Systemic challenges

Yesterday I wrote:

The world is a system. Everything is connected to everything else, weakly or strongly. Pull on one string and they all are going to move. The fact is that you cannot separate issues like climate change and peak oil and population.

I thought I'd follow up with some explanation of what this means.

Here is a very simplified model of the world system of humans and the rest of nature. The diagram doesn't begin to show all, or even some of the more important elements and relationships. But it starts to capture the fact that everything is connected in one way or another. Often these connections are indirect and have significant time delays before a change in one element propagates through the network. There may be attenuation of the effect as it propagates. But there may also be amplification. The existence of non-linearities in real, complex systems ensures that the net effect of any impulse in any one element cannot be predicted. Though, it might be anticipated.

Not shown in the diagram is the feedback from every other node to the 'human nature' node. Much of this feedback, over history, has been positive. That is, we humans have gotten a lot of positive reinforcement for our behavior, so, naturally, we have increased our efforts at using up energy and displacing the rest of nature (represented by 'biodiversity'). That behavior has always paid off in the past so why shouldn't it pay off in the future? Being creatures in whom learning plays a significant part in shaping our attitudes and behaviors, such positive feedback has amplified our beliefs that what we have done is perfectly fine and, in fact, proves that we deserve the rewards of progress.

Unfortunately the time when we got nothing but positive feedback has come to an end. We have displaced more than our share of biodiversity (by Mother Nature's reckoning). We have used all the easily recovered natural resources, especially fossil energy. We have built a population that can no longer raise enough food or have enough water available to serve itself. We have dumped chemicals previously unknown to the natural world (including our bodies) to the point of saturation and toxicity. We have now put so much CO₂ into the atmosphere that we now face global dramatic climate changes that will impact everything else. Now we are getting a lot of negative feedback. And it is going to hurt.

There are a lot of very well intentioned, bright and wise people out there who have fixed on one or another of these challenges and have taken responsibility for informing the rest of the population of the dangers. They have been actively trying to find and promote solutions to the problems as they see them. Groups have formed to fight global warming, looking for political solutions (hence my rant yesterday). Groups have formed to study and find solutions to the energy crises. Others have focused on the population problem, which they correctly recognize is the biggest effective amplifier of all the other effects. But I think there are two flaws in the current focus and solution strategy.

First, the focus on a single problem can produce unintended consequences when remedies are tried without understanding the systemic interactions. For example, suppose we did have a cap-and-trade response to carbon emissions. The intention is that we reduce the CO₂ levels in the atmosphere but essentially do it without harming the economy, which is code for not giving up our wealth consuming behavior. But the vast portion of our current energy consumption, and hence our economy, comes precisely from burning fossil fuels. There is no way that our technologies can be deployed (even if they were currently as effective in providing the energy we would need) on the scale needed in the time needed to effect the change everyone believes will result. It is unfortunate to continue to believe this. Still the popular conception holds out hope (see this Scientific American article on the Solar Grand Plan; pay attention to the caveats.)

Second, as hinted in the last paragraph, we have not really understood the true problem that has gotten us into this situation. We keep believing that the problem is that we just need to get off carbon-based fuels and find an alternative that will allow us to save our civilization and our species will continue on happily creating the next iPod. Of course getting off carbon would solve two problems at once, global warming and peak oil! This is also unfortunate. The reality of the true problem is much more subtle and complex than that. Also, the way forward to a solution to the real problem is going to be a hard pill to swallow. The solution to the real problem isn't going to lead to a happy tomorrow that looks a lot like yesterday only more so. It is going to lead to a very different kind of world, with a very different kind of human consciousness resident. The world will certainly be physically different thanks to our mucking about. The biosphere will be different. But, with some good luck and some forethought — a strategic plan for humanity — there will be a sentience capable of enjoying and appreciating that world, that life.