Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXXXVII
Our Political Systems Are Not Going to Help Our Predicament As They Want/Need Growth
I just wanted to throw together this brief contemplation that shares a conversation I had with others on the online media site The Tyee that I came across again recently as the result of a writing project I initiated last week and am quite excited about. I won’t say much concerning it now except that it aims to bring together a variety of authors/thinkers who all focus on the limits to growth, overshoot, and energy. I will write more about this at a later date as it gets closer to its ‘publication’ which I hope will be in the 1–2 month range from now, bearing in mind that the best laid plans of mice and men…
This project is at present taking up most of the limited time that I sit in front of my computer during our protracted growing season here north of Toronto. I’m almost always outside toiling away at the variety of chores that need attention in our food gardens from April to December after my morning mugs of coffee and shortened online time.
Anyways, the conversation below occurred almost 4 years ago — and prior to my Contemplation musings — in response to a Dr. Bill Rees article on our climate crisis.
Me:
This is an excellent summary of some of the most profound existential threats to humanity. Throw in archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s thesis that sociopolitical collapse tends to be the result of the law of declining marginal productivity (aka diminishing returns) and you have even more to worry about.
However, if you are ‘hoping’ the political system will address these issues, you are looking in the wrong spot. Yes, hold politicians’ feet to the fire and keep the blossoming awareness of these issues on the forefront of people’s minds, but be cognizant of the increasing likelihood that political systems will not deal with the foundational causes such as a credit-/debt-based monetary system that requires perpetual growth to keep from imploding, or the belief that growth must and can be pursued while building a sustainable world (‘sustainable growth’ is an oxymoron).
Until and unless a tipping point of people come to the realization that pursuing ‘degrowth’ (and the severe curtailment of our current way of life, especially many of the ‘conveniences’ we might term ‘progress’) may be all that might help us make a smoother transition to a post-carbon world, the cliff ahead gets ever closer…no matter how or if you vote.
WWM:
Hi Steve, great topic, great comments by you throughout the forum here.
One thing i wanna bring up quickly is a common climate skeptic argument in which they say that the earth has had much higher CO2 numbers and much more warming in the past so what’s the big deal. They’ll go on to say we’re just experiencing the common effects of the interglacial period we’re living in.
The thing is that for eons climate has swung wildly but those swings took thousands or millions of years to happen whereas this human caused disaster is happening in a few decades. During the long term type of change life forms have the time to adapt and evolve and to move to a more suitable habitat. That’s the real big difference now and why apocalyptic predictions like Tainter’s and Rees’s are very possible now and why the logic of studying of long past events are now meaningless.
It’s the speed of change that’s the issue and key indicator of our human footprint being the cause is that speed of change.
Me:
Thank you for the kudos. One of the things I say to climate skeptics is that regardless of the cause of our climate change (because those who deny anthropogenic causes of climate change still admit that climate does change) our globalized food production system is still very much at risk from climate change. We are already experiencing significant diminishing returns in the realm of food production, with us pushing the boundaries through the exploitation of marginal lands, underground aquifers, fossil-fuel based additives (i.e. fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc.), and via genetically-modified organisms. Should we lose even a fraction of our arable lands because of climate change, regardless of the cause, we will experience food shortages — to say little should our fossil-fuel intensive supply chains break down for whatever reason (like a war in the Middle East or geopolitical tensions).
One of the things I’ve been fighting locally (with little to zero success or recognition) is the speed at which our local municipality (at the behest of our provincial government) is growing and paving over some of Ontario’s finest and finite arable land. The town I live in (Whitchurch-Stouffville) is one of the fastest growing in Ontario (and, ironically, proclaims this as a benefit and ‘progressive’, trumpeting it at every opportunity — in total ignorance of the fact that it is the antithesis of what we should be doing), with a burgeoning population and accompanying carbon footprint. There will come a time, I am sure, when the urgency with which they have pursued the infinite growth chalice will reverse itself and there will be a recognition that eliminating all our farmland and putting up suburban neighbourhoods was a stupid, stupid idea…then again, there probably won’t be any recognition of that because one of the things politicians and most people are great at is deflecting blame and pointing the finger anywhere but in the mirror.
WWM:
A funny aside to your local situation comes from Richmond BC which was not very long ago 100% prime agricultural land. then came the building and paving boom there. Richmond still has some nice farms but most of them are now polluted by industries, exhaust and residential runoff. The funny part is that all the really prime land was the first to get covered in blacktop and concrete so now, as local food gains traction and the all the costs of transporting the Calif. stuff up here comes to bare, many as saying that if/when they jackhammer all the damned concrete the soil underneath it will still be the best soil in BC…soil conservation through ignorance -SCTI…
Me:
Interesting.
“…saying that if/when they jackhammer all the damned concrete the soil underneath it will still be the best soil in BC…”
I would wonder if that would still be true given its time under concrete. The soil fertility might not be as great as some would hope and exposure to toxins/pollutants might be more than many would like.
I wonder also how many are aware you can’t just plop seeds in any old pile of dirt and hope for long-term sustainable food production. It also takes a lot of time and energy to grow food sustainably without all those fossil-fuel additives that are used in modern industrial agriculture.
WWM:
Richmond’s ag land sits totally on the Fraser River delta…silt deposits hundreds of feet deep and the combined erosion of thousands of years from a huge portion of BC. i’m not an agronomist, but i did own and operate a small organic form for over 25 years so i have some experiential knowledge. IMO covering that delta land and thereby creating a runoff of the scum from industry etc. directly back into the river without it percolating through the soil [though probably less than wonderful for the fish] has protected that soil from a large percentage of the toxic insults it would have otherwise sustained.
on the plopping seeds into dirt point, i’d say again that the Fraser delta soils built over thousands of years of chemical weathering of the mountains, glaciation and upstream erosion has built a platform that is anything but ‘a pile of old dirt’.
the question of the transition of our food supply from agri-business to small hands on organic farming is one the whole western world will be tackling in the coming years…the Fraser delta is., if anything, a perfect platform for that transition…plus Richmond was before the concrete and blacktop era a hugely productive area farmed by small scale farmers before the ‘better living through chemistry’ farming era really took hold.
Where you live in Ontario your land and water faces many insults from the agri-business criminals as well, but i’m fairly sure there too returning to the small owner operator organic model can and will both sequester billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere and rebuild those soils and waters. One thing i know is that if there is a real miracle in this world it’s the ability of the microbes and billions of little critters to rejuvenate the apparently dead ‘dirt’ and bring it back to living soil…
C:
Can you please expand on Tainter’s thesis?
Me:
Here are some quotes and summary info from my personal notes on the book, The Collapse of Complex Societies:
-“Collapse is recurrent in human history; it is global in its occurrence; and it affects the spectrum of societies from simple foragers to great empires…Political decentralization has repercussions in economics, art, literature, and other cultural phenomena, but these are not its essence. Collapse is fundamentally a sudden, pronounced loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity.
A complex society that has collapsed is suddenly smaller, simpler, less stratified, and less socially differentiated. Specialization decreases and there is less centralized control. The flow of information drops, people trade and interact less, and there is overall lower coordination among individuals and groups. Economic activity drops to a commensurate level, while the arts and literature experience such a quantitative decline that a dark age often ensues. Population levels tend to drop, and for those who are left the known world shrinks.” (p. 193)
-complex societies represent points along a continuum and are a relatively recent phenomenon that require constant reinforcement to maintain
-activities to legitimize complexity/stratification require a material resource basis creating an economic cost
-the conflict school argues that the state arose to protect the propertied classes while the integration school suggests it emerged as a result of social needs and adaptation
-there are positive/negative aspects to both, but they both view the state as “a problem-solving organization, emerging because of changed circumstances” (p. 194) and requiring resource mobilization
-“Four concepts lead to an understanding of collapse, the first three of which are underpinnings of the fourth. These are:
1) human societies are problem-solving organizations;
2) sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
3 increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4) investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.” (p. 194)
-humans tend to exploit the easiest to access/extract/process/distribute resources first, leaving more costly ones until later and experiencing declining returns on investments as a result
-to preserve the status quo, sociopolitical organizations must increase their investment in complexity with the support population bearing the cost but experiencing decreasing benefits
-as costs rise, investments for future growth decline “at first gradually, then with accelerated force. At this point, a complex society reaches the phase where it becomes increasingly vulnerable to collapse.” (p. 195)
-two factors can increase the possibility of sociopolitical collapse
-first, because of declining marginal returns, surpluses deteriorate making the ability to address an unexpected stress surge less effective and increasing vulnerability to the next crisis
-“Once a complex society enters the stage of declining marginal returns, collapse becomes a mathematical likelihood, requiring little more than sufficient passage of time to make probable an insurmountable calamity.” (p. 195)
-second, declining marginal returns create a situation where increasing investments/costs are seen as less attractive than separation/disintegration and regions begin to resist continued investments
C:
Thanks Steve, you laid that out well.
second, declining marginal returns create a situation where increasing investments/costs are seen as less attractive than separation/disintegration and regions begin to resist continued investments
Alberta, much?
Me:
The fossil fuel industry, especially as it pertains to oil, is a perfect example of diminishing returns. In its infancy, one could get about 100 barrels of energy equivalency out of the ground for every barrel invested; stick a pipe in the ground and out flowed the oil. Nowadays, we are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel for oil through deep-sea drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and refinement of oil sands, lucky to get 3–5 barrels equivalency for every barrel of energy invested. This ever-decreasing energy-return-on-energy-invested is one example of diminishing returns on a very, very important resource that many people do not understand.
C:
Thank you. I’ll put it on my post harvest reading list.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.