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, here and here.
Introduction
As a guide to the factors involved in eco-social relations we can point to a number of different, but interacting systems. This list is not claiming to be complete, but it can be used as a set of reminders when we try to make analyses of our contemporary situation, and we may be able to make some general statements about how they interact. The order of relative importance of these systems is a matter for investigation, and the order of their presentation, in this blog post, is not a claim about their relative importance.
The seven main systems, discussed here, are
- Political;
- Economic (extraction);
- Energy;
- Waste, pollution and dispersal;
- Information;
- Technological;
- Planetary Boundaries (geography) :
All these systems are complex systems, and it is generally impossible to predict their specific course. They are also prone to rapid change, gradual instability, and the ‘seeking’ of equilibrium.
Political System
The political system, includes:
- the modes of struggle encouraged, discouraged, enabled or disabled,
- the patterns and divisions (the ‘factioning’) within the State and wider society,
- the differing effects of different bases of power: such as monetary power, communication power, power through violence or threat, hierarchical power, religious and cosmological power (the power to delimit the official views of the way that the cosmos works), organisational power, etc.,
- who gets into positions of power and how, and so on,
Politics can affect all the other human systems. What activities (extraction, energy use, organisation etc.) are encouraged or discouraged, the kinds of regulation that apply, what counts as pollution or risk, what information is easily available, and who is to be trusted, and so on.
Political systems can forcibly ignore pollution or the consequences of energy production, economic extraction, the wage system, and so on, effectively rendering them part of a general unconscious, which eventually ‘bites back’.
Economic System
Most of the dominant economic systems currently in action can be described loosely as ‘capitalist’. The economic system involves modes of appropriation, extraction, property, commodification, exchange, circulation of ‘products’, technological systems, energy use, as well as accumulation of social power and wealth and so on. Most of which depend upon the State for their existence and reinforcement, although they may also challenge organisation and politics within the State. There is no inherent stability in current economic systems.
In many sociological theories the patterns of economic organisation and behaviour are known as the ‘infrastructure’ and are held to be determinate of most other social behaviours, primarily because the economic system seems the most obvious determinate of what people have to do in order to survive.
This organisation may have apparently unintended consequences, such as producing periodic crashes, or destroying the ecological base of the economy, and therefore threatening that organisation. They also may have quite expectable consequences, which are downplayed. In capitalism, political and economic patternings tend to be describable as ‘plutocratic’; as wealth allows the purchase of all other forms of power. However, 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 different types of energy: fossil fuels, renewables, or nuclear. The political system legitimates and enforces, allowable modes of extraction, property and pollution, and regulates economic behaviour among different social groups. Economics always involves political as well as economic struggle; politics is part of ‘the market’. ‘Crony Capitalism’ is normal capitalism.
Extraction
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, coal or timber, and so on) but also the ways that human food gets extracted for consumption, via agriculture, gathering, hunting, industrial fishing, and so on. Ecologies are not passive, and they respond to human or other actions in ways which are often unpredictable in specific, but still disruptive. Ecologies seem to need attention, for survival to be possible in the long term.
Extraction in capitalist and developmentalist societies, often seems harmful to the functioning of ecologies, perhaps because of the need for continual growth, and thus a need for increasing extraction. Clearly, not all forms of extraction need to be destructive of the ecologies and geographies they depend upon. Extraction systems can allow the ecologies to repair after extraction, or attempt to rehabilitate the land. However, repair of ecologies can be considered an expense leading to reduction of profit, and hence is not attractive in a profit emphasising system.
As such, we can distinguish recoverable extraction, in which the ecologies and economies repair the damage from extraction, from irrecoverable extraction in which the ecologies and economies do not repair the damage from extraction within a useful time frame.
The Global Footprint network, suggests that:
Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and eight months to regenerate what we use in a year.
Global Footprint network. Ecological Footprint
If this is correct, then the current extraction and pollution systems are generally irrecoverable, and deleterious for human and planetary survival. Investigating the differences between harmful and less harmful modes of extraction may well produce useful insights.
Economies are not the only possible harmful extractive systems – cosmologies can also require irrecoverable extractive behaviour to build temples, or to show the ‘other-worldly’ specialness of humans, and so on.
Energy System
All life and its resulting ecologies involve transformation of energy. These transformations stretch from transformation of sunlight by plants, the digestion of plants, to thermal gradients in the deep sea, to atomic power. Eco-systems require a system of energy release, energy generation and energy transformation.
Transformation of energy, together with effective ecological functioning, is necessary for any human actions to occur. The human energy system powers all other human systems. Because food is necessary for human labour, cultivation of food can be considered to be part of the energy system. The energy system and its ‘infrastructure’, could seem to be as important as the economic infrastructure.
The human energy system is organised, at least in part, by the political and economic systems, and by the environmental systems available. The environmental system includes possible energy sources from plant material, animal strength and docility, fossil fuels, sunlight, wind and moving water. Human labour, and its organisation, is (and has been) part of the energy system, and while not yet, if ever, superseded completely, can be supplemented and possibly overpowered by technological sources of energy. Coal and oil power, for example, provide masses amounts more directed energy than can human labour, and this ability is important to understanding the patterning and possibilities of the economic and extraction system, and its relationship to colonial/imperial history. Modern military expansion and colonialism, largely depends on this ability to apply large amounts of energy to weaponry, movement and organisation.
Important parts of the energy system include the amounts of energy generally available for use, and the capacity for energy to be directed and applied. Non-directable energy is often wasted energy (entropy), and usually unavailable for constructive use.
Another vital point is that human production of, or using of, energy takes energy. No energy is entirely free.
The availability of energy is influenced by the Energy Return on Energy Input (EREI) or ‘Energy Return on Energy Investment’. The larger amount of units of energy applied to gain a unit of humanly directable energy output, the less excess energy is available.
Fossil fuels have historically had a very high EREI, but it is possible that this is declining otherwise nobody would be tempted by fracking, coal seam gas, tar sands, or deep sea drilling. All of which require large amounts of energy to begin with, have very high risks of extractive destruction, and fairly low profit margins when compared to the dangers.
Renewables and storage currently have a high energy cost to manufacture (and possibly a high extractive cost as well) but for most renewables, after they are installed, the EREI changes, as very little labour, or energy expenditure, is required to gain an energy output – it is more or less free – whereas fossil fuel energy generation requires continual energy use to find and process new fossil fuels and keep the power stations turning, and produce continual pollution from burning.
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 other systems, and in the costs (social, aesthetic, ecological or monetary) which influence choices about the constituents of energy systems The system’s pollution products, which may be significant factors in producing climate and ecological change, may eventually 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 energy availability, what can be done or who can do it, and thus threaten established social orders. Threats to established orders will be resisted. If an energy transition does go 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.
One important question is ‘how do we transform the energy system without continuing a damaging extraction and pollution system?’
Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems
Transformation of materials through energy use, or through energy production, produces ‘waste’. The simplest human society imaginable (and this is an overt simplification), turns edible material into energy and human excreta, which in this case can usually be processed by the ecology – although, even then, dumping excreta into rivers may not help those downstream.
Understanding the Waste, Pollution and Dispersal systems is also vital to understanding possible energy and economic transformations.
In this book we will define ‘Waste‘ as material which can be re-processed, or recycled, by the economy or eco-system, and ‘Pollution‘ as material which is not re-processable within an arbitrary useful time frame, say over hundreds of years or more. ‘Dispersal’ occurs when 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.
When too much waste for the systems to re-process is emitted, then waste becomes pollution. This is what has happened with CO2. CO2 is normally harmless, even required for the system to work, but too much CO2 changes the ways eco and climate systems work. CO2 has also been dispersed into the atmosphere which makes CO2 extraction, which is stated to be essential by the IPCC and IEA for climate stability, difficult and costly in terms of energy expenditure.
These concepts, along with ‘extraction’, directly import the ecosystem into the economy, while pointing out that what counts as allowable waste, pollution or dispersal can change, economically, politically, scientifically and ‘practically’.
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. Often localisable pollution is dumped in ‘wasted’ zones or on poorer, less noticeable and less powerful people.
Energy and extraction may not the only significant sources of pollution, and other sources of pollution need to be curtailed, or turned into sources of waste.
Information about pollution from the fossil fuel energy system and from the extraction systems, provide a major driver for energy transformation, partly because this issue seems ‘economically’ politically and energetically solvable, while other sources of pollution seem more difficult to deal with.
However, even facing the problem, provokes a likely politicisation of the information system. How would people, in general, become aware of pollution and who primarily suffers from its effects, especially when it threatens established systems of power?
Information System
What people become aware of, what can be understood or done depends on the Information System. This system determines what feedback is available to conscious humans, about what is happening in general. The information system, in theory, could allow humans to recognise eco-feedback in response to systems such as waste and pollution, or extraction. Information is vital to social functioning, and part of social functioning. Accurate information is even more useful.
Unfortunately, information about complex systems, such as societies or ecologies, is almost always limited and inadequate. Some information may tend to be symbolised rather than literal, because of the difficulties of representing the information in a literal form (these difficulties can be political as much as in terms of human capacity).
Information systems can also hide, or distort, ecological feedback, because of flaws in their design, or because powerful people do not want it to bring the problems to general attention. This adds to confusion, and to the possibilities, that the information system primarily reflects human psychological projection, fantasy and shadow politics.
The political and economic systems also directly impact on the information systems, as politics often centres on propagation of politically or economically favourable information and the inhibition of politically unfavourable or economically information. Economic power, ownership and control of sources of information can also influence what information is collected, processed and made widely available.
Information is not so much ‘received’ as interpreted, so Cosmologies and politics which provide a framework for interpretation, play a big part in how the information is interpreted and, then, what kind of information is transmitted.
Government, Religious, Economic, or military (etc) regulation can be a further important part of both the information and political systems, sometimes affecting what is likely to be transmitted. Information systems, in turn, indicate the availability or coherence of regulation and the understanding of problems and predicaments. Regulation is based on information selection as well as political allegiance, and regulations can be opaque, or hidden, as well as easily decodable. For example, until recently it seemed very difficult to find out what the NSW governments regulations for Renewable Energy Zones, meant in terms of business, building, or connection to the wider system.
The information system does not have to be coherent, thus we can be both informed and disinformed of the progress of climate change and energy transformation by the system. Certain groups are more likely to be informed than others, even though everyone tends to frame themselves as being well informed – especially in an ‘information society’ when being well informed is a matter of status. 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.
In summary, most information distortion comes from: economic functions such as business hype, secrecy and deception; from organisational functions such as hierarchy, silo-isation, lack of connection and channels; from politics where information is distorted for strategic advantage; and from the complexity of the systems that the information tries to describe and the inadequacy of the language or approach being used.
Technological Systems
Technological systems enable the kind of energy use, direction and availability, a society can have, the kinds of extraction it can engage in, the range at which political and economic systems can have an effect, the modes of transmission of information, and the types of waste pollution and dispersion which are likely to happen. Technologies also necessarily use properties of the environment and ecologies around them in order to work, and thus interact with those environments and again cause unintended consequences.
People use technology to extend their power over others, extend their capacity, escape regulation, or render previous technologies less dominant, and hence technologies tend to be caught in struggles between groups, thus provoking unintended social consequences.
We could hypothesise that technologies, as used under capitalism (and perhaps elsewhere), tend to extract people out of their environment, and break the intimacy between humans and ecology, or shift human perception onto the technology rather than the world, therefore making it easier to regularly engage in processes of destruction.
In the contemporary world, technologies become objects of fantasy, and metaphors by which we think about the cosmos in general. For example the clockwork universe is now almost replaced by the information processing universe.
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 can 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. Measuring the boundaries may have a wide margin of error, as due to the complexity of these systems and their interactions. We will not know for sure when they will collapse until they do, and once they start collapsing they will affect the resilience of other boundaries. So the known limits on the boundaries will change as we take more notice of them, and keep challenging them.
Exceeding the boundaries almost certainly leads to the rundown, or breakdown, of ecological functioning, and this breakdown then adds difficulties to maintaining other systems. If they are maintained ‘artificially’ then this requires extra energy expenditure, and may have further consequences. Kate Raworth’s ‘donut economics’ presents a quick and easy way of conceiving functional economies in terms of ecological boundaries and human betterment [1], [2], [3].
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 (distribution and interaction between lifeforms, balance between species, rates of extinction etc), water flows and cycles (availability of drinkable, non-poisonous water, and water for general ecological functioning), biochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, dispersal of valuable materials which literally form the ‘metabolic rift’, etc), ocean acidity or alkalinity (which affects the life of coral reefs, plankton and so on), levels of particulates or micro-particulates (which poison life forms), ozone levels, and the introduction of novel entities into the global ecology and their unknown systemic consequences (new chemicals, plastics, microplastics etc.). [4]
It is the functioning and disruption of these boundary systems which make processes of pollution and extraction problematic. Thus they impact directly on society, and appear to limit the kinds of economic growth, extraction, energy and technological systems that can be deployed safely.
Capitalism and developmentalism tend to recognise boundaries only to ignore them, and claim that ingenuity and willpower, will overcome those boundaries forever without limit.
Geographic Systems
Then we have Geographic systems as a subset of planetary boundaries. 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.
Mountain ranges, forests, plains etc may affect the layout of Renewable Energy, or the RE may affect the land, if trees are felled, fields converted etc. Wind may be severe, putting a limit on size of turbines, or the angles of solar panels. Winter darkness, or heavy seasonal rain can affect the possibilities of solar power.
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.
Conclusion and Provisional 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, almost the opposite in fact. 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 complex systems, all politics becomes experimental.
While complex systems adapt or seek balance, they do not have to arrive at the best conditions for human beings. From a human point of view, they can be maladaptive. For example, a social system can be maladaptive and destructive of our means of living. The ecology could arrive at a balance within which many humans could not live.
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.
- The Economic system will be entangled in the political system, and those who dominate the economic system will have disproportionate input into the political system, and this can cause problems. This recognition reinstates the economic process as both a political and a business process.
- A transition has to fit in with existing economic patterns, or its supporters may have to be prepared to change those patterns.
- Patterns of extraction, pollution and dispersal have to be less harmful than previous patterns or the harm will be continued, even if in a different manner.
- Changing the energy system is a political problem, and may require a change in the economic system as well as in power relations.
- We need 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 come from to build the new system if not from the old? And we need to demolish the old system, because of its dangers.
- We need to avoid using renewables to simply add to energy availability, without reducing energy from fossil fuels.
- 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.
- Considering these problems may lead to conclusions about the necessity of some kind of degrowth.
- Transition plans 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.
- Likewise, many people will see accurate information as political, because it potentially disrupts their way of living, or because of interpretation and projection issues.
- 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.
- Renewables should probably never be installed through deforestation.
- Renewables should not monopolise agricultural land. They should co-exist with previous land use, or help rehabilitate the land.
- We should note the capacity of any new form of energy generation, or large scale technology, to ‘unhome’ people. Fossil fuels are especially bad at this, and often also poisonous, but the information systems tend to find this easier to ignore.
- The energy transformation should aim to avoid disrupting the planetary boundary systems as much as possible. They should be installed with the longer term target 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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