Linear Thinking Versus Bounded Resilience
The human body is a miracle of self-organizing complexity which is resilient enough to sustain itself against many different challenges and changes in external variables. There are limits to this resilience though, and it has to be constantly on alert to maintain hundreds of different internal variables within sustainable bounds – a process called homeostasis. When the body becomes too hot blood will be sent to the skins surface, and breathing will be intensified (like a panting dog in hot weather) to help expel heat, if it becomes too cold blood will be taken away from the skin and shivering may commence to increase the body temperature. If arterial carbon dioxide levels are too high breathing will be automatically intensified, hence the inability to hold ones breathe to the point of physical damage. Such actions are called negative feedback loops, as they act to reverse the direction of a variable to keep it within acceptable limits. If homeostasis fails the body can rapidly degenerate into a non-reversible state, including death.
Just like the Leonardo DiCaprio character in the Titanic movie, once the human body temperature falls outside the sustainable limits unconsciousness and then death can quickly occur. With only a relatively small reduction in the oxygenated blood flow to the brain, a person will become unconscious within seconds – hence the readiness to “tap out” by MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighters caught in a Rear Naked Choke. The choked person can recover if the hold is released, but if it is held for minutes irreversible brain damage can occur. The body can also repair injuries, even to the point of reorganizing parts of the brain to take up functions lost due to a stroke. Again though, there are limits to how much damage can be repaired in this way and full functioning may never return. Once one or more internal variables have been pushed outside the sustainable values positive feedback loops can come into play, which accelerate the move away from the sustainable state. For example, a heart failure starves the other organs of oxygenated blood causing them to fail with cascading consequences throughout the body.
The set of sustainable values can be seen as a “plateau on which a system can operate normally”1. Once a system steps off this plateau the move to a very different plateau can be greatly accelerated through positive feedback loops. Thus, as with a person stepping off a cliff, the changes on the way to the cliff edge are relatively linear but once the step off the cliff has been taken the changes accelerate rapidly, becoming non-linear and generally irreversible. An individual person lives within a hierarchy of such complex systems, with each one becoming more and more complex; for example the financial system, economic system, the social system, the climate system, the earth system. All of these systems exhibit the same negative feedback loops to keep themselves within an acceptable operating plateau, and can discontinuously and rapidly move to a less optimal plateau when the resilience bounds are exceeded. The climate system has displayed long periods on such plateaus, punctuated by large changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases which moved it to a new sustainable plateau. It has also been able to deal with an increasingly hotter sun, which was 20% less intense 3-4 billion years ago2, while sustaining temperatures for the liquid water that is an essential element of living beings. The sun’s intensity will keep increasing, and at some point overwhelm the climate system’s ability to offset the extra heat. Thankfully, that point will not be reached for another three billion years3.
An important driver of system resilience is the level of diversity and redundancy, as “a more diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity”1. Having two kidneys and two lungs provides the human body with the ability to survive the loss of a single kidney or a single lung. Unfortunately, humanity has been very successful at reducing diversity and redundancy in both man-made and natural systems, while pushing natural systems towards the edge of their requisite cliffs. In essence, humanity is undermining the ability of these complex systems to deal effectively with challenges, while at the same time increasing the intensity of those challenges. In the name of efficiency, free markets, and globalization local farmers give way to agri-businesses, “mom and pop” stores give way to the likes of Wal-Mart, local production is replaced with imports, local buffer stocks are replaced with “just in time” delivery and local financial institutions are subsumed into “too big to fail” financial behemoths. Commercial mono-crops replace the previous rich diversity of flora and fauna, cities and roads replace natural environments. At the same time, the very fossil fuels that have allowed humanity to grow to such a level of destructiveness are also mindlessly depleted to produce trinkets for the growing legions of global consumers.
Even the diversity of human societies and their beliefs have been greatly reduced through the eradication and acculturation of innumerable indigenous peoples and the transfer of norms and practices across borders through such things as the international media, global corporations, and foreign students. The conversion of the communist countries, such as the USSR and China, into state-controlled capitalism further reduced cultural and economic diversity, as well as generally invalidating communitarian points of view. This is especially true of the decision making elites, which in many ways have more in common with their foreign counterparts than with their fellow citizens. Thus a singular set of beliefs tends to pervade elite gatherings, with unthinking support for the efficacy of continued growth, technology-driven answers, private property, and the free market (at least for the rest of society). This belief system is then reinforced through international bodies such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank, and WTO (World Trade Organization) as well as being embedded in international treaties which remove any questioning of such beliefs from the democratic process. Thus, societal challenges are increasingly viewed through a single conceptual lens, a global “group-think”, greatly reducing the range of homeostatic actions available. Perhaps during the Mayan collapse all the elites could do was to call for yet more human sacrifices to satiate the gods, in the same way that the current elites call for continued growth as an answer to all society’s problems?
At some point in the future, which may not be more than a decade or two away, we may succeed at pushing the climate system over the edge. The resulting chaotic, rapid, and irreversible (in any timeline meaningful to humanity) changes will make a mockery of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) predictions, as positive feedback loops multiply the effects of man-made climate change. Humanity’s dependency upon huge amounts of cheap energy will then become apparent as its Achilles heel, with the choice between burning more fossil fuels to keep society going and for emergency actions or leaving those fuels in the ground to help future generations. These cheap energy sources may have already been significantly depleted by then, reducing the scope and scale of humanity’s actions. The current structure and organization of our societies will act more as an accelerator than a buffer, as the overly efficient and dangerously brittle financial systems, global supply chains and just in time networks break down.
It is imperative that we understand the nature of the positive feedbacks within the earth system so that we can stay away from any irrevocable moves to a new state which may not be conducive to human civilization. In addition, we need to increase social and economic diversity and redundancy through such things as re-localization and place much tighter controls over the absurdly complex and volatile financial system. A system that only stays afloat through huge injections of new money, like a man bleeding to death but kept alive with new blood transfusions, and the socialization of its losses.
The resilience of the earth’s systems are bounded, especially on any timelines meaningful to humanity, and if pushed beyond those bounds may no longer provide an environment amenable to our continued existence. As Wallace Broecker put it so well “The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks”4.
References
1. Meadows, Donella (2009), Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Earthscan Limited
2. n/a (2013), How Early Earth Kept Warm Enough to Support Life, Science Daily. Accessed at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130709155642.htm
3. Sample, Ian (2013), Long-range forecast: sunny spell will wipe out life on Earth, The Guardian. Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/18/forecast-life-on-earth
4; Savory, Eve (2008), Wallace Broecker: How to calm an angry beast, CBC News. Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wallace-broecker-how-to-calm-an-angry-beast-1.714719