This is another go at formulating a list of basic systems which need to be considered for eco-social analysis. For earlier versions see here and here.
As a guide to the factors involved in the socio-ecological dialectic we can point to a number of different, but interacting systems. We can use this list as a set of reminders for analysis and we can make general statements about how they interact. The order of importance of these systems is a matter for investigation.
The main systems are as follows:
Political System
The political system, includes the modes of struggle encouraged, enabled or disabled, the structure and divisions (factioning) of the State, the differing effects of different bases of power (monetary, communication, violence, hierarchy, religion etc), who gets into positions of power and how, and so on.
Economic System
The economic system can presently be described as ‘capitalist’. The economic system involves modes of appropriation, extraction, property, commodification, exchange, circulation of ‘products’, and accumulation of social power and wealth and so on.
In capitalism, political patternings tend to be describable as ‘plutocratic’, although different factions in the State can ally with different or competing factions in the economic system. For example, different government departments or political factions can support fossil fuels, renewables, or nuclear. The political system legitimates and enforces, allowable modes of extraction, property, pollution and regulates economic behaviour among different social groups. Economics always involves political as well as economic struggle.
The Extraction system is part of the economic system, but it might be useful to separate it out from the economic system because extraction is one of the prime ways in which economies interact with ecologies and because different kinds of economies can use similar extraction systems. Extraction not only involves extraction of what gets defined as ‘resources’ (minerals, naturally occurring substances such as oil or coal, and so on) but also the ways that human food gets extracted for consumption, via agriculture, gathering, hunting and so on. Clearly not all forms of extraction need to be destructive of the ecologies and geographies they depend upon, and investigating the differences may well produce useful insights.
Energy System
The energy system powers the economic system and is organised, at least in part, by the political and economic systems. Human labour is part of the energy system, and while not yet, if ever, superseded completely, can be supplemented and possibly dominated by technological sources of energy. Coal and oil power provides masses amounts more of directed energy than human labour, and this is important to understanding the patterning and possibilities of the economic and extraction system, and its relationship to colonial/imperial history.
Important parts of the energy system include the amounts of energy available for use, and the capacity for energy to be directed. Non-directable energy is wasted energy (entropy), and usually unavailable for constructive use.
The availability of energy is influenced by the energy return on energy input. The greater the amounts of energy applied to gain a humanly directable energy output, the less energy is available. Because food is necessary for human labour, cultivation of food can be considered to be part of the energy system.
Social power and economics may affect the ways that energy is distributed, what uses are considered legitimate and so on. However, the energy system also influences what can be done in both other systems, and the costs (social, aesthetic, ecological or monetary) which influence choices about the constituents of energy systems The system’s pollution products which are significant factors in producing climate and ecological change, will also limit what can be done.
As the energy system determines what energy is available for use, it is not an unreasonable assumption that social power and organisation will be partly built around the energy system and that changes in energy systems will change what can be done, and thus threaten established social orders and be resisted. If an energy transition goes ahead, it is likely that the established orders will try and preserve the patterns, of organisation, wealth and social power which have grown up under the old system.
Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems
Understanding the Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems is vital to understanding current energy transformations. We can define waste as “material which is re-processable by the economy or eco-system”, and pollution as not being so re-processable. ‘Dispersal’ is where some essential material is dispersed into the system, and becomes largely unavailable for reuse without ‘uneconomic’ expenditures of finance or energy – as occurs with helium and phosphorus. These concepts directly import the ecosystem into the economy, while pointing out that what counts as allowable waste, pollution or dispersal can change, economically, politically and ‘practically’.
When too much waste for the systems to re-process is issued, then waste becomes pollution. This is what has happened with CO2. CO2 is also dispersed in the atmosphere which makes CO2 extraction, as recommended as essential by the IPCC and IEA, difficult and costly in terms of energy.
Waste, pollution and dispersal from the energy system and from modes of extraction, enter into the political system because that system decides and regulates what can be emitted, and where, and who is too valuable to be poisoned by the pollution. The political makes the laws allowing, diminishing or preventing, pollution.
However, energy is not the only significant source of pollution, and if we are to discuss transition this has to be remembered.
Information about pollution from the energy system and the extraction system, provides a major driver for energy transformation, partly because this issue seems ‘economically’ politically and energetically solvable, while other sources of pollution seem less easy to deal with. This involves a likely politicisation of the information system. How would people, in general, become aware of pollution and who it is that primarily suffers from its effects?
Information System
What people become aware of, what can be understood or done depends on the Information System. This determines what feedback is available about what is happening in general, but also the information which allows people to act politically, economically, in response to the actions and reactions of the ecological system to other systems such as waste and pollution, or extraction.
Regulation is an important part of both the information and political systems. Information systems indicate the availability or coherence of regulation of energy and extraction, and the understanding of problems and predicaments. Regulation is based on information selection as well as political allegiance, and regulations can be opaque as well as easily decodable.
The political and economic systems also directly impact on the information systems, as politics often centres on propagation of politically favourable information and the inhibition of politically unfavourable information. Economic ownership and control of sources of information also impacts upon the information available. Economic power may also influence what information is collected and processed.
The information system does not have to be coherent, thus we can be both informed and disinformed of the progress of climate change by the system. Certain groups being more likely to be informed than others, even though everyone tends to frame themselves as being well informed. Information does not have to be accurate to have an effect, it is also part of socially constructed propaganda – as we can see with climate and covid denial, and this can influence political process, victories and inaction.
Geographic Systems
Then we have Geographic systems. Geography affects the layout of energy systems, the potential reach of political and economic systems, the ‘natural’ flow of air and water, changes in temperature, the availability of sunlight, and the kinds of extractions which are ‘economic’ or economic in the short term, but deleterious in the long term. Geography is relational, giving layout in space between spaces and constructions. Geography shapes and is shaped by politics, social activity, economics, pollution and so on. Geography constitutes the human sense of home, and transformation of geography or relations of geography can produce a sense of ‘unhoming’, or dislocation in place and in the future of place.
Planetary systems and boundaries
Finally we have planetary boundaries. The planetary boundaries are ways of conceiving the limits and constitution of ecosystems, and are, as such, fairly abstract. These boundaries represent systems necessary for human and planetary functioning.
They do not necessarily form the one system, and could be separated out for purposes of analysis. They act as guidelines, and probable reactive limits which are essential for the consideration of ‘eco-social’ relations, and the likely long term success of those relations.
These planetary boundaries appear to be either under significant pressure, or breaking down. Any global system which does not preserve or reinforce planetary systems will probably give impetus to global ecological collapse.
The systems are usually listed as involving: climatic stability, biospheric integrity (balance between species, rates of extinction etc), water cycles (availability of drinkable, non-poisonous water), biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, dispersal of valuable materials, which literally form the metabolic rift, etc), ocean acidity or alkalinity, levels of particulates or micro-particulates, ozone levels, and the introduction of novel entities into the global ecology and their unknown systemic consequences (new chemicals, microplastics etc.). It is the functioning and disruption of these systems which make processes of pollution and extraction problematic. Thus the impact directly on society.
Conclusion and Advice
Recognition of the interactions of these systems, with their differing but interacting imperatives, seems vital to getting a whole and accurate picture of the problems and opportunities presented by energy transition.
All the systems that have been discussed here, are complex systems. They are composed of ‘nodes’ which modify themselves or change their responses in response to changes in the ‘system as a whole.’ The systems are unpredictable in specific. The further into the future that we imagine, the less likely our predictions are to be specifically accurate. We can, for example, predict that weather will get more tumultuous in general as we keep destroying the ecology, but we cannot predict the exact weather at any distance. Complex systems produce surprise and actions often have unexpected consequences. If we seek to apply a policy, we cannot expect it to work exactly as we think it should. For example, the political move to make ‘markets,’ the most important institution, did not deliver either efficiency or liberty, as was expected. In all cases of actions within complex systems we should seek for unintended consequences. Sometimes the only realistic way to approach unintended consequences is to realise that our theory could not predict those events, and without looking we might never even have seen the events, or realised their connection to what we did. Working in such systems, all politics becomes experimental.
Complex systems do not have to be seek the best conditions for human beings. From a human point of view, they can be maladaptive. For example, our social system can be maladative and destructive of our means of living.
People involved in promoting Energy Transformation have to deal with the various complex systems we have discussed above. The complexity does not mean we cannot make any predictions, although we need to treat them cautiously.
- People engaged in transition have to consider the effects of the political systems involved, and be aware that politics influences what is likely to be possible. A transition may be delayed by political action, and political patterning, no matter how sensible or affordable the transition is.
- A transition has to fit in with economic patterns or its supporters have to be prepared to change those patterns. It may help or hinder the process if patterns of extraction, property and control are not changed. This reinstates the economic process as both a political and business process. Patterns of extraction also have to be less harmful than previous patterns or the harm will be continued, even if in a different manner.
- We have to have the available energy to build the transformed system. As we are supposedly aiming to replace the existing harmful system without lowering the energy availability, this may prove difficult. Where does the energy to build the new system come from if not from the old? We also need to avoid using renewables to simply add to energy availability, without reducing energy from fossil fuels. Considering these problems may lead to conclusions about the necessity of degrowth, in the same way as slowing down the damage from extraction may do. Changing the energy system is a political problem, and may require a change in the economic system as well as in power relations.
- The new system and the path of transformation, has to reduce pollution and extraction damage, or ecological and climate crises will continue, and planetary boundaries will be given no chance to recover. A transition plan which does not consider this problem is probably futile. Likewise a transition plan should consider diminishing the dispersal of rare and valuable materials. More of what is currently pollution and dispersal has to be transformed to waste, in amounts the systems can process.
- The current information system does not seem to be functioning in favour of the transition. It seems highly politicised and does not report ecological feedback accurately, either denying crisis, or delaying the supposed arrival of crisis. Our current information system is largely owned and controlled by the neoliberal fossil fuel based establishment, which is defending its power, wealth and ways of living in the world. Without an independent information system, it will be impossible to win the political struggle. At the same time accurate information will be attacked and dismissed as political. At the least, people engaged in energy transformation have to be aware of the nature of complex systems and the normal arising of unintended and unexpected consequences. We need an information system that allows us to perceive such consequences, without attacking the transformation as a whole.
- Geography will affect the layout and possibilities of the transition. Renewables appear to require far more land than fossil fuels per unit of energy although fracking and coal seam gas seem to require similar amounts of land and do far more permanent damage to that land. The capacity of renewables to take up agricultural land has to be factored in, as does the capacity of any new form of energy generation to ‘unhome’ people – especially fossil fuels which are also poisonous.
- Finally, the transformation should aim to avoid disrupting the planetary boundary systems as much as possible, with the longer term targets of restoring those systems. Pointing to the range of boundaries will possibly remind people that climate change is not the only problem we face, and it should be clear that no energy, or social, system is going to survive if it violates these boundaries in the long term.
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