Monthly Archives: March 2012

Healthcare for All in the U.S?

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oldamericancentury.org

by Mary Logan

The discussions in the US this week surrounding the constitutionality of health insurance payment mandates and the fact that my terminal degree is in health policy helped me to choose a topic for this week’s post. The US Supreme Court question that the Justices are examining this week has to do with the issue of insurance payment mandates for individuals—is it constitutional? The goal of Obama’s The Affordable Care Act is a goal of healthcare for all within the existing system. One primary argument of those supporting the plan is that, while not perfect, the plan is a good start in transitioning to a universal healthcare system. Yet the plan and the current discussions make a number of unstated assumptions about a healthcare system embedded within a capitalist, free market economic system of the wealthiest country on the planet. These assumptions need to be exposed in order to view the problem systemically. I would suggest that these assumptions are not even correct to begin with for the existing system, and that the assumptions will become even less true in a permanently declining economy associated with peak oil. Rousseau said, “Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad laws bring about worse.” In my opinion, creating bad laws now that assume that the current system can grow infinitely only lead to further catastrophe.

Flywheel from MT Brown 2004 Picture Worth a Thousand Words (from Odum, 1976)

Public policy is whatever governments choose to do or not do (Dye, 1995). Policy is the authoritative allocation of values for the whole society (Easton, 1975). Politics, then, is the act of how we get policy done. In our current western economies, policy resistance is occurring due to embedded vested interests of powerful corporate players in the policy arena. Reinforcing feedback loops (autocatalysis) creates an imbalanced system and dominance, which then creates more imbalance, eventually leading to a sort of super-circulation such as our exponentially growing flywheel economy.  As we expand the current healthcare system, autocatalysis causes an extreme super-circulation similar to that found in the economy at large. A market-based healthcare system gives the strongest shareholders the most power to garner even more profits (Kuttner; Hsiao, 1994; Arrow). A crowded policy environment with too many players creates gridlock, allowing only incremental expansion instead of significant needed reform. As in the economy at large, too many powerful vested interests create more inequity, more debt, and more consumption (treatment) with less regulation and more profit.

Meadows (2008) describes policy resistance as an attempt by various actors to pull a system stock towards various goals. “Any new policy, especially if it is effective, just pulls the stock farther from others’ goals and produced additional resistance, with a result that no one likes but that everyone expends considerable effort in maintaining” (Meadows, 2008, p. 116). Thus, defining the goals of the system and the assumptions embedded within those goals becomes critical. While the trigger for this post is American healthcare as the extreme case, some of the systemic issues can be applied to various sectors in other countries, too. The unstated assumptions regarding growth of any economic sector at this point in time need to be stated and examined from a systemic perspective. I would like to expose healthcare assumptions as an example du jour, using a framework of the traditional triad of health policy values: quality, access, and cost.

General Structural Assumptions/Goals of the Current U.S. Healthcare System

  • Healthcare is a commercial commodity that can be developed and sold
  • Healthcare can support profit while providing adequate care for all
  • Healthcare allocation is unnecessary; rationing is effected by market costs
  • Healthcare policy can continue its expansionary growth in the face of peak oil and economic contraction
  • The current healthcare system (HCS) in the US is functional and is worth expanding
  • The current level of bureaucracy and complexity can be incrementally expanded
  • Insurance linked to employment works in low employment situations such as recessions as well as vibrant, high employment situations
  • Just in time efficient healthcare is resilient to impacts of increased needs for healthcare

Quality Assumptions:

  • The current HCS in the US is effective in promoting health, healing the sick, and prolonging quality life in the elderly
  • The current HCS places the interests of patients as primary
  • Insured patients receive the proper amount of care (not too much or too little treatment)
  • Libertarian ethical emphasis on individual autonomy and personhood assume infinite capabilities of our healthcare system to expand and provide for all

Access Assumptions:

  • Healthcare should be a right for all, whether we pay for it or not
  • The US has the ability to incrementally expand the current system and support additional complexity and profit while meeting the needs for all

http://www.jec.senate.gov/republicans/public/index.cfm?p=CommitteeNews&ContentRecord_id=bb302d88-3d0d-4424-8e33-3c5d2578c2b0

  • There is no political or ethical need for restraint of healthcare
  • The US has the ability to expand the healthcare and the economy in the future
  • The US has the ability to provide infrastructure (hospitals, intensive care units, healthcare workers (HCW) to meet expanded demands from increased numbers (from healthcare reform and aging boomers) at the current level of intensity of care

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7084749.stm Japan Inverted Population Pyramids (Gender represented on X axis with males on left and females on right of zero-point)

Cost Assumptions:

  • US healthcare is a mix of private, public, and mixed produers embedded within a capitalist economy, favoring private solutions wherever possible
  • Debt and entitlements to the future ($200T?) do not matter
  • Copayments for those with insurance are affordable

Ritholtz Big Picture

  • Insurance attached to employment basis is a good way to provide insurance
  • Health Insurance protects families from damaging economic consequences
  • Healthcare AND Insurance markets are sound, competitive, efficient, and fair. Markets have:
    1. Enough competitors
    2. Pricing which affects producers and consumers
    3. Freedom of competitors to enter or leave market
    4. No collusion among competitors
    5. Informed choice for consumers (McClure, 1983)

Many of the assumptions stated above regarding American healthcare policy may not be supported by current realities. I rephrase the assumptions below from a larger systems perspective. Each one of these bullet points could probably be a post in itself, with many links, references, and supporting arguments. The goal here is simply to suggest a different world view.

Quality Realities:

  • http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ fortune500/2011/industries/223/index.html

    Marketization pursues efficiency and profit rather than quality (Hsiao, 1994)

  • Insurance companies have a primary goal to provide profits for shareholders and to restrict costs to their companies
  • Patients are overtreated (medicalization) in order to increase profits in a market system through supplier-induced demand
  • Libertarian ethics redirects attention from utilitarian welfare and justice
  • Much of the real gain in healthcare improvement has come from socioeconomic and public health improvements such as clean water, modern sewage systems and adequate healthy food (Frieden, 2010).

Access Realities:

  • Policy changes to expand insurance mandates (rather than expanding basic healthcare for all) tailors the problem to existing assumptions of profit-based healthcare and infinite growth
  • Consolidation and conversion from non-profit to for-profit of insurance and hospital systems have consolidated power and placed corporate profits before care

Logan, 1998 HC Policy Model Insurance Profits under Managed Care

Cost Realities:

  • http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Spending-vs-GDP-500x554.jpg

    US HCS currently costs twice that of most other developed countries, with lower quality. Demand side controls do not work; supply-side regulations are needed

  • Over time insurance premiums have risen while coverage has trended down (Newsom & Fernandez, 2011, Congressional Research Service)
  • High deductibles and copayments in a descending economy result in less treatment for patients and higher profits for insurance companies (NYT, 2011)
    • Healthcare and insurance markets are inefficient, unfair, and monopolistic. In an analogy, if healthcare is a factory, patients are cogs in the hospital/clinic assembly line. The administrative bureaucracy is the floor manager. Physicians are customers, and the Insurance/Pharmaceutical Industry are the owners. Gatekeeping control of drugs and treatment is by profit-making Insurance and Pharmaceuticals
    • Pricing is obscured or absent until after the fact (billing). Private market financing is inefficient due to risk-selection and high management costs
    • Competitor entry into markets is limited by federal, state, and local laws for healthcare entities and a 15 year, exorbitantly expensive pipeline for physicians with strict quotas, heavy federal subsidies, and gatekeepers. Long pipelines require proactive interventions to avoid imbalance in the system
    • Powerful healthcare and pharmaceutical lobbies act as collusion in markets by gaming the system and promoting favorable regulations
    • Outcomes information for consumers is limited, obscured, or gamed in the media, creating imbalanced power between producers and patients
    • Insurance is positioned at the front of the healthcare payment pipeline; they siphon off optimal profits with minimal regulations. “In the midst of a deep economic recession, America’s health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent in 2009, a year that saw 2.7 million people lose their private coverage” (Walker/HCAN, 2010, ABC).
    • Monolithic healthcare entities’ size makes them powerful and relatively invulnerable to change
    • Expanding the insurance mandate to all will create more healthcare consumers; then more healthcare will mean more profit for private insurance companies and increased strain on consumers and healthcare entitites such as hospitals and physicians
    • Even with insurance, the cost of healthcare treatments can bankrupt families

Conclusions

Peak oil and diminishing resources are linked to a cessation of economic growth and hence to economic contraction. In the future, our advanced, technological western healthcare system will arguably need to contract in complexity, size, and profits, as we have less resources available to spare within economies. Permanent economic contraction will lead to disappearing traditional corporate jobs, and thus disappearing traditional health insurance linked to those jobs. At the same time, diminishing resources will lead to inflation in all sectors including healthcare, and decreased ability for insurance companies to  provide adequate payment and decreasing ability of consumers to pay for insurance. Stressors in the economy (including pollution buildup) will lead to decreased health and increased pressure on healthcare.

Hierarchy and autocatalysis drives the complexity of our healthcare system. Our complex society focuses costly interventions at the top of the hierarchy while taking for granted the socioeconomic benefits derived from our fossil fuel slaves, which are only present as long as the fossil fuels are present. At the same time, effects of surplus consumption and surplus wastes also impact our health, creating more problems with each loop of the economic engine. Our HCS is another imbalanced hierarchy; top heavy with complexity and too much treatment for too few and not enough treatment for the rest.

The rise in the number of people being treated for expensive conditions has had an impact on the growth in private insurance spending similar to that on overall health care spending. The rise in the number of people being treated, rather than the rise in spending per treated case, was the most important determinant of the growth in private insurance spending between 1987 and 2002, according to a recent study. For 16 of the 20 most expensive conditions, the rise in the number of people being treated accounted for more than half the growth in private insurance health care spending. Researchers attribute the additional numbers of people being treated to three factors:

  1. The continued rise in the share of privately insured adults classified as obese.
  2. Changes in clinical treatment guidelines and standards for treating patients without symptoms or with mild symptoms only.
  3. The availability of new medical technologies to diagnose and treat patients.

Especially important is the increase in the number of people treated for conditions clinically linked to obesity. From 1987 to 2002, the proportion of the population treated increased 64 percent for diabetes (accounting for 80 percent of the increase in costs) and increased 500 percent for hyperlipidemia (accounting for almost 90 percent of the increase in costs). A number of factors might explain the substantial increase in treatment rates for conditions linked to obesity. These factors include a rise in the number of people with obesity-related conditions, a rise in the number of more seriously ill patients, a greater emphasis on preventive care, and the introduction of broader treatment options (Stanton, AHRQ, 2006).

In a crumbling economy and healthcare system, maintaining or expanding spending for chronic conditions, especially in the very aged, is an unsustainable trap. Similar to any other part of the economy, our fossil-fuel based lifestyle has allowed us to leapfrog past basic needs and focus on the wants at the higher levels of the complexity pyramid instead.

TRFriedenApril 2010, 100(4)Am Jo Public Health

The most bang for our healthcare buck occurs in providing improvements in socioeconomic factors–preventive, systemic changes that result in improved quality of life. Those changes have occurred naturally over the past two centuries as a function of fossil fuel related improvements in public health and complexity. (See also Hans Rosling’s 4 minute Gapminder video on “200 years that changed the world.) Yet most of our current healthcare interventions occur at the top of the pyramid above, in costly, high-tech clinical interventions. If fossil fuels are constrained in the system, then both the top and the bottom of the healthcare hierarchy become disordered, requiring change. Healthcare is one of the last bubbles in the US economy. We need new goals and a new healthcare system that is focused on justice and the good of the whole, rather than profits and personal freedom.

The most effective way of dealing with policy resistance is to find a way of aligning the various goals of the subsystems, usually by providing an overarching goal that allows all actors to break out of their bounded rationality. If everyone can work harmoniously toward the same outcome (if all feedback loops are serving the same goal) the results can be amazing. The most familiar examples of this harmonization of goals are mobilizations of economies during wartime, or recovery after war or natural disaster (Meadows, 2008, p. 115).

http://thinwildmercurythought.blogspot.com/ original source unknown

A permanently contracting economy will result in a bioethical crisis as fewer resources are available to an increasingly stressed global population. We need to reconsider our goals of expansion of capitalism-driven wealth as the system loses its surplus energy. Instead we need to consider the sustainable good of the entire country during the contraction of the economy. We need justice in terms of basic needs for all, with more attention to the health of entire communities rather than individual rights. Failure to provide basic needs for all affects the whole system, with increases in epidemics due to stress, overcrowding, poor nutrition, dirty water and pollution, and failures in vaccination programs and general control of illnesses.

Based on the apparent politics of today, as we continue to descend, what we will probably get as the system becomes more imbalanced and unsustainable is limited fee for service care for the wealthy (with eventual failure of insurance), very limited care for the poor, and early mortality for many. Perhaps Obama’s healthcare proposal is the only politically feasible step in our currently gridlocked and imbalanced policy arena. But if we potentiate the power of Big Insurance and Big Pharma with healthcare reform that reinforces feedback to them through increased profits, aren’t we just one step further on the road to Too Big To Fail Yet Too Big to Sustain?

http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/join_the_discussion_daschles_healthcare_response/

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Sub-Arctic Dreams: Fresh Veggies in March

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http://pinterest.com/source/good -potato.com/ US WWI Poster

by Todd Logan

Alaska has a long and interesting history of agriculture, including a government-sponsored relocation of 200 Midwest farm families in 1935 to establish the Matanuska Valley Colony near present-day Palmer. Today a modest number of commercial agricultural operations are successfully operating around the state. Nonetheless,  commercial agriculture, even when combined with subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering, supplies less than 5 percent of the food consumed by the 720,000 residents of the state.

In recent years home vegetable gardening has seen rapid growth in popularity nationwide. The local foods movement and a growing interest in sustainable and self-sufficient living have at least in part fueled this interest. In the Anchorage area, ornamental and vegetable gardening is popular. Our long summer days are a big plus. Our short growing season and naturally cool air and soil temperatures are our biggest challenges. Anchorage gardeners typically reserve Memorial Day weekend to plant most vegetables outdoors.  We enjoy harvests from mid-summer until the hard frosts and first snows of mid-October bring the outdoor gardening season to a close.

At our Anchorage home we have had a successful vegetable garden for several years.  Leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and Swiss chard do well here. Root vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, and turnips also thrive in our long days and cool soils at 61°North. However, if you lust for a good tomato, cucumber, or pepper, regardless of season, you must create more conducive growing conditions or accept the imported fare that spends weeks traveling from farm to market.

Harvest from our outdoor garden – September 2011

In 2011 we decided to build a greenhouse. We had two primary goals.  First and foremost, we wanted to grow a broader range of vegetables than what outdoor conditions allow, as well as extend the season for the leafy green vegetables we much enjoy. Secondly, we were interested in creating a sunny warm space where we could relax and enjoy a good book now and again. Our mid-winter days are short – 5 ½ hours from sunrise to sunset, and even our July days, on average, only warm up to 65 degrees. We also set some constraints – primarily that the space had to require only modest energy inputs once built, and if possible, capture heat for greenhouse and other domestic uses. We also envisioned significant application of at least 7 of the 12-permaculture design principles:

  1. Observe and interact
  2. Catch and store energy
  3. Obtain a yield
  4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
  5. Use and value renewable resources and services
  6. Integrate rather than segregate
  7. Use small and slow solutions

We began our research and quickly learned that our goals were somewhat in conflict. A good greenhouse does not make a great sunroom, and a glassed space designed to maximize solar heat gain would not make a comfortable greenhouse or sitting space.  We didn’t abandon our goals. We just made some compromises and hoped that we would strike a decent balance.

We chose to create an attached greenhouse – one that shares a wall with our existing home. Benefits of attached greenhouses include reduced construction costs, reduced energy needs for both greenhouse and home, and convenient location. We were fortunate to have a well-situated south wall of our house for this purpose. And the dimensions and configuration of our house prescribed the size of our greenhouse – 9’ x 14’.  We selected a local sunroom contractor to design the structure and construct most of it. His knowledge from 3 decades in the sunroom/greenhouse business was most helpful. For example, one’s choice of glazing (the glass) requires a trade-off. Glass that allows undiminished light transmission and optimizes solar heat gain has poor insulation values. Since we planned to heat our greenhouse at least part of the year, the insulation value of the glazing was quite important to us.  Contrary to standard sunroom design, we selected glazing that seemed to reasonably balance these three attributes for both the walls and ceiling of our new space (light transmittance = 65%, solar heat-gain coefficient = 0.27, U-Value = 0.25).

Many options exist to warm a greenhouse to extend the growing season and create an environment for growing temperate zone vegetables. One can maximize passive solar heating by adding mass such as dark colored masonry and/or water barrels inside the greenhouse. Potential active solar heating systems include subterranean heat and cooling systems (SHCS) and hydronic heat storage. On the fossil fuel front, we considered simple electric space heaters, a dedicated natural gas heater, and/or expanding our existing home’s natural gas and wood-fired furnace hydronic heating system. We ultimately chose the latter, but incorporated some of the solar heat capture approaches as well. After monitoring a season of greenhouse operation, we will likely incorporate additional solar heat capture.

While deciding how to heat an Alaska greenhouse is of primary concern, we are virtually certain that our greenhouse will actually overheat (exceed 80oF) on sunny summer days. Greenhouse cooling is typically handled by manually opening windows or automated with exhaust fans that simply blow excess heat outdoors. We are loath to discard heat in Alaska, even mid-summer! Two potential approaches to cool the greenhouse and capture the waste heat are (1) blowing the warm greenhouse air into the rest of the house with a fan, and/or (2) removing heat from the greenhouse with an air-to-water heat exchanger. With respect to the latter, the warm water generated  might be stored and used for greenhouse heating, home space heating, and/or domestic water heating. As stated above, we will evaluate the potential for integrated heating/cooling methods during our first season of greenhouse operation.

Foundation footers about to be poured. Footers were topped with 4’ of concrete block to support the floor

Due to all of these heating and cooling options and unknowns, we sought a greenhouse design that maximized future adaptability. We quickly realized that our choice of greenhouse foundation design would affect many options. The simplest greenhouse floor would be dirt, gravel, stone, or a poured concrete slab. While properly insulated dark colored concrete floors are often used in passive solar designs, we felt this approach would be ineffective in a greenhouse filled with shade-creating growing tables and plants.  We decided that allowing for active solar heat capture was important and promising, so we went with a joist-supported wood floor over crawl space supported by 6’ deep concrete footers. Water is a superior medium for heat storage, and insulated tanks for hot water storage are an expensive and

Floor framed. Note the access hatch for each compartment.

space-consuming component of solar hot water systems. The two crawl space compartments beneath the greenhouse were designed to allow them to be retrofitted later with insulating foam sheeting and a pond liner to make two 1000-gallon hot water storage tanks (see www.builditsolar.com). We reasoned that one 1000-gallon tank might be used to store warm water in conjunction with a greenhouse air-to-water heat exchanger. A second tank might be

Main structure complete – November 2011

dedicated to store high-temperature hot water from dedicated solar thermal panels at some point in the future.

Greenhouse construction began in early October. Contractors got the foundation in just before the ground freezes in this part of the world. We then built the floor ourselves. In early November, the contractor tented the site and built the pony wall and glass structure over a 3-week period. In January and February we finished the inside of the pony wall, installed electrical outlets, hydronic baseboard heat, two hose bibs, and water and freeze-resistant vinyl flooring. We finally had a greenhouse!

Prototype earth boxes under lights. Good lettuce production. Good tomato plant growth and flowering, but no setting of fruit to date, possibly due to inadequate light and/or low indoor humidity

With respect to growing things, we had yet another goal – low maintenance. We love to garden, but we also love to get into the backcountry regularly to enjoy the amazing wilderness that this part of the world has to offer. With this in mind, we decided to go with “earth box” design growing tables, which will self-water and feed plants for extended periods. We built and tested several mid-sized earth boxes mid-winter, under LED grow lights, and liked our results. Earth boxes (www.seattleoil.com /Flyers/Earthbox.pdf) have a water reservoir in the bottom, then an air layer for healthy roots.  Above that the box holds 8” of growing medium, which is topped with fertilizer bands between planting rows and finally a plastic evaporation barrier. Wicking tubes connect the soil layer to the water reservoir.  The soil layer stays both moist and aerated from the water and air layers below.

We built two very large earth boxes to be our primary growing tables.

We built our earth boxes out of Douglas fir and cedar 2x4 lumber.

The shell of the first of 2 boxes is done.

Boxes done (upside down) with legs being attached.

The boxes are waterproofed by lining with PVC pond liner.

Boxes in the greenhouse. Tested for leaks.

Float valves will keep 4” of water in the bottom of the box. Soil is supported above with an inch of air between.

The growing medium is supported by fiberglass window screen over expanded metal. Screen is cut away from support tubes so they fill can be filled with soil to make wicking chambers.

We filled the boxes with 25 cubic feet of commercial growing medium to ensure good wicking and aeration.

On March 15 we set the greenhouse thermostat to 50oF and planted cool season greens -– lettuce, spinach, kale, and Swiss chard. Sprouting began on schedule a week later.

Planting initial cool season greens. Organic fertilizer is laid on the surface in strips between planting rows. The surface is then covered with a 1-mil plastic evaporation barrier (inexpensive painter’s drop cloth).

We are having an unusually cool March. Nighttime temperatures have been dropping into the single digits, with days warming into the 20s. While we are still heating with our wood furnace, keeping the greenhouse near 50o has not been hard.  On several sunny afternoons we’ve seen 70o inside. These are good temperature ranges for leafy greens.  Indoors we have started warmth-seeking tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and celery.  In a few weeks these should be of transplanting size. With our warming spring temperatures we can rationalize pushing the greenhouse thermostat to 65o and see how these do. We’ll share our success, or lack thereof, in a future post. We are quite optimistic that we can make this work, but gardeners know you don’t always get everything right the first time!

Initial planting is done. Space is reserved for tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers after they are started indoors.

While we have attempted to share how permaculture principles shaped some of our thinking on this project, we are in no way claiming that we maximized those principles on this project. With a simple Internet search you can find some great resources on passive solar greenhouse designs, use of recycled/discarded materials in greenhouses, and even how to heat greenhouses with compost and animal manure.  We encourage you to take a look at these should you ever decide to build a greenhouse.

We are all anticipating an early harvest!

Finally, the big picture:  We must ask, “Should one be trying to grow temperate zone vegetables in Alaska at all? What’s the energy investment in an Alaska greenhouse-grown tomato or cucumber? How does that energy investment compare with one shipped to Alaska from the Central Valley of California, South Florida, or South America? In the energy scarce future, should Alaskans expect to eat tomatoes at all?” Good questions!

The Finished Greenhouse in March

The construction of this greenhouse required large energy inputs, including excavation with a tracked excavator and high tech glass and framing shipped from the East coast. High tech engineering and shipping to high latitudes demands fossil fuels, globalization and a broad base of complexity. Food security can be developed with less technology using hoop houses (here and here) and cold frames. While initial costs of an attached greenhouse are energy intensive, operation and maintenance should be much less demanding. Is a greenhouse an appropriate investment in the face of imminent descent? We think so.  Will Alaskans have greenhouses, at least of this design, in the future low-energy world? Maybe, maybe not.

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Whatever Happened to Hierarchies in Ecology?

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by Mary Logan

A previous post explored the cognitive dissonance that occurs when we fail to recognize the true energy basis for global problems such as climate change. This week’s post follows up with another example of cognitive dissonance in the sciences; the disconnect in relating  the energy basis of ecosystems to that of economies. Soddy (1926) describes the essential nature of understanding the energy basis for society:

We thus arrive at the conclusion that any sort of perpetual motion is impossible. A continuous stream of fresh energy is necessary for the continuous working of any working system, whether animate or inanimate. Life is cyclic as regards the material substances consumed, and the same materials are used over and over again in metabolism. But as regards energy, it is unidirectional, and no continuous cyclic use of energy is even conceivable. If we have available energy, we may maintain life and produce every material requisite necessary. That is why the flow of energy should be the primary concern of economics (p. 56).

Yet economic perspectives fail to recognize the unidirectional, limited nature of much of the energy that drives our economy. Economists consider environmental resources to be “externalities” whose only limitation is market cost.  If we do not recognize varying qualities of energy and how they contribute to the hierarchy of energy, then we do not understand the limits of what is achievable. Sewall called this “reperceving depth.” And if we do not value energetic contributions of the environment to society and recognize the limits of different types of energy sources, then we will fail to organize society in a sustainable way. A description and quantification of how energy flows through systems is essential for explaining growth, complexity, carrying capacity, and sustainability in systems.

The cognitive dissonance regarding energetics can be illustrated by examining perspectives about energy from Economists and Ecologists. How do we view the movement of energy through systems in both the environment and the economy?  E.P. Odum (1997) describes the interface between the study of ecosystems and economies:

In theory, ecology and economics should be companion disciplines. In practice, however, economists deal with human works and with market goods and services while ecologists have until recently focused on the natural environment . . . . (p. 32).

Economists focus on human production and consumption using monetary measures, while Ecologists focus on natural ecosystem production and consumption using measures such as population size or biomass. The recent trans-disciplinary field of Ecological Economics proposes to combine the two sciences using economic methodology while merging conceptual theory. Ecological economists propose that we “internalize the externalities” of Nature into human economic systems. Yet this does not go far enough, if one is to value resources properly as the basis for our survival. In one of their last papers, Odum and Odum (1999) proposed that, in order to understand sustainability issues, we should reverse the idea and “externalize the internalities” by placing the contributions of the economy on the same measurement basis as the work of the environment. This reversal requires a different type of measure than money, since Nature’s processes (from which we are all derived) do not use currencies. So neither Economics nor Ecology nor Ecological Economics sciences as they currently exist can capture the relationships and levels of hierarchy in the unified system of Man and Nature. The new science of Emergy Synthesis proposes to quantitatively measure the complexity in those relationships. The premise for this post is that the unsustainable hierarchy and complexity of our economies can be represented visually by inverted pyramids for those who are not mathematically inclined.

Abel (from Odum)

Ecologists originally described the energy basis of ecosystems in terms of a food chain. In a food chain, larger numbers of basic producers at the base of the food chain provided many calories flowing through numerous organisms to converge in a network, transforming into fewer higher level consumer units with fewer total calories but with larger size and territory over a number of trophic levels. Stable food chains were initially viewed as pyramids, with large bases of energetic support narrowing to a top. Available energy decreased through each transformation, but the energy quality increased. The largest predators were at the top, with increased ability to reinforce energy interactions both upscale and downscale through feedback loops. Theoretically humans were the top predators in the system. Odum (1987) viewed this process as a proposed fifth law of energy hierarchy; All the energy transformations known can be connected in a series network according to the quantity of one kind of energy required for the next. The representation of energy as a hierarchy allowed the pyramid to be quantified and standardized based on comparable embodied solar energy equivalence units in order to measure the real wealth generated by nature and humans on any scale of time. This then allowed comparisons of capabilities of available energy of different kinds to do work, and to properly value Nature’s contributions (Odum, 2007, p. 97).

Ecological pyramid/food chain

Yet, if one performs a google image search for the words “food chain,” none of the pyramidal images that result depict humans! So where are the humans in this big picture that the ecologists describe? Aren’t we the top carnivores and the dominant species on the planet? Ecologists turned away from food chains in favor of food webs, deeming that webs better fit the complex network of feeding relationships in systems. Interestingly enough, when food webs appeared, humans were finally added to the top of the some of the diagrams of webs, although energy hierarchy was dispensed with. Yet the concept of a chain of transformations is integral to the description of energy flows and for the quantification of energy hierarchies. So energy hierarchies are less easily explained or quantified in webs.

An Economist views Ecology http://www.econguru.com/ fundamentals_of_ecology/ecosystems .html

As an interesting historical aside, those few scientists who study isotope behavior in systems appear to consistently understand the importance of energetic hierarchy.  Frederick Soddy won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for his early studies of isotope decay, and he was insistent about the importance of energy for understanding economic systems. Both Odum brothers developed their energetic theories about society using radioecology. Ecologists are showing recent renewed interest in radioisotope tracers to quantify food webs (Hebert et al., 2006) along with other, more reductionist, top-down methods. Will humans be included in those isotope surveys as a result of the rising background levels of isotopes in some countries, and will we derive a tardy understanding of the relationships between Man and Nature?

Critiques from Goldsmith (1985, 2002) suggest that ecologists may have turned away from energetically-based theories of hierarchy and succession in favor of theories focusing on genetics and evolution in order to achieve consistency with the reigning growth-oriented social paradigm of the past 30 years. Is this why ecologists gave up the food chain in favor of food “webs?” It is difficult to retain oppositional world views, and scientific theories are arguably derived from world views rather than vice versa. Most ecosystems reach a stable, pulsing successional climax, eventually being replaced over the larger scale of time. This theory does not fit our world views regarding the future of industrial society. And in an energy hierarchy that is quantified, humans must either exist within the limiting energy budget of renewable resources, or else the assumption about the temporary nature of exponential growth due to nonrenewable resources must be made explicit. Quantifying these implied assumptions would mean that we would have to either change our world view to match our inevitable energetic limits, or else change our scientific theories? In unintentional support for this idea, Rudel (2009) suggests that the ideas of succession and food chains are flawed meta-narratives that . . . “have no place for important features of human societies like globalization and the world system” (p. 90). Rudel discounts succession as a potential master narrative for environment and society, and suggests that succession may instead yield clues to sustainable development that yields both economic growth and environmental protection. Rudel appears to be discounting theories that do not support his world view. Additionally scientists focus on problems and ask questions that address their world view; Ecological studies are only recently attempting to include humans in studies of urban ecology. Kingsland notes that these recent studies used microscopic methods such as “patch dynamics”, however, that omit the energetic basis. Our ecological blindspot regarding energetic limits appears complete.

Thus, Ecology now emphasizes growth and competition among populations rather than limits and succession leading to cooperation, with less of an emphasis on balance and holism. Kingsland (2005) suggests that Ecology has diverged, with two messages to offer:

. . . one in keeping with American ideas about progress and the other subversive. The clash between these two view-points made it necessary to think more deeply about the extent to which ecology can or should be human-centered. This question in turn relates to the problem of how we view ourselves in relation to the environment, whether we are outsiders and disturbers or intrinsic parts of a system, whose health depends on our cooperation (p. 209).

Transformity Depiction (Tom Abel)

Although some subversive scientists such as Tim F.H. Allen and others are still exploring the concept of hierarchy as a unifying concept for ecology, most ecologists appear to have abandoned the idea of hierarchical energy as an explanatory theory for both man and nature. As Allen points out, the limits of what is possible in a system typically come from the lower levels of an energy hierarchy. So theoretically, humans are limited by the Transformity of the lower levels of the hierarchy.  Tom Abel’s Transformity pyramid above depicts the representation of human society as it ideally rests upon its natural resource basis, with genetic DNA and human society information at the pinnacle of transformity within the naturally-shaped pyramidal hierarchy. Due to nonrenewable energy inputs to society over the last two centuries, however, the reality is far different from the ideal society depicted above.  What would our current global industrial society look like in a qualitative representation using pyramids?

Is there a single energy hierarchy for Nature and the Economy together, or are Nature and the Economy separate entities described by disconnected sciences with separate toolkits? Can we visually marry these two seemingly oppositional energetic and economic world views as to how the world works? Kurt Cobb skirts the boundaries of this topic in his post on Upside Down Economics. When we examine the sub sectors of an economy, here is what Economists see when they look at the US Economy, for example.

Kurt Cobb Resource Insights http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2007/07/upside-down-economics.html

Yet here is what an Ecological Economist might see instead, at least in the extreme economy of the United States, if we transposed the pie chart above into a pyramid, as Mr. Cobb did.

Kurt Cobb Resource Insights http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2007/07/upside-down-economics.html

Abel&Cobb-Industrial Society as an Hourglass

The sectors of a human economy based on nature do not appear to follow the normal pyramid shape of a stable food chain. In our current economy, sectors of natural resources and basic services are a small part of our global economy, while sectors that are arguably dislocated from the real economy are dominant, such as the financial, insurance and real estate sectors. If we try to visually marry Abel’s ideal representation of Man living within limits of Nature with Cobb’s upside-down economic pyramid on top, what results is an hourglass at right, with a fuel injector made of fossil fuels between the natural and human worlds. Although the analogy is qualitative and imperfect, the images suggest that fossil fuels have allowed us to build a separate skewed society perched on the apex of the natural, sustainable energy hierarchy of Nature. The amount and degree of high quality transformities are inflated by the injections of fossil fuels, creating an exponential super-circulation of information in the human end of society, and an increasingly impoverished Natural end. This may seem obvious to many, but then why do our theoretical models do not reflect this basic understanding?

BIS Pyramid of Global Liquidity circa 2007?

We can even make analogies about the shape of our current global monetary system, which takes on the same shape of a skewed, upside down pyramid, as shown at right in the BIS Inverted Pyramid of Global Liquidity. Many other examples of upset hierarchies can be found by googling images of upside down pyramids. Inverted pyramids are inherently unstable. Is there anything natural about our current global economic system, and how far must we bend or even

Gothard http://online.wsj.com/articl e/SB123958260423012269. html

break theories about Nature to make them fit our worldview of our economic system? Dr. Abel’s naturally shaped Transformity pyramid represents how our society should be, in balance with Nature. But our society can no longer be represented by a normal pyramid with a broad base and narrow apex. The inverted shape of our society is only workable as long as we can extract an increasingly broad footprint of natural resources in order to avoid toppling our rapacious economy. In fact, if one combines the visual images of an imbalanced upside-down economy and its associated upside-down money supply spinning like an accelerating flywheel, then a spinning top results. And we all know what happens to spinning tops that stop spinning? Isn’t that what they call a “pyramid scheme?”

Sharon Kingsland (2005) summarizes ecological perspectives that view Nature as a problem isolated from society, and energy as a market commodity:

. . . Unless a human-centered perspective can be built into environmental discussions, it will be difficult to convey to ordinary people, and also to politicians, the links between environmental reforms and other issues that affect human health and societal health. This failure also creates a barrier to the teamwork that is needed to solve environmental problems (p. 262).

We have shifted our theories to fit the context and perceived reality of industrial society and capitalism. Our perceived world view lacks unifying concepts that might consider a future with less resources. We are very unprepared for the limits to growth.

And the next time that you see images of inverted pyramids, consider the nature of hierarchies, their relative inherent sustainability or stability, and their place within Nature.

http://www.redd-monitor.org/2011/03/22/munden-project-report- on-redd-and-forest-carbon-forest-carbon-trading- is-unworkable-as-currently-constructed/

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Cooperative Culture–Energy Characteristics

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Together; The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation, R. Sennett, 2012 Yale Univ. Press

by Mary Logan

Professor Dave Tilley suggested a review of Richard Sennett’s new book, Together; The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation.  The book was thoughtfully written. Sennett traces the nature and evolution of cooperation in society, and examines the reasons for the lack of cooperation in current society, and how we can reclaim it. He examines the relationship of cooperation to solidarity, competition, and ritual.  Sennett views cooperation realistically; he understands that cooperation is not innately benign, and has its own problems, as people who are bound together can then do harm to others. He discusses the need to rebuild cooperation using the metaphor of repair work embodied in a social workshop, as suggested by the book’s cover painting at right, Making a Staircase by Frances Johnston. He makes a number of fascinating points; for example, he describes the institutionalization of cooperation in the form of solidarity as the Left’s response to the evils of capitalism. Sennett ends the book with a quote from Jacob Burckhardt about modern times as an “age of brutal simplifiers”. Sennett suggests that:

Today, the crossed effect of desires for reassuring solidarity amid economic insecurity is to render social life brutally simple: us-against-them coupled with you-are-on-your-own. But I’d insist that we dwell in the condition of “not yet.” Modernity’s brutal simplifiers may repress and distort our capacity to live together, but do not, cannot, erase this capacity. As social animals we are capable of cooperating more deeply than the existing social order envisions . . . . (Sennett, 2012, p. 280).

Sennett is a sociologist; while he does not view the world through an energy lens, he is aware of the unbalanced nature of our competitive society and the need for return to a more civil, cooperative society. He blames our cultural woes on industrial society and capitalism, thus he arrives at some of the same conclusions as those who frame their worldview using an energetic focus. A society based on grossly surplus energy creates extremes of inequity, with weakened social cohesion, psychological withdrawal, and loss of justice.

As I read the book, I found the need to take notes, as a slightly different perspective unfolded than that of the author. As I read, wearing my spectacles made with energy lenses, I saw the give and take of mutualism throughout history as a function in part of societies with surplus energies (high gain) and less surplus energies (low gain). Viewing the world energetically was briefly fashionable in the 1970s for many science specialties, including ecology and anthropology. Ecologists addressed the issues of succession and relative energy availability in systems in structural terms, and cultural Anthropologists wrote about ecological anthropology. But these approaches to energetic gain generally faded in theoretical popularity in the 1980s after the oil shocks diminished, except for notable holdouts such as Tainter and Allen, who have continued to develop theories viewed through an energetic lens, based on environmental determinism. Many science specialties including ecology dispensed with an energetic world view at the same time that western society as a whole dispensed with it.

The review morphed into a summary of potential characteristics of a new culture. So here, below, is an optimistic view of how a society with less surplus energy might develop as we descend, and what some of those changes might look like. This table is a work in progress, garnered from a number of different sources; some are referenced below.

Characteristic: Low Gain (Scarcity) High Gain (Surplus Resources)
Energy Mandate Efficiency more important for Maximum Empower Maximum Empower w/ less efficiency
 Less dense, less technology Increased size, more technology
Slower, less productive, more recycling Faster, wasteful of energy, high entropy, open mineral cycles
Sustainable orientation, pulsing, k-selection Growth Orientation r-selection
Zero Sum or Negative Sum Positive Sum Game
Requires stable energy base Boom and bust more common
Focus Community Needs Individual Wants
 Goal Communal harmony?, quality Wealth, quantity
 Relation to Nature  Living within Nature as stewards Separate from Nature, less stewardship
 Spatial Orientation Localized, smaller capacity, more stratification, heterogeneity Global, colonization, urbanization
 Temporal Orientation 7 Generations + perspectives Next quarter outlook
Hierarchy Shorter food chain length Longer more complex hierarchies
Diversity More diversity, parallel units, narrow niches Less diversity, less complex webs, broad niches
 Ethics Centered on Community, Justice Focused on Individual Personhood, Respect for Personhood, Autonomy
 Needs Hierarchy Focus on basic needs Focus on higher needs
More self-reliance Needs supplied by system
 Equity More equity, less division Less equity
Physical Better genetic fitness Larger mass, better health, more offspring
 Psychological Depression/vigilance OK Techno-optimism
Generalists More diversity in terms of specialties
Focused on Maintenance Focused on Expansion
 Social Extended families, guilds Nuclear families, mobility
Cooperation Competition
Altruism, Gift economies Inequality, Winner takes all
Mutual Dependence, Harmony Independence, Mobility
 Political Less freedom, more equality Capitalism (more freedom, less equal)
Increased regulation, stored info Just-in-time
Grass Roots Centralized
Network Silos, bureaucracies
Symbiosis Darwinism, Social Insurance
Externalize Internalities? Internalize Externalities
 Cultural More Ritual, myths, stories Division of labor, Information society
Stricter Values Looser Value systems, self-indulgence?
Civility, conformity Experiments, social deviance
Selflessness Self-aggrandizement
More resistance, less resilience Rapid evolution

from Odum, 1969; Tainter et al., 1996, 2003; Sennett, 2012, Roszak, 2003

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Thinking Like a System about Climate Science

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by Mary Logan

H.T. Odum spent formative years interrupting his undergraduate study during World War II as a tropical meteorologist in the Panama Canal zone, which helped him to develop understanding of the energetic basis of global systems. He was generally less disturbed about the threat of climate change than he was about our coming bottleneck due to peak oil, proposing that the greatest and most impacting effect of climate change would would be greater extremes and wider swings in weather. On the subject of climate, he was

A little ice-age in Anchorage

unsure about whether heating due to greenhouse gases would cause significant rises in sea level or not; one early hypothesis of his in the 1980s was that if heating caused more water vapor to go into the air, then more snow and ice could form in polar regions at high altitudes. Glaciers might melt at their toes at sea level, but might actually accumulate in ice fields, perhaps counteracting the relative rise in sea levels. While there is accumulating evidence that sea levels are rising, and the jury is still out on glaciers at high altitudes/latitudes, there are certainly greater extremes in weather.  I ponder these questions as I write about the intersection of climate and peak oil this morning, looking out my window in Anchorage, a weather sample of n=1. We are victims of the polar jet and La Niña here in Alaska this winter, and I’m wondering when it’s all going to melt?!?

Ouroboros as symbol of cyclical birth and death of Nature, energy, unity of all, cycling, and self-sufficiency

We can frame the discussion using the hot-button example of climate change, since the polarized arguments on climate reveal some of our faulty logic and assumptions regarding global problems and solutions. The problems of peak oil and climate change are basically two ends of the same snake, which consists of the inputs and outputs of our global energy problem (see the ouroboros at right as a metaphor).  We currently produce too much CO2 as a

Flywheel from MT Brown 2004 Picture Worth a Thousand Words (from Odum, 1976)

result of the excessive use of our surplus stash of nonrenewable fossil fuels, especially here in the United States. The starting point is the unsustainable use of fossil fuels, which creates excess CO2 in the atmosphere. The process of production and consumption accelerates over time, as the flywheel global economy continues to accelerate due to oil-related growth.  So instead of being sustainable as suggested by the ouroboros, it becomes unsustainable, only limited by the amount of fossil fuels that can be removed from the eath. It is the amount of energy in the tank and how we control it that is perhaps the source of our incorrect assumptions. Isn’t the polarized war on the science of climate really a proxy for the struggle about growth and capitalism?

How we examine problems depends in part on our worldview. Our world view can be faulty, resulting in cognitive dissonance, blindspots, incorrect assumptions, or failure to examine all aspects of an issue. The failure to view problems at a larger scale sometimes prevents us from asking the right questions in framing problems. Which are the biggest problems, and how are they related to each other? Does our worldview about how the global economic system runs impact our scientific viewpoint and the theories we subscribe to? Which choices in using waning resources are best for the system as a whole? What are the fundamental assumptions of our scientific worldview, and is the natural world or energetic limits and principles considered as a part of those assumptions? Systems science can describe the nature of complex systems, in order to help us understand of nature and society.

Here is an example of questionable assumptions regarding climate change from an interesting list of five future strategic scenarios from Deutsche Post DHL. In it, a relocalization scenario was described by a group of economic experts:

SCENARIO 5, GLOBAL RESILIENCE – LOCAL ADAPTATION

This scenario describes a world initially characterized by a high level of consumption thanks to cheap, automated production. However, due to accelerated climate change, frequent catastrophes disrupt supply chains and lean production structures, resulting in repeated supply failures.

This statement suggests that climate change will be the cause of future global supply chain interruptions. If taken at face value, apparently these economic experts have less concerns about the supply for oil production than climate change. Economic experts, corporations, and the media return repeatedly to climate change as our greatest environmental problem, the cause of our woes, and the focus of our attention and funding for solutions. Soddy (1926) said, “If we have available energy, we may maintain life and produce every material requisite necessary. That is why the flow of energy should be the primary concern of economics” (p. 56). Yet the flow of energy is not the primary concern of our political and economic leaders in general, or here in this specific example. The primary concern of economics is arguably money and the perpetuation of growth. Corporations look for market problems and solutions that do not impede economic growth, as growth of stockholder value and managerial salaries is their primary goal. If one has a hammer, then everything becomes a nail? And since corporations increasingly drive media and politics, corporate agendas may also begin to drive national science and policy discussions, and frame our reality through the media.

How can we view the problem of climate as a critical imminent threat, and not view peak oil in the same way? (Thanks to Dave Cohen and others for beating this drum.) What are the incorrect assumptions that lead to our faulty logic?

  • Misunderstanding regarding what drives our economy, thinking that the basis is money and technology rather than energy
  • Failure to understand net emergy, leading to gross overestimates of energy reserves for oil, coal, and gas
  • Mental and scientific models that fail to include peak oil as a limiting factor to production
  • Insistence on extrapolating existing conditions of growth indefinitely in climate models
  • Dependence on television media for explanations of complex global systems problems, reducing the issues to single problem sound bites
  • Incentives to pursue growth as a prerequisite for the goal of wealth
  • Cognitive dissonance between media exhortations that economic growth is of primary importance and beliefs/concerns about the environment

BP-Proven Oil Reserves 2007 http://tinyurl.com/5o3p6l

Has “climate change” become a euphemism for the peak oil problem that we appear to be unable to face? Is there some psychological benefit to focusing on climate instead of energy problems or is it simply a blindspot due to lack of education regarding the energy basis for society? Can we maintain BAU (Business as Usual) if we focus on some distant environmental problem as a proxy for those threats too close at hand for psychological safety? When the cognitive dissonance is that great, does it qualify as a form of mass delusion or psychosis?  Does the energy resource blindspot regarding our source of empire extend also to issues of war, where those who fail to view energy as a problem also view causative factors for war with Iran, Iraq, or other Middle East countries as based on terrorism rather than based on oil? If we are made to understand the prominence of the oil problem, must we then accept the energy basis of our empire? Is it a coincidence that these two related controversies of climate change and also war in the Middle East are so polarized, especially in the United States? Isn’t climate change really just a proxy or euphemism for our oil addiction problem, especially here in the U.S?

from Cohen 2009 http://energybulletin.net/node/48193

While climate scientists focus on the waste CO2 buildup caused by consuming fossil fuels as primary, resource experts focus on the disappearing fossil fuels. Is either problem, climate change or peak oil, really a separate issue that can be isolated, with separate and independent economic solutions for each problem? If the problems are separated, then are the solutions separate and different also? Can single issues that are subsets of “a safe operating space for humanity” be prioritized as “the most important issue” and what is our

Rockstrom et al. 2009, Nature A Safe Operating Space for Humanity

metric for that? If we “chunk up” and view both problems from one scale up at the global level, what is the real root cause of both of these problems?  Who is molding our cultural debates about priorities in science, and why? Who decides our policies and is the policy based on unbiased science? If we were to reverse the problem, how would the solution change? In other words, if we wanted to increase CO2 in the atmosphere, what would we do—withhold carbon credit policies, stop geo-engineering, or speed up

Climate Change Geoengineering Proposal from Bipartisan Policy Center Oct. 2011 http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/library/report/task-force-climate-remediation-research

growth? Doesn’t our flywheel economy, the root cause, dictate that the only solution for climate is to slow the rate of spin, either voluntarily or involuntarily? How do we change the fundamental goal of our economic system–growth?

A new national policy agenda focuses on geo-engineering as a solution to the problem climate change as an example. In Oct. 2011, the Bipartisan Policy Center proposed expansion of climate mitigation through technology focused on specific large scale projects. Instead of addressing the

Bipartisan Policy Center Oct. 2011 http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/library/report/task-force-climate-remediation-research

fundamental problem of growth in energy consumption, we want to create an elaborate energy-intensive set of solutions that further degrade the environment (click on the picture at right for more details). Does a narrowed focus lead to finding solutions framed within the narrow boundaries of economics and market solutions, subject to corporate gamesmanship through carbon credits? Or are the problems better addressed by examining the problems with a

Stephanie McMillan Code Green http://www.stephaniemcmillan.org/codegreen/

broader focus on the economy as it exists within Nature and our energetic basis?  Isn’t the solution of geo-engineering a classic example of the story of the blind men and the elephant, where each blind man describes a different part of the elephant, thus arriving at a different reality for the whole? Aren’t market solutions a bit too convenient for corporate absolution and continuation of BAU? Might mitigating climate change make other more imminent and threatening problems worse?  If we fix one problem, are there unintended consequences that impact other parts of the system? HT Odum said, ”Geo-engineering the planet with interventions such as dumping iron filings in our oceans could be catastrophic.”

Here is another example of reductionist solutions to climate, from the Princeton Climate Mitigation Institute (CMI):

  • Double fuel efficiency of 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg
  • Decrease the number of car miles traveled by half
  • Use best efficiency practices in all residential and commercial buildings
  • Produce current coal-based electricity with twice todays efficiency
  • Increase wind electricity capacity by 10 times relative to today, total = 2 million large windmills
  • Replace 1400 coal electric plants with natural gas-powered facilities
  • Install 100 times the current capacity of solar electricity
  • Use 40,000 square kilometers of solar panels (or 4 million windmills) to produce hydrogen cells
  • Capture AND store emissions from 800 coal electric plants
  • Produce hydrogen from coal at six times today’s rate AND store the captured CO2
  • Capture carbon from 180 coal-to-synfuels plants AND store the CO2
  • Increase ethanol production 12 times by creating biomass plantations = 1/6th world cropland
  • Add double the current global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity
  • Eliminate tropical deforestation
  • Adopt conservation tillage in all agricultural soils worldwide

Taken singly, each one of these proposals from the Princeton CMI may sound reasonable, if one does not do the associated math on scaling and emergy basis. Taken together, however, one begins to realize the desperate, bargaining, “grasping at straws” nature of our efforts to bend over backwards to avoid the real issue, which is our desire to grow forever.

Finally, when we think like a system, we begin to see other problems that were not even on our radar. For example, why did none of the mainstream economists see the economic problems on our horizon, calling the problem a “black swan” when it arrived, as though it came out of nowhere without building causation, when actually the problem was very predictable when viewed from a perspective of expanding money supply combined with diminishing resources? In the same vein, are there other environmental hazards that we need to consider from a more comprehensive view, such as nuclear hazards resulting from aging nuclear plants in a setting of economic deterioration? As a former radioecologist, Odum also said, “Every home should have a geiger counter.” What part of the words smoldering ruins (above) do we not understand? Is a hazard such as this even on scientists’ radar and how do we prioritize it in a world with waning electricity security?

How fast can we/should we put on the brakes to avoid falling apart?  We need integrative, ecological thinking to both prioritize the problems and to frame solutions. As scientists are herded into zero sum games and even negative sum games for solutions to our ecological problems, the solutions will become more disintegrated and less logical.  Which policies ensure that we brake our flywheel economies slowly in order to match reductions in resource production or imports, while also protecting the environment so that it is there for us when nonrenewable supports have departed? Odum (1995) said, “Maximizing jobs and the economy requires maximizing the symbiosis of the economy with the environment and its resources” (p. 367). Encouraging a growth economy while creating policies that transfer blame for the growth amongst the culprits will not stop the problem. Trying to close the barn door after the horse is gone with carbon credits or other market-driven solutions will not stop the problem. Our media focus on climate change suggests a concern for the rapid consumption of energy but sidesteps the real root cause of greenhouse gases, which is growth. Solutions based on climate change are too narrow, focusing on market solutions that will probably not work–market solutions that do not acknowledge the need for descent are bandaids (or bananas, below). The focus on climate distracts us and takes energy away from more important national agenda priorities, such as the need to anticipate diminishing resources by changing our infrastructure to accommodate less energy inputs. Arguably self-organization will eventually select for optimum intermediate efficiencies, but wouldn’t it be better if we were proactive, as changes in fossil-fuel infrastructure requires fossil fuels? How fast can we/should we put on the brakes to avoid falling apart? Perhaps Emergy Synthesis can help us to answer some of these questions and provide solutions that best maintain economies and environments together as we descend.

Using carbon credits to fix climate change is like stuffing a banana up the tailpipe of your 1983 Mercury Marquis? Thanks, Eddie Murphy & Beverly Hills Cop!

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