{"id":1097,"date":"2009-10-25T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2009-10-25T04:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2009-10-25T00:00:56","modified_gmt":"2009-10-25T04:00:56","slug":"why-efficiency-speeds-up-consumption-reported-ny-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/why-efficiency-speeds-up-consumption-reported-ny-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Why efficiency speeds up consumption – reported NY Times\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

So\u2026 how do we get to the bottom of this?<\/strong> The basic dilemma seems to be how many ways we are using conceptual models, often build with cultural values instead of solid observations, to represent how the physical world works and are simply way off.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cNew School of Thought Brings Energy to \u2018the Dismal Science<\/a>\u2018\u201d October 23, 2009 (online Business page)<\/p>\n

The NY Times seemed<\/em> to break its silence on what some call \u201cthe physical world problem\u201d in nicely covering the BioPhysical Economics meeting I presented to last week. They included mention of my presentation on the surprising problem that our main way of slowing down resource uses has and will continue to accelerate them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s bound to be confusing\u2026 that the sustainability movement misunderstood the use of efficiency to decrease our energy and economic impacts, since it naturally has and will continue to multiplying them. See the links below for my presentation.<\/p>\n

The meeting was organized by Charles Hall and his\u00a0BioPhysical economics workgroup<\/a> at SUNY-ESF where the proceedings will eventually get posted. His work and workgroup are closely connected with\u00a0The Oil Drum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The main finding presented was that world oil production has been slowing due to absolute limits of supply and decreasing returns for extracting what\u2019s left (EROI), and has reached the peak and begun to decline as the group has long predicted. The globe is meeting a natural technology limit for recovering our main energy source.<\/p>\n

The group consensus seems to be that it would unavoidably result in repeated economic contractions in the relatively near future, affecting the less productive economies and sectors more severely. They accepted my evidence that stimulating efficiencies was making the economy use energy, and so drive the depletion process faster\u2026, being somewhat accustomed to discovering shocking confusions in the reasoning that got us to this global point of crisis. \u2014 My talk on \u201cWhy efficiency multiplies consumption\u201d\u00a0in one page<\/a> and\u00a0in 23 slides <\/a>w\/ audio link,\u00a0short text outline<\/a> of presentation<\/p>\n

\u2014-<\/p>\n

The question for most people, though, is how to explain in simple moral principles (sort of like the ones so many intent on reducing our impacts misinterpreted\u2026), but get it right this time.<\/p>\n

One of the deeper underlying reasons for our mixing it up is that both sustainability advocates and economists seemed to use cultural models to predict global environmental effects, not checking the physical system but validating the models by their profitability. People even seemed to agree on using the same cause for opposite effects, promoting both decreasing and increasing impacts as the result, sometimes in the same sentence. Whether people agree on cultural models or not, physical systems don\u2019t follow them.<\/p>\n

Moral principles come from long experience with nature in complex situations, and so tend to be what we rely on guiding us through intellectual mistakes and confusions of that kind. How come no one seemed to \u201cbe suspicious\u201d of using efficiency as the universal solution, even as it caused the opposite of most people\u2019s intended effect??<\/p>\n

Part of it is that people confused \u201cthe work it takes\u201d to do things (that efficiency reduces) and \u201cthe service it provides\u201d to those around us (that efficiency increases). Measuring improvements in efficiency and improvements in productivity you use the exact same ratio. They\u2019re the same thing. The difference is a switch in viewpoint, looking up stream in chain of effects with \u201cthe work it takes\u201d and downstream with \u201cthe service it provides\u201d. We thought reducing the work it takes would reduce the work it does, but that\u2019s not necessarily true at all. In our economy improving the service our work provides causes much more work to get done.<\/p>\n

So\u2026, the moral values that seem to convince everyone that efficiency results in sustainability is at least \u201cmissing something\u201d. I think there\u2019s a little hint of a \u2018cheap-shot\u2019 in our common belief that \u201call we can do is work hard and be self-sacrificing\u201d. That\u2019s clearly not sufficient, anyway, if it causes us to accelerate the depletion of all our resources as a way to preserving them\u2026<\/p>\n

So, I\u2019ve struggled for years to find how to give moral value to what the physics says we really have to find meaning for. The physics doesn\u2019t tell me about that, though.<\/p>\n

Remember the basic \u201chunter-gatherer\u201d strategy of \u201cfirst pick the low hanging fruit\u201d? With our sort of \u201cmechanized hunter-gatherer\u201d methods we\u2019re providing services to others who don\u2019t know any better than to pay us to pick low hanging fruit till there\u2019s no fruit left within most anyone\u2019s reach. That\u2019s partly our responsibility. The solution could be to keep picking low hanging fruit, only as fast as it grows.<\/p>\n

So.. we need something other than just hard work and self-sacrifice, what I think of as a kind of \u201ctrue generosity\u201d. We need to make sure everyone cooperates in leaving enough fruit on the tree for others to pick, i.e. take responsibility for commons, looking out for others as something of a gift to ourselves too. The cells in your body seem to do that, for example (the ones that aren\u2019t cancers\u2026 anyway).<\/p>\n

Does that start to explain it? I have another good attempt (only 2 pages), approaching the question from asking how you design \u201cEconomies that become part of nature<\/a>\u201c, using the same principle, but described in economic terms.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Because I have a technique that lets me see what others are missing on how environmental systems are likely to respond to things, my approach might be of help for anyone\u2019s strategic planning.<\/p>\n

\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8.\u2022\u00b4 \u00af `\u2022.\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8\u00b8<\/a> NY NY<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So\u2026 how do we get to the bottom of this? The basic dilemma seems to be how many ways we are using conceptual models, often build with cultural values instead of solid observations, to represent how the physical world works and are simply way off. \u201cNew School of Thought Brings Energy to \u2018the Dismal Science\u2018\u201d … Continue reading Why efficiency speeds up consumption – reported NY Times\u2026<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mail","category-econn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}