the 'spaceship Earth'. and whatever tamed and domesticated biosphere remained would indeed be our 'life support system'. -- James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth

Focus

An illustration of [the] single-minded corporate focus on financial returns can be seen in a conversation between biologist Paul Ehrlich and a Japanese journalist. Ehrlich observed that the Japanese whaling industry was at risk of exterminating the whales that were the source of its wealth. The journalist responded: “You are thinking of the whaling industry as an organization that is interested in maintaining whales; actually it is better viewed as a huge quantity of [financial] capital attempting to earn the highest possible return. If it can exterminate whales in ten years and make a 15% profit, but it could only make 10% with a sustainable harvest, then it will exterminate them in ten years. After that, the money will be moved to exterminating some other resource.” -- Jeremy Lent, The Patterning Instinct

Scars are not easily removed

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise. Aldo Leopold

A Chinese Tale

Once upon a time, there was a man who was riding in a horse drawn carriage and traveling to go take care of some affairs; and in the carriage there was also a very big suitcase. He told the driver to of the carriage to drive non-stop and the horse ran extremely fast. 

Along the road, there was an old man who saw them and asked, “Sir, you seem anxious, where do you need to go?” 

The man in the carriage then replied in a loud voice, “I need to go to the state of Chu.” The old man heard and laughing he smiled and said, “You are going the wrong way. The state of Chu is in the south, how come you are going to to the north?” 

“That’s alright,” The man in the carriage then said, “Can you not see? My horse runs very fast.” 

“Your horse is great, but your path is incorrect.” 

“It’s no problem, my carriage is new, it was made just last month.” 

“Your carriage is brand new, but this is not the road one takes to get to Chu.” 

“Old Uncle, you don’t know,” and the man in the carriage pointed to the suitcase in the back and said, “In that suitcase there’s alot of money. No matter how long the road is, I am not afraid.” 

“You have lots of money, but do not forget, The direction which you are going is wrong. I can see, you should go back the direction which you came from.” 

The man in the carriage heard this and irritated said, “I have already been traveling for ten days, how can you tell me to go back from where I came?” He then pointed at the carriage driver and said, “Take a look, he is very young, and he drives very well, you needn’t worry. Goodbye!” 

And then he told the driver to drive forward, and the horse ran even faster.

-- Chinese Tale

Spending the Inheritance

It’s very hard for people to realize just how incredibly stupid civilization has been. Building a modern society on finite resources and then failing to accept it’s finality or shortsightedness, let alone do anything about it has been suicidal. We’re committing speciescide of our own race. Worse, we destroyed the ecological base along the way where we obtain our sustenance.

The world is presently overpopulated by the billions. We obtained this surplus through sheer folly and shortsightedness, a.k.a “greed”. There is a valid reason why overpopulation of this magnitude never appeared in human history before. No other civilization before ours exploited the oil reserves that were tens of thousands of years in existence, predating all human life and converted them into agriculture and global transportation system.

But we did, and we built a overpopulated world that polluted, raped, destroyed it’s natural carrying capacity to such a degree that human life itself is now threatened. We became so accustomed to this temporary ‘abundance’ that we fooled ourselves into believing it would last forever. We were dead wrong.

Surviving the collapse will mean we must first stop lying to ourselves. And we must stop listening to the lies being spouted off by others. Neither the media nor the government will be honest enough to tell the truth, yet are making their own secret preparations without telling you. Ignoring the hype, false promises, “vaporware” and empty platitudes that everything is going to be ok is important. Everything is NOT OK and its past time we started acting like it was true. [link]

Georgescu-Roegen - The Entropy Law & the Economic Process (1973)

[M]y point is not that arithmetization of science is undesirable. 'Whenever arithmetization can be worked out, its merits are above all words of praise. My polnt is that wholesale arithmetization is impossible, that there is valid knowledge even without arithmetization, and that mock arithmetization is dangerous if peddled as genuine. Let us also note that arithmetization alone does not warrant that a theoretical edifice is apt and suitable. As evidenced by chemistry -- a science in which most attributes are quantifiable, hence, arithmomorphic -- novelty by combination constitutes an even greater blow to the creed "no science without theory." (p.15)

The verdict is indisputable: no social science can subserve the art of government as efficaciously as physics does the art of space travel, for example. Nevertheless, some social scientists simply refuse to reconcile themselves to this verdict and, apparently in despair, have come out with a curious proposal: to devise means which will compel people to behave the way "we" want, so that "our" predictions will always come true. The project, in which we recognize the continual striving for a ''rational" society beginning with Plato's, cannot succeed (not even under physical coercion, for a long time) simply because of its blatant petitio principii: the first prerequisite of any plan is that the behavior of the material involved should be completely predictable, at least for some appreciable period. But aggressive scholarship will never run out of new plans for the "betterment of mankind." Since the difficulties of making an old society behave as we want it can no longer be concealed, why not produce a new society according to our own "rational" plans? (p.16)

It is fashionable nowadays to indulge in estimating how large a population our earth can support. Some estimates are as low as five billions, others as high as forty-five billions. However, given the entropic nature of the economic process by which the human species maintains itself, this is not the proper way to look at the problem of population. Perhaps the earth can support even forty-five billion people, but certainly not ad infinitum. We should therefore ask "how long can the earth maintain a population of forty-five billion people?'' And if the answer is, say, one thousand years, we still have to ask "what will happen thereafter?" All this shows that even the concept of optimum population conceived as an ecologically determined coordinate has only an artificial value. [...] Man's natural dowry, as we all know, consists of two essentially distinct elements: (1) the stock of low entropy on or within the globe, and (2) the flow of solar energy, which slowly but steadily diminishes in intensity with the entropic degradation of the sun. But the crucial point for the population problem as well as for any reasonable speculations about the future exosomatic evolution of mankind is the relative importance of these two elements, For, as surprising as it may seem, the entire stock of natural resources is not worth more than a few days of sunlight! [...] In a different way than in the past, man will have to return to the idea that his existence is a free gift of the sun. (p.20ff)

Anatomically, theoretical science is logically ordered knowledge. A mere catalog of facts, as we say nowadays, is no more science than the materials in a lumber yard are a house. Physiologically, it is a continuous secretion of experimental suggestions which are tested and organically integrated into the science's anatomy. In other words, theoretical science continuously creates new facts from old facts, but its growth is organic, not accretionary. Its anabolism is an extremely complex process which at times may even alter the anatomic structure. We call this process "explanation" even when we cry out "science does not explain anything." Teleologically, theoretical science is an organism in search of new knowledge. (p.37)

There can be no doubt that the decumulation of a machine is not a mechanical spreading in time of the machine as is the case with the stock of provisions of an explorer, for instance. When we "decumulate" a machine we do not separate it into pieces and use the pieces one after another as inputs until all parts are consumed. Instead, the machine is used over and over again in a temporal sequence of tasks until it becomes waste and has to be thrown away. A machine is a material stock, to be sure, but not in the sense the word has in "a stock of coal." If we insist on retaining the word, we may say that a machine is a stock of services (uses). But a more discriminating (and hence safer) way of describing a machine is to say that it is a fund of services. 

The difference between the concept of stock and that of fund should be carefully marked, lest the hard facts of economic life be distorted at everyone's expense. If the count shows that a box contains twenty candies, we can make twenty youngsters happy now or tomorrow, or some today and others tomorrow, and so on. But if an engineer tells us that one hotel room will probably last one thousand days more, we cannot make one thousand roomless tourists happy now. We can only make one happy today, a second tomorrow, and so on, until the room collapses. [...] The use of a fund (i.e., its "decumulation") requires a duration. Moreover, this duration is determined within very narrow limits by the physical structure of the fund. We can vary it only little, if at all. If one wishes to "decumulate" a pair of shoes, there is only one way open to him: to walk until they become waste (of course, one may sell the shoes. But this would mean decumulation of the shoes as a stock not decumulation of the shoes as a fund of services.) In contrast with this, the decumulation of a stock may, conceivably take place in one single instant, if we wish so. And to put the dots on all significant i's, let us also observe that the "accumulation" of a fund too, differs from the accumulation of a stock. A machine does not come into existence by the accumulation of the services it provides as a fund: it is not obtained by storing these services one after another as one stores winter provisions in the cellar. Services cannot be accumulated as the dollars in a saving account or the stamps in a collection can. They can only be used or wasted.

Nothing more need be said to prove that also the use of the term "flow" in connection with the services of a fund is improper if "flow" is defined as a stock spread over time. In fact, the generally used expression "the flow of services" tends to blur -- at times, it has blurred -- the important differences between two mechanisms, that by which the prices of services and that by which the prices of material objects are determined. The inevitable trap of this ambiguous use of "flow" is that, because a flow can be stored up, we find it perfectly normal to reason that services are "embodied" in the product. Only the materials that flow into a production process can be embodied in the product. The services of the tailor's needle, for example, cannot possibly be embodied in the coat -- and if one finds the needle itself embodied there it is certainly a regrettable accident. The fact that in certain circumstances the value of services passes into the value of the product is to be explained otherwise than by simply regarding a machine as a stock of services that are shifted one after another into the product. 

The difference between flow and service is so fundamental that it separates even the dimensionalities of the two concepts. For this reason alone, physicists would not have tolerated the confusion for long. The amount of a flow is expressed in units appropriate to substances (in the broad sense) -- say pounds, quarts, feet, etc. The rate of flow, on the other hand, has a mixed dimensionality, (substance)/(time). The situation is entirely reversed in the case of services. The amount of services has a mixed dimensionality in which time enters as a factor, (substance) x (time). If a plant uses one hundred workers during a working day (eight hours), the total of the services employed is eight hundred man x hour. If by analogy with the rate of flow we would like to determine the ratio of service for the same situation, by simple algebra the answer is that this rate is one hundred men, period. The rate of service is simply the size of the fund that provides the service and consequently is expressed in elemental units in which the time factor does not intervene. (p.226ff)

A leading symptom is that purists maintain that thermodynamics is not a legitimate chapter of physics. Pure science, they say, must abide to the dogma that natural laws are independent of man's own nature, whereas thermodynamics smacks of anthropomorphism. And that it does so smack is beyond question. But the idea that man can think of nature in wholly nonanthropomorphic terms is a patent contradiction in terms. Actually, force, attraction, waves, particles, and, especially, interpreted equations, all are man-made notions. Nevertheless, in the case of thermodynamics the purist viewpoint is not entirely baseless: of all physical concepts only those of thermodynamics have their roots in economic value and, hence, could make absolutely no sense to a nonanthropomorphic intellect.

A nonanthropomorphic mind could not possibly understand the concept of order-entropy which, as we have seen, cannot be divorced from the intuitive grasping of human purposes. For the same reason such a mind could not conceive why we distinguish between free and latent energy, should it see the difference at all. All it could perceive is that energy shifts around without increasing or decreasing. It may object that even we, the humans, cannot distinguish between free and latent energy at the level of a single particle where normally all concepts ought to be initially elucidated.

No doubt, the only reason why thermodynamics initially differentiated between the heat contained in the ocean waters and that inside a ship's furnace is that we can use the latter but not the former. But the kinship between economics and thermodynamics is more intimate than that. Apt though we are to lose sight of the fact, the primary objective of economic activity is the self-preservation of the human species. Self-preservation in turn requires the satisfaction of some basic needs-which are nevertheless subject to evolution. The almost fabulous comfort, let alone the extravagant luxury, attained by many past and present societies has caused us to forget the most elementary fact of economic life, namely, that of all necessaries for life only the purely biological ones are absolutely indispensable for survival. The poor have had no reason to forget it. And since biological life feeds on low entropy, we come across the first important indication of the connection between low entropy and economic value. For I see no reason why one root of economic value existing at the time when mankind was able to satisfy hardly any non biological need should have dried out later on.

Casual observation suffices now to prove that our whole economic life feeds on low entropy, to wit, cloth, lumber, china, copper, etc., all of which are highly ordered structures. But this discovery should not surprise us. It is the natural consequence of the fact that thermodynamics developed from an economic problem and consequently could not avoid defining order so as to distinguish between, say, a piece of electrolytic copper -- which is useful to us -- and the same copper molecules when diffused so as to be of no use to us. We may then take it as a brute fact that low entropy is a necessary condition for a thing to be useful. (p.277ff)

The corresponding symptoms in analytical studies are even more definite. First, there is the general practice of representing the material side of the economic process by a closed system, that is, by a mathematical model in which the continuous inflow of low entropy from the environment is completely ignored. But even this symptom of modern econometrics was preceded by a more common one: the notion that the economic process is wholly circular. Special terms such as roundabout process or circular flow have been coined in order to adapt the economic jargon to this view. One need only thumb through an ordinary textbook to come across the typical diagram by which its author seeks to impress upon the mind of the student the circularity of the economic process.

The mechanistic epistemology, to which analytical economics has clung ever since its birth, is solely responsible for the conception of the economic process as a closed system or circular flow. As I hope to have shown by the argument developed in this essay, no other conception could be further from a correct interpretation of facts. Even if only the physical facet of the economic process is taken into consideration, this process is not circular, but unidirectional. As far as this facet alone is concerned, the economic process consists of a continuous transformation of low entropy into high entropy, that is, into irrevocable waste or, with a topical term, into pollution. The identity of this formula with that proposed by Schrödinger for the biological process of a living cell or organism vindicates those economists who, like Marshall, have been fond of biological analogies and have even contended that economics "is a branch of biology broadly interpreted.". The conclusion is that, from the purely physical viewpoint, the economic process is entropic: it neither creates nor consumes matter or energy, but only transforms low into high entropy. (p.281)

Low entropy is a necessary condition for a thing to have value. This condition, however, is not also sufficient. The relation between economic value and low entropy is of the same type as that between price and economic value. Although nothing could have a price without having an economic value, things may have an economic value and yet no price. For the parallelism, it suffices to mention the case of poisonous mushrooms which, although they contain low entropy, have no economic value. (p.282)

we cannot mine the stock of solar energy at a rate to suit our desires of the moment. We can use only that part of the sun's energy that reaches the globe at the rate determined by its position in the solar system. With the stocks of low entropy in the earth's crust we may be impatient and, as a result, we may be impatient-as indeed we are with their transformation into commodities that satisfy some of the most extravagant human wants. But not so with the stock of sun's energy. Agriculture teaches, nay, obliges man to be patient-a reason why peasants have a philosophical attitude in life pronouncedly different from that of industrial communities. (p.297)

In a broad perspective we may say that mankind disposes of two sources of wealth: first, the finite stock of mineral resources in the earth's crust which within certain limits we can decumulate into a flow almost at will, and second, a flow of solar radiation the rate of which is not subject to our control. In terms of low entropy, the stock of mineral resources is only a very small fraction of the solar energy received by the globe within a single year. More precisely, the highest estimate of terrestrial energy resources does not exceed the amount of free energy received from the sun during four days! [...] because the low entropy received from the sun cannot be converted into matter in bulk, it is not the sun's finite stock of energy that sets a limit to how long the human species may survive. Instead, it is the meager stock of the earth's resources that constitutes the crucial scarcity. Let S be this stock and r the average rate at which it may be decumulated. Clearly, S = r x t, where t stands for the corresponding duration of the human species. This elementary formula shows that the quicker we decide to decumulate S, the shorter is t. Now, r may increase for two reasons. First, the population may increase. Second, for the same size of population we may speed up the decumulation of the natural resources for satisfying man-made wants, usually extravagant wants.

The conclusion is straightforward. If we stampede over details, we can say that every baby born now means one human life less in the future. But also every Cadillac produced at any time means fewer lives in the future. Up to this day, the price of technological progress has meant a shift from the more abundant source of low entropy-the solar radiation to the less abundant one--the earth's mineral resources. True, without this progress some of these resources would not have come to have any economic value. But this point does not make the balance outlined here less pertinent. Population pressure and technological progress bring ceteris paribus the career of the human species nearer to its end only because both factors cause a speedier decumulation of its dowry. The sun will continue to shine on the earth, perhaps, almost as bright as today even after the extinction of mankind and will feed with low entropy other species, those with no ambition whatsoever. For we must not doubt that, man's nature being what it is, the destiny of the human species is to choose a truly great but brief, not a long and dull, career.

"Civilization is the economy of power [low entropy]," as Justus von Liebig said long ago, but the word economy must be understood as applying rather to the problems of the moment, not to the entire life span of mankind. Confronted, in the distant future, with the impending exhaustion of mineral resources (which caused Jevons to become alarmed about the coal reserves), mankind -- one might try to reassure us -- will retrace its steps. The thought ignores that, evolution being irrevocable, steps cannot be retraced in history. (p.303ff)

[T]he usual denunciation of standard economics on the sole ground that it treats of "imaginary individuals coming to imaginary markets with ready-made scales of bid and offer prices" is patently inept. Abstraction, even if it ignores Change, is "no exclusive privilegium odiosum" of the economic science, for abstraction is the most valuable ladder of any science. In social sciences, as Marx forcefully argued, it is all the more indispensable since there "the force of abstraction" must compensate for the impossibility of using microscopes or chemical reactions. However, the task of science is not to climb up the easiest ladder and remain there forever distilling and redistilling the same pure stuff. Standard economics, by opposing any suggestion that the economic process may consist of something more than a jigsaw puzzle with all its elements given, has identified itself with dogmatism. And this is a privilegium odiosum that has dwarfed the understanding of the economic process wherever it has been exercised. (p.319)

The question is why a science interested in economic means, ends, and distribution should dogmatically refuse to study also the process by which new economic means, new economic ends, and new economic relations are created. (p.320)

[T]he immense satisfaction which Understanding derives from arithmomorphic models should not mislead us into believing that their other roles too are the same in both social and natural sciences. In physics a model is also "a calculating device, from which we may compute the answer to any question regarding the physical behavior of the corresponding physical system." [Bridgman, The Nature of Physical Theory] The same is true for the models of engineering economics. The specific role of a physical model is better described by remarking that such a model represents an accurate blueprint of a particular sector of physical reality. But [...] an economic model is not an accurate blueprint but an analytical simile. Economists are fond of arguing that since no model, whether in physics or economics, is accurate in an absolute sense we can only choose between a more and a less accurate model. Some point out also that after all how accurate we need to be depends on our immediate purpose: at times the less accurate model may be the more rational one to use. All this is perfectly true, but it does not support the further contention -- explicitly stated by Pareto -- that it is irrelevant to point out the inaccuracy of economic models. Such a position ignores an important detail, namely, that in physics a model must be accurate in relation to the sharpest measuring instrument existing at the time. If it is not, the model is discarded. Hence, there is an objective sense in which we can say that a physical model is accurate, and this is the sense in which the word is used in" accurate blueprint." In social sciences, however, there is no such objective standard of accuracy. Consequently, there is no acid test for the validity of an economic model. And it is of no avail to echo Aristotle, who taught that a model is "adequate if it achieves that degree of accuracy which belongs to its subject matter." One may always proclaim that his model has the proper degree of accuracy. Besides, the factors responsible for the absence of an objective standard of accuracy also render the comparison of accuracy a thorny problem. (pg.332ff)

From the deterministic viewpoint, the notion of "rational behavior" is completely idle. Given his tastes, his inclinations, and his temperament, the person who smokes in spite of the warning that "smoking may be hazardous to your health" acts from a definite ground and, hence, cannot be taxed as irrational. And if we accept the conclusions biologists have derived from the study of identical twins, that every man's behavior is largely determined by his genotype, then criminals and warmongers are just as "rational" as the loving and peaceful people. But for a determinist even nurture (whether ecological, biotic, or cultural) cannot be otherwise than what it is: together with nature, nurture holds the individual in a predetermined and unrelenting grip. This is probably why, when a social scientist speaks of irrational behavior, he generally refers to a normative criterion. Take the villagers in some parts of the world who for the annual festival kill practically all the pigs in the village. They are irrational-we say-not only because they kill more pigs than they could eat at one feast but also because they have to starve for twelve months thereafter. My contention is that it is well-nigh impossible to name a behavior (of man or any other living creature) that would not be irrational according to some normative criterion. This is precisely why to an American farmer the behavior of a Filipino peasant seems irrational. But so does the behavior of the former appear to the latter. The two live in different ecological niches and each has a different Weltanschauung. The student of man should know better than to side with one behavior or another. The most he can do is to admit that the two behaviors are different, search for the reasons that may account for the differences, and assess the consequences. (p.345ff)

Like the social insects, man lives in society, produces socially and distributes the social product among his fellows. But, unlike the social insects, man is not born with an endosomatic code capable of regulating both his biological life and his social activity. And since he needs a code for guiding his complex social activity in a tolerable manner, man has had to produce it himself. This product is what we call tradition. By tradition man compensates for his "birth defect," for his deficiency of innate social instincts. So, man is born with an endosomatic (biological) code but within an exosomatic (social) one. It is because of the endosomatic code that a Chinese, for example, has slanted eyes and straight hair. It is because of the exosomatic code that a Filipino peasant cultivates his fields in the manner all Filipino peasants do, participates in the extravagant festivals held by his village at definite calendar dates, and so on. A biological process sees to it that the pool of genes is transmitted from one generation to another. Tradition does the same for what we call "values" or, more appropriately, "institutions," i.e., the modes by which every man acts inside his own community. (p.359)

Overshoot

When Americans not equipped with ecological concepts tried to describe and explain the contrast between their land of opportunity and the old countries from which they had come as immigrants, it became conventional to emphasize the political and ideological contrasts. We tended to forget that the freedoms America offered were not exclusively political. Even more, we forgot that the political differences between America and the older nations in Europe was full of people; America was full of potential. 

When population density was low, human equality is feasible and even probable. Each individual is economically valuable to others; it is, accordingly, hard for others to subordinate him. Class distinctions fade in such circumstances. [William Graham] Sumner tried to get us to see that democracy in Europe as well as in America had been fostered by the New World's low population density. His low density had relieved Old World pressure. Abundant land in another hemisphere influenced the European labor and land markets. Wages went up, food prices were held down, and land rents were kept lower than they would otherwise have been. The power of each European landed aristocrat was reduced by the availability of land elsewhere on the globe, not under his control. Still, Europeans tended to attribute their new freedom to new institutions and new doctrines, not seeing that the institutional and doctrinal changes were responses to the effective reduction of population pressure.

Homo Sapiens mistook the rate of withdrawal of savings deposits for a rise in income. No regard for the total size of the legacy, or for the rate at which nature might still be storing carbon away, seemed necessary. Homo Sapiens set about becoming Homo Colossus without wondering if the transformation would have to be quite temporary. [...] The essence of the drawdown method is this: man began to spend nature's legacy as if it were income. Temporarily this made possible a dramatic increase in the quantity of energy per capita per year by which Homo Colossus could do the things he wanted to do.

Population pressure can be defined as the frequency of mutual interference per capita per day that results from the presence of others in a finite habitat. [...] Population density in the ordinary sense is simply the number of people per square mile. Two nations with equal population density could differ in population pressure if their peoples differed in level of activity. A population using more prosthetic equipment would tend to subject its members to more pressure by doing more things. [In America] more people had been pumped into our finite living space, to make demands upon our finite resources. But our pace of living had also been greatly accelerated. We traditionally welcomed such acceleration as a sign of progress, seldom recognizing that it meant people had increased the ways in which their co-presence resulted in mutual interference. The loss of independence and the failure to understand how it was lost can be illustrated by a fundamental change in the occupational structure of an industrialized nation's labor force.

It is high time to learn that the wisest "use" of coal and oil may be to leave them underground as nature's safe disposal of a primeval atmospheric "pollutant" - carbon. By our ravenous use of fossil acreage to extend carrying capacity we not only prolonged human irruption but also began undoing what evolution had done in getting the atmosphere ready for animals (including man) to breathe, and ready to sustain the kind of climate in which present species (including ourselves) had been evolved. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution had produced the oxygen-rich and nearly carbon-free atmosphere we need [...] We need to accept the earth as it was when our species evolved upon it. had it been different, Homo Sapiens could not have emerged [...] Barring human extinction, there will never come an end to man's need for enlightened self-restraint - the conservation ethic.

Overshoot, William R. Catton

Inevitabilidade

Temos um problema catastrófico nas fontes da economia global -- recursos, energia -- e nos seus escoadouros -- poluição, aquecimento global. De que forma e quão profundamente as nossas soluções para os direitos económicos e políticos -- capitalismo, democracia -- terão de se transformar para serem capazes de verdadeiramente atacar esta questão? 

Passado, Presente, Futuro

"As an island in space, the world could not rely on imports from elsewhere; nevertheless, it was already heavily dependent upon imports from elsewhen. [...] The human species, through technological progress, had made itself more than ninety percent dependent on phantom carrying capacity – a term we must now define. Phantom carrying capacity means either the illusory or the extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a given life form or a given way of living. It can be quantitatively expressed as that portion of a population that cannot be permanently supported when temporarily available resources become unavailable." Overshoot, William R. Catton

Lei de von Liebig

"[W]e need to step outside the usual economic or political frames of thought, go back two-thirds of a century before the 1929 crash, and reexamine for its profound human relevance a principle of agricultural chemistry formulated in 1863 by a German scientist, Justus von Liebig. That principle set forth with great clarity the concept of the “limiting factor” [...] Carrying capacity is limited not just by food supply, but potentially by any substance or circumstance that is indispensable but inadequate. The fundamental principle is this: whatever necessity is least abundantly available (relative to per capita requirements) sets an environment’s carrying capacity.

While there is no way to repeal this principle, which is known as “the law of the minimum,” or Liebig's law, there is a way to make its application less restrictive. People living in an environment where carrying capacity is limited by a shortage of one essential resource can develop exchange relationships with residents of another area that happens to be blessed with a surplus of that resource but happens to lack some other resource that is plentiful where the first one was scarce.

Trade does not repeal Liebig’s law. Only by knowing Liebig’s law, however, can we see clearly what trade does do, in ecological terms. Trade enlarges the scope of application of the law of the minimum. The composite carrying capacity of two or more areas with different resource configurations can be greater than the sum of their separate carrying capacities. ...] A good many of the events of human history need to be seen as efforts to implement the principle of scope enlargement." Overshoot, William R. Catton

AVC

Um ser vivo precisa do seu ambiente como uma pessoa da sua cultura. A relação entre cérebro e mente é ainda mais íntima, mas suponhamos admissível a analogia. Quando há uma falha, um precipício inesperado, um terramoto que altera a geografia, em todos eles esse esforço inevitável de um novo hábito.

Escalas

A arqueologia, a linguística e a genética produziram um imenso corpo de evidências que mostram ser o ambiente onde uma cultura se origina e desenvolve, determinante na forma como esta progride e, muitas vezes, no seu destino final. Em muitos casos documentados, a diferença entre ser-se conquistador ou conquistado derivou, em última análise, do local e da época onde se iniciaram as respectivas histórias.

Por exemplo, o isolamento é um factor decisivo sobre a dinâmica de uma dada cultura. Centenas de habitantes num ambiente pequeno não conseguem persistir muito tempo até desaparecerem (como atesta a arqueologia em muitas pequenas e isoladas ilhas) seja por migração, extinção ou extermínio. Comunidades dispersas cujo total atinja os milhares de pessoas a viver em áreas um pouco maiores são capazes de subsistir milhares de anos mas correm o risco de ver o seu conhecimento regredir de novo para o paleolítico, pela incapacidade de manter invenções e outras tradições úteis contra os azares ocasionais da história (como no caso das comunidades nativas da Tasmânia). São precisos milhões de pessoas para o surgimento de nações e o suporte de continentes inteiros para que existam comunidades suficientemente dispersas e redes suficientemente resistentes para que as conquistas do passado não se percam das gerações futuras e possam subsistir noutros locais (a Europa Medieval recuperou as obras dos Gregos graças à civilização Árabe). Estas hipóteses são sustentadas por múltiplos dados históricos e científicos e, como excelente ponto de partida desta tese, podem ser lidos os dois livros de Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel e Collapse.

Se extrapolarmos para a escala seguinte, quais são as limitações da actual comunidade global de sete biliões num único planeta? Olhando para o presente, a humanidade está a consumir o ecossistema planetário a um ritmo demasiado elevado (como o fizeram, localmente, os Maias, os Anasazi ou as culturas do Crescente Fértil) e esta estrutura social pode estar condenada se não forem aplicadas mudanças sociais e ambientais relevantes. Será que na nossa dimensão ainda existem limites aos problemas que conseguimos resolver? O que poderia construir e solucionar uma comunidade de triliões de pessoas espalhadas por milhares de planetas? Que arte, filosofia ou ciência nasceria de uma rede social de dimensão interplanetária?

Dinheiro

A noção de rendimento decrescente (em inglês, diminishing returns) é um conceito económico poderoso também na argumentação em outras áreas. Na economia é possível usá-lo para mostrar, por exemplo, que o petróleo deixará de ser extraído muito antes de desaparecer do planeta, pois apenas será usado aquele que se conseguir obter de forma rentável. Todas as reservas demasiado profundas ou em locais de muito díficil acesso serão deixadas em paz pois outras formas de energia passarão a ser economicamente mais interessantes. Da mesma forma, o conhecimento e a tecnologia nunca se irão aproximar do (eventual) limite teórico. Só se investigará e investirá numa área enquanto for economicamente racional fazê-lo. Os limites da Física das Partículas, as experiências para determinar a origem do Universo, mesmo futuras tecnologias, como o teletransporte, as viagens interestelares ou a simulação digital de pessoas só poderão ocorrer (assumindo que sejam teoricamente possíveis) se os recursos necessários às mesmas forem considerados apropriados pelas sociedades futuras. Se, por algum motivo, for demasiado oneroso implementar estas ideias, elas nunca serão ferramentas ao dispor da Humanidade, não por serem impossíveis mas, simplesmente, por serem demasiado caras.

Criticalidade

No planeta Ankh foi dominada, há muito, a ciência de detectar e prevenir terramotos. Ao início, esta técnica permitia conter terramotos de grau 6 sendo agora capaz de deter sismos até 8.3 (usamos a escala de Richter por facilidade: para entender como os Ankhianos os classificam obrigar-nos-ia a uma pós-graduação em cores e tonalidades). Mas atenção, dizem certas vozes, cada vez que um tremor é detido, aumenta a tensão resultante na crosta Ankhiana. Seria melhor escolher criteriosamente quais se poderiam deter, mesmo que isso implicasse perdas de propriedade ou civilização. Só que a perspectiva de deixar incólume a destruição natural quando se pode evitá-la não costuma vingar no espírito bem intencionado das multidões votantes. Assim, desapareceram do planeta todos os terramotos menores à custa de sistemas de prevenção cada vez melhor organizados suportados em orçamentos progressivamente crescentes. Mas o desiquilíbrio, invisível, pulsante, aumenta: a dinâmica geológica da crosta acumula tensões tais que resultam, a ritmos anormalmente frequentes, em terramotos de grau 10, 10.5, 11. Estes, porém, não são vistos como facturas de uma política míope, mas apenas como uma face da providência que, por ora, nada há a fazer.

O Efeito de Estufa Ataca de Novo

Em Vénus, as nuvens, de ácido sulfúrico, são atravessadas por tempestades ciclónicas e produzem uma pressão equivalente à do Oceano a 1 Km de profundidade. As temperaturas chegam a atingir os 500º (o suficiente para derreter chumbo) numa superficie preenchida por enormes rios de lava. Vénus é um planeta quase igual à Terra (no tamanho, na densidade, na composição química), apenas um pouco mais próximo do Sol o que permitiu ao efeito de estufa fazer dele um inferno. Na imagem (sem nuvens) vislumbra-se a gigantesca Corona Artemis onde o nosso cérebro nos convida a um rosto.

Estabilidade

Imaginemos uma sociedade onde existam só pessoas que não saibam mentir. Esta sociedade não é estável no sentido comportamental. Se fosse 'infectada' por um mentiroso, este teria tantas vantagens que tenderia a disseminar o seu comportamento ao resto da sociedade. Até que ponto se extenderia essa infecção? Depende dos valores exactos: (a) de quanto se ganha pela cooperação entre dois indivíduos honestos, (b) do proveito que um mentiroso ganha explorando um honesto, (c) e do custo associado à falta de cooperação quando dois mentirosos interagem. Este género de questão é estudado pela Teoria dos Jogos, nomeadamente pelo conhecido Dilema do Prisioneiro Iterado. Uma população mista de honestos e mentirosos pode convergir para uma percentagem que garanta que invasões futuras de indivíduos com estratégias distintas e exploratórias não sejam lucrativas (designada por estratégia evolutiva estável).

Admitir que uma sociedade totalmente honesta é instável pode ser, para alguns, uma má notícia. Porém, não devemos esquecer a implicação simétrica deste facto: uma população de mentirosos também é instável. Ela pode ser também invadida, não por um só honesto (que seria rapidamente explorado), mas por um grupo de indivíduos honestos que, por cooperação mútua, são capazes de prosperar num ambiente de traição constante. Este raciocínio leva-nos (com alguma liberdade matemática) a outro evento relacionado: um regime totalitário, pela exigência artificial de uniformidade, é igualmente instável. Existe sempre a tendência, em qualquer grupo e de forma mais ou menos velada, de manter abertas outras opções que as dominantes. Uma cultura intolerante, da mesma forma que uma profundamente tolerante, é muito permeável à dissuasão. A pressão social de um Estado totalitário sobre os seus elementos, com o objectivo de manter coesa a ideologia dominante, é, ao mesmo tempo, causa e consequência desse desejo de homogeneidade. E quanto mais energia for gasta para manter uma população isenta de diferenças, mais fácil se tornará a conversão dos seus elementos a outras possibilidades. A notícia que esse esforço seja, mesmo que a longo prazo, inútil é uma verdadeira boa notícia.

O Impacto Ambiental de um Texto (parte 2 de 2)

O princípio é familiar. O engenheiro que desenha um produto potencialmente perigoso é responsável pelas suas más aplicações, e fará (ou deveria fazer) todos os possíveis para que estas não ocorram. Dizer a verdade o melhor que podermos é o nosso primeiro dever mas só isso não chega. Um académico que pense ser a verdade a única defesa, provavelmente não pensou suficientemente sobre as potenciais consequências do seu trabalho. Por vezes, a possibilidade de má interpretação da verdade que se pretende dizer é tão grande que a melhor atitude é ficar calado.

Uma estudante de Daniel Dennet desenvolveu um exemplo que retira esta discussão da terra da fantasia da filosofia para a realidade. Ela trabalha na pesquisa da SIDA e percebe os perigos que envolvem esta actividade:

Digamos que descubro que o HIV pode ser erradicado de um individuo infectado sobre circunstâncias ideais (total cooperação do doente, total ausência de efeitos inibitórios das drogas usadas, total ausência de contaminação de outras linhas de vírus, etc.) com quatro anos de regime terapêutico. Eu posso estar errada. Posso ter calculado algo mal, ter lido de forma errada alguns dados, ter julgado mal os doentes da experiência ou ter feito uma estimativa muito optimista. E posso errar em publicar estes resultados, mesmo que sejam verdade, devido ao seu impacto ambiental: os mass media podem descrever mal a história, podem descrever mal o processo do tratamento. E alguma dessa culpa é minha. Especialmente se eu usar a palavra "erradicar", que no contexto dos vírus significa a eliminação total do planeta, enquanto pretendia referir apenas uma das estirpes do vírus. Por exemplo, uma complacência irracional poderia espalhar-se ("A cura da SIDA já existe logo não me preciso preocupar mais"). As taxas de incidência de grupos de risco voltariam a aumentar. E pior: a globalização do tratamento poderia aumentar a resistência desse vírus porque muitos não levariam o tratamento até ao fim.

No pior cenário, podemos ter uma cura para a SIDA e sermos incapazes de encontrar um meio adequado para a anunciar de forma responsável. Não adianta queixarmo-nos da complacência das pessoas em geral, de nada serve culpar os doentes de não cumprir o tratamento. Estes são efeitos esperados e naturais (mesmo que lamentáveis) da publicação que algo deste género produziria. É necessário explorar todos os meios práticos para prevenir os abusos que uma descoberta pode produzir, implementar estratégias de segurança que os evitem. No pior caso possível, pode chegar-se à conclusão que os efeitos de uma descoberta são incontroláveis. Isto não seria só um dilema, seria uma tragédia.

[adaptado do "Freedom Evolves" de Daniel Dennet, Penguin Books, 2003]

O Impacto Ambiental de um Texto (parte 1 de 2)

[adaptado do "Freedom Evolves" de Daniel Dennet, Penguin Books, 2003]

Os estudiosos e investigadores, nas suas tradicionais torres de marfim, tipicamente não se preocupam com a responsabilidade que têm no impacto "ambiental" do seu trabalho. As leis da difamação não fazem asserções sobre os males que os textos podem trazer a terceiros, mesmo que indirectamente (focam-se somente na difamação propriamente dita). Que mal um matemático ou um crítico literário podem trazer na execução honesta do seu trabalho? Mas em campos onde as apostas são mais altas há uma tradição em ter especial cuidado e tomar responsabilidades particulares para assegurar que nenhum mal ocorra das suas acções (por exemplo, o juramento de Hipócrates tem este papel para os médicos). Engenheiros, sabendo que a vida de milhares de pessoas pode depender da forma como se constrói uma ponte, executam procedimentos específicos para determinar, segundo o melhor conhecimento humano daquele momento, que o desenho e construção desta é segura.

Quando um académico aspira a ter impacto no mundo "real" (em oposição com o mundo "académico") precisa adoptar as atitudes e hábitos destas disciplinas mais aplicadas. É necessário responsabilizar-se pelo que se diz, reconhecendo que as palavras escritas, se acreditadas por outros, podem provocar consequências profundas para o bem e para o mal. E não é só isso. É preciso reconhecer que estas palavras podem ser mal interpretadas e, até certo grau, é-se responsável pelas prováveis más interpretações da mesma forma que se é pelos efeitos da versão correcta. [cont.]