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It’s wonderful to be inventive, but that is clearly not our problem. I don’t know why that is so hard for people to see.
Our problem is needing to be ever more grandly inventive forever
Our problem is needing to be ever more grandly inventive forever, even as the environment puts up ever more daunting complications for our continuing to do so. The plan we are caught trying to follow, a real fool’s choice had it been someone’s choice and not just a leftover of history, is to continually double our productivity in converting the planet into economic wealth every 20 years or so, and every 30 years or so for the resources needed to do that, forever. Continue reading DotEarth – to be more inventive, but not have to…→
On: ClimateConcern@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 4:30 PM
Subject: Re: [CCG] Sources: what are the most unbiased sources for climate info??
Richard Foy had replied to my comment saying:
In my opinion this is the best post I have seen in a long time.
Richard
Thank’s Richard!
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I had written 6/29/2009:
I think asking for facts to answer whether the facts we’re getting are reliable is sort of an unreliable approach. It’s better to ask what can we know for sure when we don’t know much and our facts seem unreliable. Continue reading Climate Concern – do facts show the bias?→
I am interested in this idea of communicating the “systematic tendency to overestimate human knowledge and control…predicated on the premise of predictability” as discussed very eloquently by my friend Kate Rigby in Dancing with disaster. “It’s more like the practice of ‘contact improvisation’…”
Kathryn,
Coming back to this, I’d entirely agree that humanity is part of nature, and just feels alienated because our minds confuse us so much. We’ve been trying to force nature into the shape of our thinking rather than work with nature, so I think discussing it as a switch from dominion to negotiation is quite appropriate. Continue reading Human dominion to negotiation, control out of our heads→
“Thanks Peter – I do like your second paragraph – though there is a catch. The UK and the US and many more relatively low-birth-rate countries cannot live within the food-production capacity of the land they live in!”
To Peter Salonius’s statement on 6/11:
‘That said, there certainly is sentiment suggesting that food aid — offered to populations that have overshot the food production capacity of the land they live on – should not be lavished on people until they institute well defined programs that WILL begin to decrease their numbers toward levels that can be supported/sustained by the productive capacity of their OWN LAND.’
and
Ashok Agrwaal responding to my comment on 6/15
I find this brief analysis by Phil Henshaw far more meaningful than reams of speculative stuff churned out by Americans in general.
I replied on 6/13:
Eric,
Right, and the way to measure that “unaccountable” footprint on the land, far away from the user is the trick, that I think I figured out.
Yesterday Eric Rimmer, on the sustainability slide show discussion, had replied to my comment about the problem with using I=PAT for the “chicken and egg” problems of overshoot relating the problem of population vs. wealth. He said:
Thank you. Phil. Interesting thoughts, though I can’t detect what you suggest we should DO?
Eric,
Well, I’ve been thinking about that too… Because the way natural systems steer their development is by using their operating surplus to redirect their development. We should get Barack to realize his mistake of saying it’s OK to spend all our effort and surpluses to get back to using up the earth’s resources ever faster again. Continue reading Real steering for the chicken and egg→
Thanks much again. The PNAS paper on tipping elements, though as good as I’ve seen from established scientists, is still a bit flimsy relative to what you could say. You could consider the evolving physical systems of the earth as developmental processes, with organization of their own that can be destabilized themselves, rather than as mathematical models.
No contest about the balance at present...
Models just don’t have many of the behaviors that natural systems do. They use controlled variable theory to represent distributed uncontrolled systems with independently changing and reacting parts… Continue reading Now real steering at the tipping points…!→
Regarding Russ Hopfenberg’s article on population carrying capacity Lawrence Espy and Bill Reese similarly replied to Steve Solmony that the model of population growth limited by the natural carrying capacity of the earth was too general.
Lawrence had pointed out ‘carrying capacity’ has many diverse natural system and artificial system parts, that evolve very differently and those differences need to be considered but were not. Bill similarly pointed out that many ecologists do not see “carrying capacity” as a particularly useful term as the ecosystem (the species’ environment) is constantly changing its ‘productivity’ and is never a fixed target.
All agree with the basic premise that civilization’s whole shaky house of cards will come tumbling down if we are unable to maintain the constant throughput of resources necessary. I offered the following:
Tuesday 6/2/09
Lawrence & Bill,
I think the way to tie the two kinds of potentials, the natural and artificial “carrying capacity” limits of the earth is using the experience curves that indicate our own ability to leverage more and more of those potentials.
That ability to find and invent more cheaper stuff increased for centuries, but is now decreasing, so there was a peak somewhere.
In my journals I have page after page of large and small ideas, research ideas, notes to myself, and occasionally share them. Here’s one from today.
– The philosopher’s puzzle of whether a tree that falls in the woods makes a sound, posits that someone walking in the woods discovers a fallen tree, and wonders whether it had made “a sound” when it fell. It presents it as a general question about unanswerable questions.
Endless discussions on subjects like that still consume philosophical discussions. What they seem to miss is whether it matters, whether what we can conclude about a lack of information makes any difference. It can, but it might also be only a difference in what we know, and in how we observe it.
Brad mentioned Catton’s theory of response to overpopulation as “We must learn to live in harmony with natural systems…”, which is true enough.
In the details he talks about human values and not about how nature physically works, though.
It’s a major “red flag” to talk about solving physical system problems in terms of human system values. Our values are what we should use to motivate our learning about how the systems of nature work. Organizing to live by our own values is to act as if our social systems supersede nature’s systems.
Phil, Do you think it helps to distinguish between modest returns (which could be part of a flow of money) and big accumulations of wealth (which seem to take money out of circulation and to often redirect flows of money destructively)? I wonder whether a slight tweaking of the language here and there could make the writing more engaging and less bleak.
For example the harvesting of renewable resources such as solar is low only because we don’t bother and it is maybe not limited to being steady if we expand nature? You must be thinking of ways forward, as well as how growth as usual is ending?
Diminishing returns and complexity make an excellent introduction. Have you tried wiserearth as a community for posting and discussing ideas and solutions? I’ve been surprised at how well it functions and the sense of being among supporters. See for example the comments on the Dubai talk (linked below). Of course if you have criticisms please feel free to add those too!
Hang in there Best wishes, James
James,
The difference is that allowing “modest” returns really needs to mean “responsive” instead, since returns are measured in %’s.
Even a 1% return if reinvested for continual growth is still exponential and will exceed any limit and be “immodest”.
It’s not that 1% is “big”, it’s that the right thing to regulate is not growth rate but the response, to growth accumulation, at whatever rate. So, the real issue is “when” to say a relative change in scale has become an absolute change in kind. Continue reading Growth Friendly? – natural v. compulsive growth→
New systems science, how to care for natural uncontrolled systems in context
