Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Systems and Complexity

• Systems theory implies that humans, societies, ecologies, and biochemical functioning make up one vast interactive system affecting each other, even if not in harmony.
• Humans are part of this. They are not currently independent of earth functions, or of Gaia if you prefer.
• Dominant systems of human social action seem to be disrupting planetary systems and breaking ‘planetary boundaries‘. One of these disruptions is the generation of climate change via the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and cheap but harmful agricultural practices.
• There are many intersecting systems which influence each other – not only the ecological systems, but the human systems of energy, technology, illth [1], economics/power, information and social psychology. All of these seem stretched to breaking point. Economics and power is shoveling riches and power to the hyper-rich, information is becoming propaganda and defense, energy is breaking due to peak oil and the energy that will be needed to transform to renewables to stop system collapse. New technologies like 3 D printing, AI, Genetic Modification are likely to have systemic effects.
• The complexity of these systems makes prediction, knowledge and co-ordination difficult. We do know that the current interactions are likely to be disruptive and cause struggles between social groups.
• Small changes can make large differences. Tipping points accumulate and cascade throughout the system.
• Unintended consequences of action and policy are normal, hence political action should be considered as an experiment, and unintended consequences be looked for rather than dismissed.
• People at different places in the system will perceive things differently. Hence a functional information system is required, which we do not seem to be able to organise, partly because capitalism seems to depend on inaccurate information (advertising, hype, PR, marketing, misdirection etc are market tactics).
• In complexity, ‘Knowledge’ is always a simplification.
• Simplification leads to unconsciousness as well as awareness. Knowledge is paradoxically both necessary and a possible misdirection.
• Uncertainty is normal and should be recognised.
• The only accurate model of the system is the system itself.
• Diversity can help survival by allowing a multitude of experimental responses to change.
• Suppression of diversity reduces resilience and adaptive capacity, even if it helps administration, because diversity can hinder centralised governance. Everything nowadays should be run like a business, irrespective of whether that is appropriate or not.
• Government in complex systems appears distributed, and it is easy to avoid responsibility, or try and freeload onto others. The problems of co-ordinated action are boosted if everyone has to agree to a strategy for it to work – such as not increasing fossil fuel consumption, and then phasing it down. those who don’t agree will maintain what appear to be advantages.
• Even the ultra powerful can feel stymied.

Challenges and Avoidence

• Societies and individuals regularly face challenges.
• Turning away from these challenges to try and maintain the status quo or ‘elite consciousness and knowledge’ (social egos), does not help survival, mental health, or future progression.
• During their development, societies have produced ‘resolution sets’ which have solved, postponed or hidden past challenges.
• Resolution sets include types of technology and the elites that have commanded those technologies and used them in particular ways.
• Technologies include forms of social organisation. Military, economic or political forms etc. Neoliberal capitalism and developmentalism are both resolution sets that have probably developed into obstacles to facing challenges, partly because they involve continual growth and a convenient belief that The Market solves every problem and its victors should be helped rather than hindered.
• The problems neoliberal capitalism and developmentalism have ‘resolved’ largely do not include the current energy, ecological or climate challenges.
• The current resolution sets have generated the new challenges.
• Elites can get ‘stuck’ in their resolution sets as those sets provide them with status, income, power and the certainty of being useful. They give meaning.
• It is easier to turn away from those challenges when they are as big as current challenges, and solving them may involve giving up power, familiarity and meaning, which are already under threat because of the challenges.
• Sometimes new resolutions come from creative groups hidden in ‘niches’ or the spaces between powers, where they can develop without being prematurely crushed. This is a diversity in action.
• If these creative groups succeed they may become a new elite from without or, if the current elites are functional, a new part of the established elites and produce change from within.
• The presence of successful movements can change the politics of the dominant system, as politicians seek the potential votes of those involved in the new success.
• Not changing the workings of the economic and political, neoliberal and developmentalist elites, will lead to disaster.

Energy

• Energy is vital for all life including social life. The basic forms of energy are sunlight and ‘food’.
• Energy is found in ecologies (social or ‘natural’), in the active patterns of systems.
• Energy in society tends to be intertwined with power relations.
• Powerful people often have more access to energy, and to the provision of energy – through money, might and so on. Less powerful people have less available energy.
• The more energy available, then the more can be funneled to the dominant elites, increasing inequality, and apparently making those dominant elites more secure and more able to ignore challenges.
• Dominant elites, and dominant ways of life, are threatened by lack of energy. Hence the change from fossil fuels to renewables, which could provide less energy, can be seen as threatening.
• Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can be released and lost. Releasing energy takes energy – First Law of thermodynamics.

Energy and Entropy

• Energy is always dissipated when used. A closed system will run down – this is the Second Law of thermodynamics.
• Energy needs to come from outside the local system, so social access to energy tends to be competitive between social groups and between nations.
• Structures of order require energy expenditure, or they will decay or wear down, and need to be repaired, or changed, through energy use – or else more energy is required to bypass the decay.
• The more ‘artificial’ the structures of order the more energy they will need.
• Societies and businesses tend to let their structures of order such as sewage, electricity cabling, gas piping, buildings and so on decay, as repairing them is endless and takes money away from other more ‘glamorous’ or status filled projects and most of the time we don’t notice.
• Paradoxically, more energy can lead to both benefit and more destruction especially ecological destruction, reinforcing the smashing of planetary boundaries.
• Fossil fuels have been an excellent source of energy.
• The modern world has been built on fossil fuels.
• Without fossil fuel burning producing the unintended effects of pollution, ill-health, climate change and the possibilities of peak oil, few people might wish to change.
• The Energy Transition requires large amounts of energy. It will almost certainly be some time before the transition can be powered without burning fossil fuels, and increasing GHG emissions and making the situation worse.
• This is especially the case if humanity keeps increasing its energy demand, or if Jevons effects mean renewables simply add to energy supply without replacing fossil fuels in the longer term.

Steady State? Degrowth

• One possible route to transition is to reduce energy use (perhaps through efficiency measures, but perhaps through cutbacks).
• Perhaps less energy should be devoted to harming the planetary systems, and to the political systems.
• This (as implied above) will be resisted by current elites, and has other consequences, many of which may not be foreseeable.

The situation is difficult.

Tags: climate change, complexity, Disinformation, disorder, distributed governance, Energy, Toynbee

This entry was posted on February 15, 2024 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.