Orrery Software 1 NTF Layered Society Layered structure of a sustainable modern-but-just society NOTE TO FILE: Garvin H Boyle Dated: 140202 Revised: 140729 Contents Layered structure of a sustainable modern-but-just society ............................................................................................................................................... 1 References: ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Purpose............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 2 Description of Slides ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Slide #1 – Title slide ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Slide #2 – Defining the Arena of Interest ................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Slide #3 – A Pre-Modern Simple Society at Carrying Capacity ................................................................................................................................ 8 Slide #4 – Our Modern Unsustainable Society in the First Half of the Age of Oil .................................................................................................. 11 Slide #5 – A Sustainable Modern Society in the Post-Oil Age ................................................................................................................................ 14 Slide #6 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the “Post-Oil Age” ............................................................................................................... 17 Slide #7 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the "Post-Oil Age" ............................................................................................................... 21 After Slide #7 – So Now What? ............................................................................................................................................................................... 21 ANNEX 1 – Some Background Ideas .............................................................................................................................................................................. 23 Entropy As I See It ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 23 Anthroposphere ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 27 Biosphere ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Sources and Types of Energy ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 32
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Orrery Software 1 NTF Layered Society
Layered structure of a sustainable modern-but-just society
NOTE TO FILE:
Garvin H Boyle
Dated: 140202
Revised: 140729
Contents Layered structure of a sustainable modern-but-just society ............................................................................................................................................... 1
Description of Slides ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Slide #1 – Title slide ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Slide #2 – Defining the Arena of Interest ................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Slide #3 – A Pre-Modern Simple Society at Carrying Capacity ................................................................................................................................ 8
Slide #4 – Our Modern Unsustainable Society in the First Half of the Age of Oil .................................................................................................. 11
Slide #5 – A Sustainable Modern Society in the Post-Oil Age ................................................................................................................................ 14
Slide #6 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the “Post-Oil Age” ............................................................................................................... 17
Slide #7 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the "Post-Oil Age" ............................................................................................................... 21
After Slide #7 – So Now What? ............................................................................................................................................................................... 21
ANNEX 1 – Some Background Ideas .............................................................................................................................................................................. 23
Entropy As I See It ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 23
Sources and Types of Energy ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 32
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The phenomenon of the 20th
Century ........................................................................................................................................................................... 34
Social Justice ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 36
Bringing These Ideas Together ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 37
References: This note goes with the slides of the same name. In addition, I have drawn on ideas from these sources, at least:
Hubbert curve, and peak oil theories
The book “Peak Everything”
CAS Hall and other Biophysical Economists, EROEI etc.
William Rees, ecological footprint
H T Odum and the Ecological Economists, maximum power principle
Piketty and his graphs, return of the gilded age
V Yakovenko and the econophysicists, social implications of entropy
Boltzmann, Shannon, and my expanded concepts of entropy production
Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter , and their theories of complex societies
John Michael Greer, and his theory of catabolic collapse
UN report describing planetary boundaries
Purpose “What does a sustainable society look like, in consideration of the reality of the ‘planetary boundaries’ and the carrying capacity
of the Earth?”
The purpose of this NTF and the slides it describes is to capture, in picture and in words, my thoughts about this question.
These slides are my attempt to capture and record the background image that I have been developing, implicitly, as I comment
on various materials, answer questions and do research, on those somewhat rare occasions that I can, these days, in support of
the folks at Foundation Earth.
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I know these ideas are not 100% correct, but I think they are a better representation of reality than what I have seen elsewhere.
They are a kind of synthesis of all those ideas I have come across and with which I have had some agreement. None of these
ideas are totally my own, but, I suppose, the way I have knit them together is a creation of the machinery at the back of my
unconscious mind, working diligently when I sleep, This summary of the combined ideas is what that machinery has produced.
The annex to this note contains some key ideas that make the slide descriptions make sense. Perhaps it should be read first. It
was written first, and then moved to the annex.
Description of Slides There are a total of seven slides in the associated slide deck. Each is described in more detail below, but here is the quick
version:
1. The title slide for the deck
2. Venn diagram for the biosphere and the anthroposphere
3. Energy band diagram for a pre-carbon sustainable society
4. Energy band diagram for our modern unsustainable society
5. Energy band diagram for a fictional post-carbon sustainable society
6. Modified version of slide 5 to include social justice premium
7. Modified version of slide 6 to include a long-term stability premium
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Slide #1 – Title slide It is self-explanatory.
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Slide #2 – Defining the Arena of Interest
This slide simply shows a Venn diagram of the biosphere and anthroposphere. Define the biosphere as all living organisms on
Earth. This includes all of humankind, of course. See the supplementary material in the annex.
Define the anthroposphere as all of humankind, plus all of its organizations, all of its machinery, and artifacts. In addition,
include all of those organisms that are used by humankind for any and every purpose. My purpose in defining this is to specify
that part of the Earth’s globe that is of interest is a discussion of sustainability. I realize this is a bit of a fuzzy definition, but it’s
the best I have at the moment.
A similar contained circle could be drawn for each species in the biosphere. For this exercise, my focus is on our own species.
The inward- and outward-pointing arrows around the edge of the anthroposphere represents the dynamic tension between
humankind and the rest of nature in the biosphere. Each species in the biosphere competes against others for a share of the flow
of mass and energy that makes continued life possible.
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Slide #3 – A Pre-Modern Simple Society at Carrying Capacity
This slide is a simple template for the more complex slides that follow. In this and other slides the interpretation of energy
bands is similar.
The height of the green rectangle represents the total energy that flows through the biosphere in, say, a year. The width of the
rectangle has no real meaning. The two-toned green rectangle represents the biosphere, and the dark green portion at the
bottom represents the anthroposphere, which is a subset of the biosphere.
The sloping angle of the line that separates the anthroposphere from the rest of the biosphere is a reminder that the definition of
the boundary of the anthroposphere is fuzzy, and not really clearly defined.
The light green arrows pointing downwards represent the fact that humankind’s competitors, predators, parasites and diseases
would try to usurp the flow of energy that humankind enjoys. The dark green arrows upwards indicate that humankind would
usurp the flow of energy that is currently enjoyed by the rest of the biosphere. All societies, whether simple or complex, exhibit
some ability to increase flows of mass and energy via, e.g., agriculture. They also all exhibit some ability to defeat predators,
parasites and diseases. In a world in which the flow of energy is relatively constant, such as was the case in a pre-carbon
society, this tension is real, as any movement of this line upwards or downwards represents a change in the relative size of the
anthroposphere.
The red arrows represent the planetary boundaries. The portion of the biosphere which shows above these boundary markers
represents that portion that is needed to support the rest of the biosphere by the absorption of wastes such as CO2 and the
production of life necessities such as O2. I realize that the dynamics around planetary boundaries are a lot more complex than
this. But a simple point can be made with a simple diagram. My simple point is that the anthroposphere cannot function if too
much of the rest of the biosphere is destroyed.
I think there is a difference between carrying capacity as determined for one species (say wild pigs) in one locale (say a
mountain valley). While it is possible for pigs to destroy their local ecosystem and cause the extirpation of many species
therein (by eating all young trees, all grass roots, all roots of any kind, before they die of starvation, it is not very likely. In
general, one species cannot cause an ecosystem to be pushed past a tipping point, causing a change of phase of the system.
Predators, parasites, and lack of access to the means of life in timely fashion will halt the rise of the population of pigs before
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destruction happens. When considering introduced species, however, for which predators and parasites are not locally present,
and for which there is a massive endowment of the necessities of life that local species do not exploit, it is possible to push the
system past such tipping points. We say such an introduced species is in a state of ecological escape. The extirpation of local
species by introduced species is a common example of this. When we are considering the carrying capacity of the Earth with
respect to people, we have to view it in the same way as we do the introduction of a species in a state of ecological escape. We,
humanity, are in a state of ecological escape. The “balance of nature” has been disturbed and is in flux. It is not clear who will
survive, and who will be extirpated, or, in a global frame, extincted. (Is that a word?)
The purpose of this slide is to show that, in a simple society, the bulk of energy that is under the control of the society and flows
through the society is spent on providing the simple necessities of life. Those are, food, shelter, and other necessities such as
simple tools, clothing, or toys, that are here represented by the word ‘clothes’.
It is the evolutionary imperative of all life, including human life, to produce more offspring than have a reasonable chance of
survival. You may look around and doubt this, but think of the fact we have overshot the capacity of the Earth to support
humans, and still we produce children. Hundreds of millions are malnourished world-wide, and still we produce children. In
other words, it is the evolutionary imperative of every species to press upwards towards each its own carrying capacity, and to
consume not just its fair share of mass and energy that flows through the biosphere, but more than its fair share. In the pre-
carbon era, human populations were at the carrying capacity available to them with their technology. But, here is the real point.
In order to expand our population, we had to divert a share of the flow of mass and energy that belonged to the wild places of
the Earth, and make it our own. It was a zero sum game. When we took more, they got less. So, this evolutionary imperative,
in the hands of man, kept us at carrying capacity, and expanded that capacity by usurping a share of the mass and energy flows
that was external to our own business.
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Slide #4 – Our Modern Unsustainable Society in the First Half of the Age of Oil
While this slide looks somewhat similar to slide 3, the dynamics behind it are dramatically different. Our need for an expanding
share of energy flows was dramatically and exuberantly met with fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) as well as smaller amounts of
wind, solar, nuclear and hydro-electric energy. We are no longer chiefly dependent on our muscles, or those of our beasts of
burden, to get things done, but rather, machinery of all kinds does it for us. With this machinery we have built massive globe
encircling infrastructures and systems. Also, with this machinery we have been able to vastly expand the amount of energy that
can be put into primary needs such as food, shelter and clothes, again building global systems to meet these needs, so our
population has mushroomed. BUT, with more people we also need a greater share of the flow of mass through the biosphere,
and so we have converted much of the wild lands to agricultural or urban lands. The result is, in spite of our abnormal access to
energy, we have encroached dramatically on the wild places of the Earth. What is not shown in this diagram is the way that our
waste stream has increased so that, the wild places that remain are very very sick – many of them sick to death. The oceans
have dead zones. Many major rivers run dry before they reach the ocean. Glaciers are disappearing. Species are being
extirpated and made extinct at an alarming rate.
I have added one layer, in silver, that did not appear in slide 3. To the right there are two text boxes associated with this layer.
The bottom box names some social systems that are directly needed to make our modern global economies operate. These are
the things that economists worry about. Above those, I add the things that are of less interest to economists and of more interest
to sociologists.
These systems of our modern complex society are very sophisticated and very expensive to build and maintain, in terms of a
share of the flow of mass and energy through the anthroposphere. Much of that energy currently comes from our large
endowment of fossil fuels. But, we must look to the near future when that flow of energy will falter as it becomes clear that it is
too expensive. In fact, it would seem that it started to falter and fail about 1970-1980. However, all of the mass, in the form of
food and water, construction materials and operational equipment and supplies, comes from the former wild places of the Earth.
I call these premiums, because the cost of maintaining these social systems is in some sense in addition to the cost of
subsistence living. But, I am slightly uneasy with this characterization. Without these modern business and social systems, our
global systems for production and delivery of the basic needs (food, shelter and clothes) would be impossible on the scale
required. So, these extra costs are a premium payment that is no longer optional, but is now necessary for continued survival of
the modern way of life.
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In this first half of the age of oil, we have raised the roof on carrying capacity, and that has enabled us to build very impressive
and very expensive business and social support systems (i.e. expensive in terms of mass and energy consumption). It is no
longer based on a division of a fixed flow of energy among trophic levels of the biosphere. We have our own free flows of
energy that have enabled the creation of all the wonders of the modern world that exceed the wonders of, say, the days of Queen
Elizabeth I in 1600, in the pre-carbon era.
The planetary boundaries are placed at the point on the left-hand scale at 1.0 Earths. This is William Rees’ ecological footprint
scale. In our state of ecological escape, we have, almost magically, but certainly only temporarily, pushed past several
ecological boundaries of the Earth. Biodiversity is in free fall. The ability of the biosphere to push back against the expanding
anthroposphere is gone, as forests and glaciers disappear. The business and social systems that are needed to maintain such a
massive anthroposphere are also consuming what remains of the wild biosphere without pushback as mining, forestry and
fishing interests make inroads into the most remote places in the world.
Again, I am trying to capture a very complex dynamic with a static picture. The picture seems inadequate, but it is already
pretty busy.
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Slide #5 – A Sustainable Modern Society in the Post-Oil Age
General This is the first of three slides in which I try to build up a picture of a socially just and dynamically stable and sustainable
modern economy. This is the base slide, in which I represent sustainability. Then the next two slides add what I consider
necessary levels of assigned and protected bands of energy flow to achieve the utopian goal of social justice, and the dynamic
goal of long-term stability.
It may be merely wishful thinking to believe that such a thing as a sustainable modern society is possible. Certainly, it will be
much different from our present unsustainable ‘modern’ society, as depicted in slide 4. I will describe it from the top down.
Wild Places The wild places must be preserved and protected. The light green area above the planetary boundaries represents the necessary
portion of energy flow allowed for untamed biosphere. Moral and legal proscriptions against encroachment must be strong,
with severe penalties. So, the number one characteristic of a sustainable modern society is extremely strong protection of wild
places, and the biodiversity they support. Why? Because, without these, we go extinct.
In order to achieve this, the current size of the anthroposphere must first be shrunk in size. We MUST have a smaller human
population. And the wild places must increase in size to a sustainable level. They cannot be held static at their present-day
levels, because they are currently dying for lack of protection, and that trend must be reversed. This slide assumes that the
necessary allocation for the wild places has been determined and achieved.
The slanted line between the silver area and the light green area indicates that we may not know at this point exactly where the
line should be drawn to achieve sustainability. That lack of vertical arrows along this line represents my conviction that, once
determined and achieved, this line must NOT be allowed to be encroached upon. Scientific studies must be undertaken to
establish the size of required wild places, and the means to defend them. The concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ is the first step
in this direction.
Anthroposphere Commercial and Social Systems Below that, the silver area represents the flow of energy needed to maintain our global commercial and social systems. The
human systems are no longer gobbling up the share of the flow of energy that belongs to the wild places. But, in this diagram,
we are still at carrying capacity, pushing dangerously against the planetary boundaries. If our population continues to grow, we
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are not allowed to push up into the green area above, so we must convert some of the energy flows currently assigned to
maintenance of our business and social systems (e.g. maintenance of infrastructure, operation of education and health systems)
and turn it to food production. This means, maybe, taking people out of the cities and putting them back on the farms, tearing
up roads and planting seeds there, that sort of thing?
The vertical arrows along the edge between the silver area and the dark green area represent this dynamic tension that must be
maintained between population size and the commercial and social systems required to service them in a modern society. The
energy diverted to health and education systems, for example, must be limited and scaled down to what is affordable. This
implies some very serious rethinking of the rights of access to health and education.
The dark green area at the bottom of the slide, again, represents the band of energy needed to provide our basic needs of food,
shelter and clothes. Again, these needs are met by global systems that are massive in scale, and are necessarily supported by the
commercial and social systems identified in the silver band above. This is an intrinsic part of our modern society. The angle of
the line dividing this dark green area from the silver area is slanted to indicate that it is difficult to determine exactly where this
line is. Perhaps that is not important, but it may be. For example, when determining how many people the planet can support,
the green band might be considered the ‘profit centre’ of a modern sustainable economy, while the silver band may be
considered a ‘cost centre’. However, when considering the cultural and physical benefits of living in a technically sophisticated
society, the classification of cost vs benefit would change.
Major Deficit There is a significant problem with this scenario, if we think this is a definition of a utopian society. When left unregulated, the
global systems of the modern era are ‘entropy-driven’, in the sense described in the annex to this note. This means they will
eventually self-organize to exhibit distributions of wealth, land, energy consumption and political power in which a small elite
population control most of it, and the bulk of humankind will have insufficient access to it. While such a global economy might
be eminently ‘sustainable’, in the sense that follow-on generations would theoretically have equivalent access to the Earth’s
endowments as the present generation, access to those endowments would be extremely uneven within a generation. For most
people, they will be disenfranchised, and life will be brief and difficult. This is a socially unstable circumstance.
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Slide #6 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the “Post-Oil Age” This is almost the same as slide 5 but with an additional energy band added, called the ‘Social Justice Premium’.
I have made a few adjustments to slide 5 as follows:
The height of the dark green energy band associated with basic needs has been reduced. This is meant to imply that a
smaller global population can be supported, and it therefore consumes less energy.
The height of the silver energy band associated with modern commercial and social systems has been reduced. This is meant
to imply that a smaller population needs fewer services, so less energy needs to be allocated to maintenance of such systems.
It also signifies, however, that we must monitor the efficiency of such systems and ensure that they remain less than fully
efficient, due to the unavoidable trade-off between efficiency and social justice, and so some level of inefficiency in energy
used per service delivered must be a goal.
I have added an energy band (purple) called the ‘social justice premium’ which is allocated the portion of the energy flow
that is no longer allocated to basic needs or social and commercial systems.
The slanting line between the social justice premium band and the global life support systems band is meant to imply that we
still do not know exactly how much we need to allocate to global life support systems, and we need to do research to figure this
out. The vertical arrows between the social justice premium band and the social and business (silver) band indicate that there
will be a dynamic tension here is a sustainable society.
The height of the band for social justice premium is equal to the lost height in the other two bands of the anthroposphere. Social
justice has an energy cost, because social justice requires extra expenditure of energy in the faith systems, justice systems, and
governance systems, as well as less efficiency in the commercial systems. Since the total energy available does not change, just
because we want to live in a just society, the sizes of those pre-existing bands must adjust to pay the social justice premium.
As pointed out under the discussion for slide 5, entropy-driven processes produce undesirable distributions of wealth, land,
political power, and access to energy. The only remedy to this would be a systematic generation-by-generation redistribution of
those things that are concentrated in the hands of the elite by all identifiable entropy-driven processes. Such redistribution
would be managed by the elite, and for this to happen at least two significant adjustments need to be made:
The ‘free markets’ that have been largely unregulated to this point in the history of the world would need to be carefully
regulated in such a way as to slow the concentrating effects of those entropy-driven processes. Since maximum entropy
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production is correlated with maximum efficiency in a market, this means the market must be regulated to be somewhat
inefficient.
The ‘faith system’ that dominates the behaviour of the elite would, of necessity, need to include morals about sharing and
redistribution of wealth and power for the sake of humanity and for the sake of life on the planet. I think such altruistic
moral guidance has been part of many indigenous cultures of the past and present. In addition, the ‘faith system’ that
dominates the behaviour of the less elite would, of necessity, need to include acceptance of reduced rights, such as
reproductive rights and ownership rights.
Such ideas are anathema to modern-day industrialists as well as to modern-day libertarians. I would consider both of these
groups to be adherents to extremist secular faith systems. Our modern faith systems, whether religious or secular, seem to be
strongly oriented towards our own ultimate destruction. This is, perhaps, not surprising, as they assumed their present form and
orientation during the very unusual period of immense flows of free energy (i.e. free profits) of the 20th
century. The implicit
assumption that such conditions of life are normal has lead to the development of unsustainable belief systems.
What are the implications of this?
Faith systems are the most serious problem, especially the secular faith systems. Followers of religious faith systems, for the
most part, try to do altruistic good. It is not so with secular faith systems, which currently put a premium on personal or
corporate or national aggrandizement. Sustainability looks like a secular problem that a body like the UN can just vote away,
with the support of most governments. This is not the case. We cannot just simply scale down our global society and economy
by a factor of 1/1.6 and then carry on with business as usual. We must radically change our ways. But how? Much of what is
covered in this, my vision of a sustainable society, requires a deeper level of scientific knowledge of how social and economic
systems work. Far too much economic theory is just quasi-religious pseudo-scientific talk that wears the robes of science
(taught at major universities, dressed up in mathematical equations). Its practitioners have about the same chance of giving
good advice as back-woods witch-doctors. And yet, all the leaders of the world go to them for advice. Economists do far more
damage in the world now, and cause more misery and death, than the most evil-minded witch-doctors ever did or could. Social
systems experts do not even have that much credibility. Maybe that's a good thing. We must turn our scientific research onto
solving the riddles of social dynamics and economic dynamics.
Problem
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I am troubled with one more issue. This diagram, in its simplicity, hides a lot of dynamic inter-dependencies that we do not
really understand. Even supposing that we can control the size of our population, establish an altruistic secular faith that
includes defence of the biosphere and social justice, find ways to control the immensely powerful entropy-driven processes, and
learn to live in such a sustainable society - even supposing all of that - what if we have it wrong somewhere? What if we
accidentally expand our activities in the anthroposphere across some as-yet-unidentified planetary boundary, past a tipping
point, and it all falls apart. What if there is some subtle entropy-driven process with positive feedback (a bad thing in dynamic
systems) that we fail to control pushing us over a known boundary. Civil unrest, natural calamity, failure of moral constraints -
any of these could push us over one of many such planetary boundaries, and we lose it all. This kind of brinkmanship is
irresponsible.
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Slide #7 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the "Post-Oil Age" This slide is just like slide 5 but with one additional energy band. To resolve the problem of lack of understanding of the
immensely complex dynamics of a fully functioning biosphere containing a modern but sustainable anthroposphere, and
faulting on the side of caution, I have added an energy band called ‘no brinkmanship premium’.
This gives the life support systems of the world some chance of survival if we fail to understand the dynamic systems with
which we are tinkering. To make room for this safety band, this ‘margin for error’ as it is called in the descriptive box to the
right, each of the other energy bands in the anthroposphere must be shrunk.
After Slide #7 – So Now What? So, now that I have a picture of the vision of a sustainable global economy, what do I think of it?
The 4-5 Gap, and Catabolic Collapse There is a gap between slide 4, the modern situation, and the vision of slides 5 through 7. Slide 4 is patently unsustainable.
Slide 5 represents a sustainable population of people, with a sustainable society, similar to that seen in slide 3. How do we get
from 4 to 5, and then to 6 and 7? Each step along the way involves reduction of our population size, and reduction of the
systems and infrastructure of the anthroposphere.
There are only three substantially different outcomes to slide #4, when judged from the point of view of the continuance of
humankind:
The world as we know it comes to an end with a major extinction event that includes humankind;
The world passes one or several tipping points (it may have already done so) and the world as we know it comes to an end
with the total collapse of all social systems, resulting in world-wide famine and disease, leaving a small remnant of humanity
to carry on in a desolated world;
We constrain ourselves, apply ourselves to the problem, and manage a ‘soft landing’ of some kind in which some semblance
of a modern sophisticated science and technology-based society survives, and in which there is social justice, as envisioned
in slides 6 and 7.
John Greer describes a process he calls catalytic collapse, by which the superstructure of a complex society shrinks by stages
and restores, as I see it, a balance between the ‘needs’ and the ‘wants’ of society. At each such stage of collapse, society
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becomes a little less complex, and is more sustainable based on the current access to energy and mass. If such a process
continues to total catalytic collapse, then we will end up with a pre-carbon style of society. Think of Europe in the 1600s.
The problem with uncontrolled catalytic collapse, as I see it, is that it could turn into total social anarchy at any one of the steps,
and we would have a return to world-wide dark ages. I don’t see that as a cheerful and heart-warming vision of the future. So,
the only kind of scenario I can imagine that I find tolerable, the only vision I can buy into for my descendants, is one involving
controlled catabolic collapse, a la Greer.
How could we do that? Aside from all of the other things that today’s ecologists and scientists are working on and worrying
about:
We would need to tame the evolutionary imperative that demands we produce too many offspring.
We would need to tame the entropy-driven processes that demand that societies (and economies) evolve to become unjust
and unstable.
We would need to align the incentives that guide the actions and decisions of world leaders to align with the establishment of
a sustainable modern society; and
We would need to learn how to trigger and manage the steps in catabolic collapse.
Utopian, or Dystopian? The REALLY BIG problem that now confronts me is this. This vision of the only realistic and acceptable path to future
sustainability sounds very much like a description of all of the dystopian societies imagined by the authors of futuristic fictions.
In all of those visions, freedom of individual thought and action are limited by the needs of society as a whole.
Is it a necessary component of a future modern sustainable society that we also evolve, individually, to be less creative and
more ant-like in our demeanor? Must our society become more hive-like? Must our civil governance become more repressive?
In the fictions we write, and read, and watch on TV and in the movies, such a future is abhorrent and rarely stable, from our
point of view in our western secular faith systems.
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ANNEX 1 – Some Background Ideas There are some background ideas that need to be recorded if the slides are to be
understood.
Entropy As I See It I have struggled for years to understand this concept. I think I am finally getting
there. This is my own version of entropy.
Every dynamic change that ever happens involves energy. Energy is either moved
from one place to another, or converted from one form to another as things change.
But, in all these changes, energy is never created or destroyed. [For this to be true,
mass must be considered a form of energy. For the sake of this discussion, we will
exclude the process of mass/energy conversion. ] The total amount of energy in a
closed system never changes. A closed system is one to/from which energy cannot
enter/escape. Energy cannot disappear into nothing. It cannot appear from
nothing. This is the first law of thermodynamics, the law of the conservation of
energy.
In most cases, during these changes energy degrades. It starts at a higher grade,
and finishes at a lower grade. The probability that it will degrade is so close to one
as to be considered as good as certain. This is precisely the same level of certainty
we have that time will move forwards. When energy degrades, entropy in the
system rises. High grade energy is able to do a lot of work, or to cause a lot of
change, proportionally. Low grade energy is able to do little work, or to cause
little relative change.
I can define the grade of energy for a closed system, but I haven’t figured it out for
an open system, yet. In a closed system, define the entropic index as IS = S / SMax
where S is the entropy of the system, SMax is the maximum possible entropy for
this closed system, and IS is the entropic index. Then define the grade of the
energy in this closed system as GE = 1 – IS. IS and GE are both numbers, indices,
really, between 0 and 1.
In a closed system, entropy will always rise (the grade of the energy will always
fall) until a maximal level of entropy is approached asymptotically (until the grade
of energy reaches zero). Energy that has a grade of zero has no ability to do more
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work in this situation. This is my interpretation of the second law of
thermodynamics.
When entropy in a closed system of ideal gas molecules rises to its maximum
possible value, the distribution of energy contained in the atoms of the gas are
distributed in a characteristic shape. A very small number of atoms have very high
levels of energy contained in them, and the bulk of atoms have a very small level
of energy contained in them. This was described by Boltzmann and Gibbs.
Perhaps, one can define a concept I shall call ‘social entropy’ based on wealth,
rather than energy. This is not in text books.
When social entropy in a society rises to its maximum possible value, the
distribution of wealth owned by the people of the society is distributed in a
characteristic shape. A very small number of people have a very high level of
wealth owned by them, and the bulk of the people have a very small level of
wealth owned by them. This was described by Victor Yakovenko and his
Econophysics colleagues. When wealth has a grade of zero, it has no more ability
to ‘do work’ in the economy. I am not exactly sure what that means, theoretically,
but, when I look around, I know exactly what it means in practice.
One can define another kind of entropy that we might call, just to give it a name,
“national energy consumption” entropy.
When ‘national energy consumption entropy’ in the world rises to its maximum
possible value, the distribution of energy consumption by the nations of the world
is distributed in a characteristic shape. A very small number of nations have a very
high rate of consumption, and the bulk of the nations of the world have a very
small level of consumption of energy. Victor Yakovenko described this. When
the grade of ‘national energy consumption’ is zero ... Hmm?
The same fundamental mathematical process that underlies the second law of
thermodynamics and gives the distribution of energies in a gas the Boltzmann
distribution – this same fundamental mathematical process automatically causes all
societies to develop an extreme distribution of wealth in which the bulk of
members of society hold little wealth, while a few hold great wealth. And, this
same fundamental mathematical process causes unequal access to consumable
energy in the global economy.
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H T Odum discovered that energy flowing through an open ecosystem (causing
entropy to rise) will cause the ecosystem to self-organize such that energy is
degraded and mass is consumed (eaten, digested, integrated, and then discarded) at
a maximum possible rate. This is called the Maximum Power Principle. He also
believed this was active in open economic systems. This is counter-intuitive, given
the above ideas. I believe that the same fundamental mathematical principle is at
work to make this happen in open systems. The chief difference is the open nature
of the systems now being considered. If energy is degraded at a maximum rate in
an open system, then entropy is ‘produced’ at a maximal rate. This is tentatively
being referred to as the “Maximum Entropy Production Principle” (MEPP) for
open systems.
What happens to this ‘produced’ entropy? Entropy is not local, so it baffles me to
say it flies away. Is it dissipated? I have seen that there are those that argue that
information (which I have not discussed here) is conserved, in the same way that
energy is. Is entropy conserved? I don’t think so. I really need to dig into that
further! In a few weeks, maybe!
About terminology: I don’t know the words that make some of the sentences I am
about to write both brief and correct, so I will resort to expressions that are brief
and clear, but somewhat incorrect. Entropy rises and falls. Entropy is a measure
like height. It cannot be produced. It cannot be driven, or drive anything. I will
refer to the self-organizing processes that cause atoms to move energy around, that
cause wealth to redistribute in a society, or that cause consumptive ability to move
around amongst the nations of the world as entropy-driven processes. What this
really means is that there is a fundamental stochastic mathematical process that
causes energy/wealth/consumptive ability to shift about (and degrade??) as
changes happen, and those changes drive entropy upwards in the most probable
direction until a maximal value is reached.
So, let me be absolutely clear about this. I am making up some of this. I did not
find it all in text books. In fact, I find many texts about entropy almost
unintelligible. I have read a few selected papers and written several notes. This is
my synthesis of it. I could be a little more careful about open and closed systems, I
guess, but this is more-or-less how I think entropy works, and exactitude is not my
goal here.
So, what is the incredibly powerful mathematical process that drives global
societies to such excesses of social dystopia? Here is the most simple case.
Imagine two sets of agents (atoms, people, or countries), one with eight members
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and one with two members. We can represent this state with the ordered pair (8,2).
You randomly choose an agent in one pile and move it to the other. It is most
probable that you have moved an agent from the pile of eight (making it seven) to
the pile of two (making it three). Entropy is calculated as a weighted average.