Tom's Topical Topics, Etc

God stop me before I write again.

(pause)

ok...

Is this gutted, trash-filled Winnebago ordered or disordered?

It seems disordered (possibly disturbed).

It also seems complicated. It requires a particular description (windows broken, door gone, mattress on floor, etc.). It is not like every other Winnebago of the same vintage. They've all aged. A common description no longer works.

But in a previous piece of semi-psychotic rambling I said people become more ordered as they age. Responding to experience and failing parts they (we) become structured and rigid. Set in our ways. Inflexible.

Which is it?

Maybe I confused order and complexity.

Like the Winnebago we lose order. Things fall apart.

And like the Winnebago we become more complicated. Common definitions no longer work for us either. We've got broken windows, sagging mattresses. We each have our own story.

Some of us do become inflexible, set in our ways. But we all become more and more unique. Although neither we nor the Winnebago might generate much new surprise, our existence is a surprise. (How did the Winnebago end up parked in a yard in Delight NC? And what is the story of that mattress? )

We may or may not write lengthy new stories (maybe the Winnebago will get hauled off to suffer the next stage of thermodynamic entropy). But our complete messages - our life stories - well they are something else.

updating the entropy metaphor

(Claude Shannon, inventor of information entropy)

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that over time systems go from lower to higher entropy, from order to disorder. The Entropy Metaphor (EM) says that people do the same thing, going from order to disorder, from life to death.

...there is a lady
who lives down the hall
who dances
with her little dogs
like a toy top
spinning alone
beneath the quarter moon
fingers held out
dreaming of her dead husband
a recessional processional
into entropy

But maybe the EM is wrong, or at least incomplete.

What about information entropy (which I understand even less than thermodynamic entropy)? Invented in 1948 by Claude Shannon, it keeps popping up. Information entropy seems to measure randomness, the non-structured content of messages, the part that you could not compress with an algorithm. Getting a little metaphorical, it seems to measure surprise.

How does this jibe with the EM?

Certainly thermodynamic disorder is our ultimate fate. Our atoms will become scattered. Our order as living creatures will cease. And, in my case anyway, there seems to it seems a lot of disorder right now - lost names, hesitant awkward conversations, etc.

However, in some ways aging people seem to become more ordered - more rigid and structured - mentally and physically. In terms of information entropy our "messages" become predictable, tedious. We could be easily represented by an algorithm.

Accommodating ourselves to failing parts and accumulating experience we become complex (not simple - simple people are spontaneous, ready to go one way or the other).We bend, stoop, limp. We develop elaborate theories to explain ourselves, others.

("I am miserable - because I neglect myself to help other people and they don't appreciate me - because the people here are not as interesting/good as the people where I used to live - because the people here are obsessed with their families and ignore me - because my mother resented men and took it out on me and I got stuck, etc etc etc.)

We become set in our ways. We are less able to handle change, less able to surprise and be surprised.

Although I certainly don't know this for sure, maybe the fibrous plaques in an Alzheimer's brain provide too much structure, rendering the brain rigid and incapable of handling new data. Even cancer, which at first seems to be a product of disorder could be viewed as excessive order, cells stuck in the wrong way of doing things.

Maybe until the end we lose entropy, sucking in order until one morning we give it all up.

Maybe we slide into order and on that great getting up morning explode into entropy.

Maybe I am full of shit (it has been suggested).

Anyway, Merry Christmas.

Asides...

OK - it is Christmas.

Some kids are very rigid, becoming less structured as they age (until at some point they become rigid again). Allie likes maybe four foods.

Some old people stay loose and flexible until the end.

In On Being (a discussion of science and religion) , Peter Atkins says that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is his favorite law.

In The Upside of Down, Thomas Homer-Dixon says that societies inevitably tend toward thermodynamic collapse, becoming more complex and rigid, less able to respond to change. There will be a Fall. But we can minimize the effects by developing "prospective minds", moving beyond consumption, embracing change.

In Collapse, Jared Diamond describes society after society that fails to change - ignoring the past, repeating the past - falling apart. But some don't.

Not counting some sociopathic, paranoid tendencies, I like krav maga because it is without rules. The goal is to be flexible - to respond to threats anytime, anywhere. To anticipate everything and nothing.

Complexity and People Plates

excerpts from Upside of Down section of "EDGE of the Apocalypse"...

Complexity

Breakdowns and collapses happen when societies become rigid and fixed – unable to change. They are unable to respond with complex solutions.

Wars and social disruptions happen when people are no longer able to talk. When positions become intractable and people are stuck in simple, unyielding positions. Until then the answer to stress is increasing complexity.

We develop increasingly elaborate solutions.

But at some point the complexity gets too convoluted – it takes too much energy to follow and maintain. We fall back into the comfort of simplicity – and we sometimes fight.

The Mad Max post-apocalyptic world is ultimately very simple. Haiti is simple. So is Somalia. Hitler and Stalin wanted to create simple societies.

But complexity cannot increase forever. It always falls apart.

A gun is very simple. So is death.

Weathers’ Aside - People Plates

Perhaps people could be regarded as having psychological plates - like the earth has tectonic plates.

People plates correspond to likes, dislikes, desires, fears. Everything that makes a person. Just as tectonic plates slide around in response to pressures - some from within some from without - people plates move around. When the plates (either kind) slide past easily the crust remains undisturbed. When there is friction, pressure builds up until finally released as an earthquake (or a person quake).

Stretching the analogy...

Both types of plates float on a fluid inner layer (mantle, subconscious). Sometimes the inner layer erupts into the surface (as volcanoes, dreams, fits, blurts, poems). The inner layer not only supports the plates, it is a source of destruction and construction. It destroys old plates and creates new ones.

Stretching the analogy even further...

The power of the inner layer comes from energy within which comes from energy without - gravity, dark matter, dark energy, cosmic biology, cosmic history - who knows. So long as there is energy, the inner layer stays fluid and the plates continue to move. The inner layer supports, destroys, and rebuilds.

But after a time - billions of years or seven decades, the energy runs out - or has been so altered by entropic flow to be unusable. The clock quits. The plates stop moving, crack - turn to dust.

The system dies.

Then the whole thing falls back to a universal center, explodes and does it all again.

(According to some theories.)

EDGE of the Apocalypse (Preface)

Inspired by …

The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb

The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman

Collapse - Jared Diamond

The Upside of Down - Thomas Homer-Dixon

The Great Disruption - Paul Gilding

Something Is Coming

You can smell it. We are approaching an edge which overlooks an apocalypse. A sulfurous odor comes from below.

If it were just me it would not be a big deal. Old people like to celebrate their own mortality with tales of doom and gloom. We associate our demise with the demise of the world – which from a certain perspective is truth.

However, it is not just me. Jared Diamond, who won a Pulitzer Prize says there might be a societal Collapse. Paul Gilding a respected environmentalist says there will be certainly be a planet-wide Great Disruption and if that is not preceded by a Great Awakening there will be a Great Collapse. Thomas Homer-Dixon another respected environmentalist says a Fall (what he calls a “pulse”) is likely but there will be an upside. Homer-Dixon also says there will be an upside if there is a Great Awakening first.

Diamond, Homer-Dixon and Gelding have written books explaining what will happen. Taleb and Friedman, although it was not their intent, have written books that explain some of the factors behind the disruptions and collapses.

All these books get below the surface of common assumptions, revealing obvious truths that aren't all that obvious. They shift our point of view, forcing us to regard emperors without clothes and unseen elephants in the corners of rooms.

Everybody should read these or similar books (there are a lot).

Of course not everybody does.

Some people just don’t like to think about these things. They are in one of the phases of denial described by Homer-Dixon and paraphrased below…

Existential Denial – We say the problem does not exist; it has been manufactured by eco extremists and anti-capitalists.
Consequential Denial – We say the problem has been exaggerated and the problems that do exist (e.g., loss of artic ice) do not really affect us. It’s too bad for the polar bears.
Fatalistic Denial – We say there is a serious problem but we can’t do anything about it so we might as well live as we have been living all along.

Some people simply don’t care.

Some people simply don’t read.

And some people do care and do read and aren’t in denial but simply don’t have the time.

My book is for the latter group. By distilling the main points of these books, reducing over 1,000 pages of others’ words to 200 or so pages of my words, I hope to appeal to those who don’t have time. Perhaps after reading my book they will find time and go out and buy the other books.

I also hope to promote awareness of the issues.

Book Inspired by Books

Here is a brief summary of the books discussed in this book inspired by books:

Paul Gilding – The Great Disruption. Gilding says that we are about to be seriously disrupted. It won’t be a once-in-a lifetime, or even once-in-a-century event , but something that happens once-in-a-civilization, something that defines an era – like the Renaissance, Enlightenment, or the Dark Ages.

(It might be even bigger, redefining us at the evolutionary level. People with certain propensities might breed more. Those that survive might think and behave differently. )

Why? The earth is running out of room. There are too many people consuming too much stuff. The planet cannot replenish itself. It is like a global Ponzi scheme driven by the momentum of economic activity. It is just a matter of time before the game plays out.

Most people don’t know an end is coming. But soon everyone will. Gilding calls this the Great Awakening.

Jared Diamond – Collapse. Diamond has written a book about societies that have collapsed – ancient and modern – and a few societies that did not collapse. The book notes various factors contributing to collapses, but tends to focus on environmental issues. He lists a “five-point framework of possible contributing factors”:

Environmental damage caused by people.
Climate change – today caused by people in the past by natural factors.
Hostile neighbors who prevail when a society becomes weak – maybe because of one of the other factors.
Friendly neighbors who become unfriendly or weak and no longer support the society (maybe the formerly friendly society has been weakened by other factors)
A society’s responds to its problems. Are its people smart, perceptive, honest – or the opposite?

Thomas Homer-Dixon – The Upside of Down. Homer-Dixon says that human societies are threatened by interrelated stresses:

Population – growth rate is different in rich and poor societies, has peaked in some rich societies – the poor flood into rapidly growing megacities (e.g., Dhaka in Bangladesh)
Energy – high quality energy (oil) that fuels growth has peaked – we are now scrambling
Environmental – natural environment is being destroyed
Climate – atmosphere is changing, planet warming
Economic –gap between rich and poor is widening, societies becoming unstable – prone to revolution, terrorism

These conditions are like tectonic plates bumping into each other building up pressures which ultimately must be relieved.

Nassim Taleb – The Black Swan. Taleb believes the world is much more unpredictable than we pretend, beset by black swans, and unforeseen (and unforeseeable) events. Tricks for getting by include learning to ignore people to who claim to predict the future and learning to recognize and run with good luck when it happens.

The main words to remember from Black Swan are non-linear and chaos. Environmental changes which bring about a collapse or disruption will not proceed in a regular, straight-line fashion but in a non-linear, chaotic manner.

Thomas Friedman – The World is Flat. Friedman says the world is smaller than we image, flatter. Everybody is connected to everybody else. Barriers between trade and communication have come down (been flattened). The playing field on which people, companies, and countries compete and play has been leveled. The people on the playing field are just as likely to be brown and Eastern as they are to be white and Western.

The main point to remember in the Flat World book is how an event in one place, can, because of globalized connections, rapidly have repercussions across the entire planet. The repercussions feed back into the original event which spreads outward again, then feeds back, then out, then back in a loop, every iteration reinforced and stronger. It is how non-linear chaotic systems develop. How a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a tornado in Kansas.

Caveat

This is my book. Although inspired by the words of others, these words are mine. Also, in some odd sense the ideas are mine. After all the rewrites and edits I own what I say – even though I am “only” interpreting the ideas of the smart men listed above. Consequently the mistakes and the misinterpretations are mine. If you have a problem with something, bear in mind that you are reading me. That’s who you have an issue with – not with the smart men.

C14 of Collapse - Disastrous Decisions

Diamond’s college students always ask how could societies make the disastrous decisions that allow a collapse to happen?

In other words...

Why don’t societies anticipate problems (are the people just stupid)?
Why don’t societies recognize problems even after the situation becomes obvious?
Whey, even after the situation becomes obvious, do some societies, (or the people who could do something) not even attempt a solution?
And why do some solutions fail (again, are the people stupid)?

Note: The people generally aren’t stupid – maybe venal, maybe short sighted, maybe besotted by religion or tradition – but not stupid .

Problem Not Anticipated

Sometimes people just don’t see a problem coming. There is a failure of imagination. British colonists in Australia did not imagine what would happen when they introduced foxes and rabbits. The foxes killed off smaller native animals and birds (none of whom had genetically coded experience with these foreign predators). Rabbits ate everything and even though the foxes ate the rabbits they couldn’t keep up. Another example is kudzu –which was introduced in the southern U.S. to control erosion and ended up covering a lot of landscape.

Sometimes societies don’t remember past problems. Non-literate societies can lose information from generation to generation. Literate societies can simply forget what has been written. For example just after the 1973 oil crisis Americans briefly switched to more economical cars. After a few years they returned to gas guzzlers.

Sometimes people draw false analogies to past problems. Remembering apparent lessons of WWI, the French developed the Maginot line – a series of fortifications positioned to repel likely German infantry attacks. Unfortunately the Germans bypassed the Maginot line with masses of tanks – which had only been used individually in previous war. The French generals were stuck in the past and failed to anticipate the future. They learned the wrong lessons.

Problem Not Recognized

Sometimes people don’t see a problem even after it arrives.

There are at least three reasons for such failures of perception…

Imperceptible

The problem is literally invisible to the naked eye. For example, a region’s soil nutrients – invisible to the eye – might be missing. Native plants growing in such soil can appear lush, disguising the fact that all the nutrients are locked in the plants. When settlers, not knowing any better, cut the plants down the nutrients go away. Crops planted by the settlers won’t grow.

Or, consider greenhouses gases. They are generally invisible. So are pathogens.

Distant Managers

Decision-makers might be somewhere else. They don’t know when things go bad. Diamond notes that Tikopian and the New Guinea highland societies were successful – at least in part - because everyone involved was there. The bosses knew what was going on.

Slow Trends

Slow trends can be hidden in up and down fluctuations. Noise obscures signals. Consider global warming. One year the temperature is up; another year it is down. Much data had to be collected before scientists agreed that global warming is real.

(Weathers’ aside: Even after long-term temperature increases were accepted, a few scientists argued - and still argue - that the increase is due to natural climate fluctuation and not human activity. Only recently have most scientists concluded that the rapid – geologically speaking – increases of recent decades are not likely natural trends. Natural trends typically don’t work that fast.)

Creeping normalcy (landscape amnesia) can hide trends. When things happen slowly enough we might not see the changes. Over the years an untended field becomes overgrown and nobody notices until one day somebody says didn’t that used to be a field? Or a slum happens. Or a town becomes gentrified. Or a stream gradually becomes filled with silt from runoff. Or gradually all the trees in a forest are cut down and only the old people remember back when.

Solution Not Attempted

Sometimes solutions might not even be attempted - for various rational and irrational reasons.

Rational Reasons for Not Attempting Solutions

People or groups often don’t do anything because rationally (ignoring any moral issues) it is not in their interest to do so. Diamond cites the polluting company who leaves an area before the damage affects them. They take the money and run.

This type of issue is sometimes referred to as the “tragedy of the commons”, “the prisoner’s dilemma”, and “the logic of collective action”. Generally it means (again ignoring any moral issues) that when people can – with little penalty - gain an advantage by behaving badly it makes no sense for individuals to behave well.

For example…

If everyone is waiting in a line (vehicular, pedestrian) and you have an opportunity to cut in then why not do it before other people get the same idea? (You might be especially inclined to cut in if you don’t feel anything for the other people – or, better yet, if you resent them because of social difference – in that case cutting in provides positive satisfaction.)

Or if everybody shoplifts, maybe you should as well – before the store packs up and moves out of your neighborhood.

Or if your local economy depends on an ecologically damaging industry (logging, mining, etc.) why should your town pay the price for a national concern?

There are two obvious answers to such problems.

One is to force people and groups to do the right thing by regulating their behavior. Such regulations are typically backed by people with guns.

The other answer is for people to police themselves. Diamond says that this can only happen in homogeneous populations where people share common community values. One class cannot feel especially estranged from the class above it. And it helps if people care about something larger than themselves.

(Weathers aside: This is the top-down versus bottom-up approach to government that divides liberals and conservatives. Top-down advocates accept that many people will not do the right thing, either because they have no free-will – they are basically animals, idiots, whatever – or because they are selfish and don’t care. Bottom-up advocates argue that might be true, but everybody should be free to do the right thing and government should get in the way. People should look after themselves.)

Irrational Reasons for Not Attempting Solutions

In previous examples, no solutions were attempted because inaction made rational sense at least to some people. Irrational inaction happens when there is no rational reason for anybody to maintain the status quo but they do it anyway.

Religious convictions sometimes prompt irrational behavior. Diamond offers as an example the Easter Islanders who cut down all their trees to get logs to transport statues – objects of religious veneration. He also mentions the Greenland Norse whose shared Christian values helped them survive for centuries then prevented them from adopting new lifestyles needed for continued survival.

Secular beliefs (often held in conjunction with religious beliefs) can also get in the way of survival. Sometimes these beliefs start as a rational behavior and over the years became irrational. Sometimes it is not clear when or if there has been such a shift. The self-reliant, go-it-alone pioneer spirit which helped found the U.S. might not make sense in a complex urban society where people must live and work in close proximity. Many people – especially the people who believe in bottom-up control and free will would disagree. Top-down people – many of them – would regretfully agree.

Irrational reluctance to solve problems can also result from a focus on short-term issues at the expense of long-term views. The current willingness in Washington to sacrifice environmental regulations for a possible short-term bump in employment might be an example.

A final example cited by Diamond of irrational reluctance to solve problems is psychological denial. People just don’t want to face issues. It is too painful. He notes a study of the attitudes of people who live below dams. People who live farther away from the dam were more concerned about dam failure than people who lived closer. Diamond contends that those people – looking up at the dam every day – professed that they were in no danger in order to stay sane (by being irrational).

When The Solution Doesn’t Work

Sometimes people try to do something but the solution fails - for various reasons.

The solution might too complex at the present time. People might not be smart enough – may never be smart enough. For example we may never eradicate kudzu. Or maybe science can never get to the very moment of the Big Bang (our Big Bang anyway) or find the God Particle or figure out Dark Matter.

The solution might be perceived as being too expensive. For example all kudzu could pulled up by a huge labor force. But that would be very expensive. (Some environmental problems viewed today as being too expensive might later be viewed differently.)

Some solutions might be too little to late (or just too late or too little).

Some solutions might be just wrong, the result of ignorance. Forest service policies that allow undergrowth to build up result in more and hotter fires. (This solution was once the result of ignorance, now it is more likely economic – clearing out undergrowth is too expensive.) Dunking and burning purported witches is generally wrong and ineffective.

Conclusion

Like other writers on this subject, Diamond does not want to say societal success or failure is random - or determined by environmental or other factors. He prefers to cite courageous and/or farsighted leaders and courageous and/or farsighted people – leaders and people who can learn from history and face the future.
Maybe so.

Prologue of Collapse

Collapse

Penguin Books 2005

ISBN 978-0-670-03337-9

Jared Diamond

This is a book about societies that have collapsed – ancient and modern – and a few societies that did not collapse.

Diamond claims that these collapses are relevant today.

He notes various factors contributing to collapses, but tends to focus on environmental issues. He offers a “five-point framework of possible contributing factors”:

1. Environmental damage caused by people.

2. Climate change – today caused by people, in the past by natural factors.

3. Hostile neighbors who prevail when a society becomes weak – maybe because of one of the other factors.

4. Friendly neighbors who become unfriendly or weak and no longer support the society (maybe the formerly friendly society has been weakened by other factors)

5. How a society responds to its problems. Are they smart, perceptive, honest – or the opposite?

Diamond notes that there are two principal techniques employed by science to study societal problems – comparative method and natural experiment. The former technique compares similar aspects of societies; the later changes limited numbers of variables while holding others unchanged. Diamond employs the comparative technique.

The book is divided into four parts.

Part 1 consists of a single chapter that examines present-day Montana.

Part 2 examines ancient societies that failed and a few that succeeded. They include:

· Easter Island – ecological and population collapses caused by isolation and inward directed competition.

· Pitcairn and Henderson Islands – collapsed when environmental problems caused collapse of friendly trading partners (islands also had environmental issues)

· Anasazi and Mayan societies – collapsed for a variety of interrelated issues - environmental problems, population increases, climate change.

· Three societies that did not fail – Tikopia, New Guinea highlands, and Japan.

Part Three examines four modern societies - Rwanda, Dominican Republic/Haiti, China, and Australia.

Part Four sums up lessons and examines reasons. He lists four reasons why societies fail to solve problems…

1. Failure to anticipate problems

2. Failure to perceive problem once it arrives

3. Failure to attempt a solution

4. Failure of solution

In this part he also notes 12 aspects of environmental problem, examines the roles of big business and globalization.

C20 of The Great Disruption - Guess Who's in Charge

(Obviously we are in charge.)

This is the final chapter in the book.

It starts with a story.

Gilding imagines he is sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam in 1938 with his friend Pieter. Across the canal is the Frank house where Anne is now nine years old. Pieter, echoing the opinion of other smart people of the time, says that he believes in a few years Germany will violate Holland's neutrality, occupy most of Europe, kill maybe six million Jews (including the little Frank girl across the way) in a war that will eventually claim fifty million civilian and military lives. He further speculates that the US will not get in the conflict until the last moment - when the issue is very much in doubt.

Although Pieter feels the danger is obvious he doesn't see the possibility of any action taken anytime soon - even in Europe which will be affected first. The political leadership is not there; neither are the people.

As the now depressed 1938 Gilding cycles home, he wonders what he should do. That night he discusses the situation with his wife. They agree; it can't be that bad. Surely the leadership would do something. They decide to wait and see what happens.

Modern day Gilding's point is that the leadership is us. Business leaders (many of whom Gilding regards as smart, moral people) are limited. Political leaders (many of whom who are smart and moral; many of whom who are idiots and immoral) are also limited.

It's easy to give up. Gilding quotes this from the poem Common Sense by Paul Williams...

On the edge of the dream
we face our deepest doubts.
Now that it all is almost real
a terrible fear of success takes hold
and we grab desperately, uncontrollably, for failure.
One last chance to get off easy.
Who among us really wants to save the world,
to be born again into two thousand more years
of struggle?
How much sweeter to be the doomed generation,
floating gently on the errors and villainy of others,
towards some glorious apocalypse now…
Hallelujah! It's not my fault --
Bring on the end times!

Gilding's final point is this.

We need to get past stuff. We need to live happy, meaningful lives, not lives dominated by empty consumption.

Further, we need to talk and act - to get involved, even get mad - but as Gilding notes (maybe hard for some of us) not to get crazy. We need to follow the examples of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King.

C14 of the Great Disruption - Elephant in Room

The elephant is growth.

The Great Disruption is just the beginning.

Even after we have...

awakened to the climate crisis
gotten on a war footing
fixed the climate crisis (because we are good at war)
suffered the disruptions caused by shifting to renewable energy sources (necessary to fix the climate crisis)
reaped the economic opportunities created by shifting to renewables
celebrated the cool new technologies invented to implement the shift

...we will still have to deal with material growth.

The climate crisis is only a symptom of the underlying problem. We live on a finite planet with finite resources. We can have spiritual growth, intellectual growth, moral growth - but not unlimited material growth. Physics doesn't work that way.

Gilding acknowledges that...

The transition from material growth will be very painful. Economic growth is the foundation of our market-based system. It is the standard by which we judge our economy and our governments.
For most of the 20th century our market-driven, growth based system did work. A lot of poor people moved into the middle class. A lot of middle class people became rich. (And a lot of poor people stayed poor or got poorer.)
Even today the market based system still seems to be working. But this is a mirage. As our visible wealth increases, our hidden social and environmental costs increase even faster. At the macro level we are losing rather than gaining wealth. Like the overextended homeowners of the 2008 financial crisis we are living in the midst of a giant Ponzi scheme that is about to go bust.

However, even if we could have unlimited growth (which we can't) it would not make people happy. Over a certain level of income (about $15K/year for individuals, $60K/year for families) studies indicate that additional income does not correlate with increased happiness. There is passing satisfaction at the moment money is spent but no lasting pleasure. The new thing becomes the old thing. People do get satisfaction from making more money than their peers but it is not the absolute income that matters only the difference compared to somebody else.

And although some rich people claim that raising the wealth level for rich people also raises the level for poor people - at least allowing them to move into the 15K "happy bracket", research shows that increasing inequity within a society degrades the quality of life for all citizens. Gilding will elaborate on this in a future chapter.

C13 of The Great Disruption - Shifting Sands

Gilding says change is coming and we'd better be prepared and resilient. This is true for individuals and institutions - private and public.

He notes four aspects of change to be especially aware of...

1 - Physical impacts of climate change on security and economy

There will be food shortages, supply shocks, price volatility - regardless of our response. Contributing factors include:

Industrial agriculture. It depends on nitrogen fixation which depends on carbon which is nonrenewable. It can run out.
Integrated, just-in-time food chains. Although efficient - delivering low-cost food across the globe, such systems are also vulnerable. Transportation failures, terrorist attacks, etc. could leave some ends of chain with only four days of food on shelves.
Increased competition for food as countries like China and India become more wealthy.
Less land available for farming.
Competition between crops gown for food and for biofuel and other industrial uses.

Shortages and disruptions will create unrest and instability, especially in poorer countries. (Weathers' note: I think this has already happened - playing a role in Arab Spring. See http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/food-price-threshold/)

2 - Shifts in economic competitiveness

There will be winners and losers as The Great Disruption occurs and countries put their "war plans" in effect. If what Gilding says will happen, happens, the oil producing countries and the oil industry will be losers. So will the coal industry. Generally all those who deliver carbon based energy will suffer. However, those who develop and provide energy from renewable resources (solar, wind, hydro, etc.) will prosper.

Gilding sees the most interesting competition taking place between the US and China. The Great Disruption is closer to happening in China due to the greater environmental damage that has already taken place. Consequently China is closer to implementing it's own war plans. It is hitting the "physical limits of its economic growth model". Gilding quotes Tom Friedman (the Flat Earth guy):

"Yes, China's leaders have decided to grow green - out of necessity because too many of their people can't breathe, can't swim, can't farm and can't drink thanks to pollution from its coal- and oil-based manufacturing growth engine. And, therefore, unless China powers its development with cleaner energy systems, and more knowledge-intensive business without smokestacks, China will die of its own development."

China is seriously pursing a low-carbon economy. So are India, Brazil and South Korea.

Gilding thinks China might win the competition with the US because it is not wedded to a market-based economy. Further, its government, less burdened by the need to observe Western democratic freedoms, might be more efficient. It might respond faster to the problems.

3 - Loss of moral authority

Countries, systems and economic models that win the economic war started by The Great Disruption will have increased moral authority over those who don't. For the latter two thirds of 20th century that war was won by the West - by the US in particular. This might not be true in the 21st century.

4 - Reaction of "victims"

Some small low-lying countries and some entire regions will cease to exist - disappearing under water or sand. Even if the causes of global warming were ended today, the effects have momentum and will continue for decades. Gilding sees reparations being sought by individuals, groups, regions, countries. Some redress will be pursued in courts of law. Some in the streets.

C12 of The Great Disruption - Creative Destruction on Steroids

In this chapter Gilding attempts to answer those who ask, "How will all this happen? There is so much cheap coal in the ground, so much natural gas - even petroleum - how could people simply give that up?"

His answer is that he doesn't know exactly how it will happen. But he is certain that it will happen because it must. There will come a time in the not-to-distant future when it will become obvious that we cannot continue down this same road - that something must be done to stop the slide past a one or two degree C rise in temperature over pre-industrial levels.

Confession - Reading my own views between Gilding's lines I thought he meant that there would be an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor that would force people into action the way the real Pearl Harbor forced people into action at the start of WWII. This event - I reasoned - would almost but not quite push humanity over the brink. I was wrong. What Gilding seems to be saying is that government (or at least The Market) will take action simply because it must, because the science will become so obvious. Businesses that takes action will prosper; those that don't will fail.

Gilding says, "... it is clear government has to act, so they will. That action must result in dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions, and the science says that must result in the decline of coal and oil, followed soon after by gas. There are no realistic scenarios where this can be achieved if we wait past 2015-2020, unless we decide to go past two degrees (centigrade) of warming. Given that all the world's major governments have agreed not to, the logic of the economic risk flows pretty easily."

One can only hope that this circular chain of cause and effect actually transpires.

Gilding himself seems unsure because he says the future will characterized by by "dramatic and discontinuous change" (implying non-linear events - Black Swans) - whether we go over the edge or just get close. The difference seems to be the kind of planning we can do. If we go over the edge and "the economy collapses under the weight of climate and sustainability impacts" no planning will be possible - the level of chaos will be too great.

However, given that the latter scenario means things will pretty much go to hell anyway, Gilding doesn't dwell on it. Instead, assuming that government and/or business will pull us back from the brink, he talks about what will happen to various industries, especially coal and oil.

It is a near certainty he says that in a new economy dedicated to limiting global temperature rise to 1 (or even 2) degrees C above pre-industrial age level, coal and oil will be out. According to the German government funded Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in 2024 we will have dumped all the CO2 in the air we can. Any more CO2 will increase the risk of going over the edge of climate disaster to greater 20% - one in five.

So, assuming governments and business act, such a catastrophe will not be allowed to happen, which means that fossil fuels can longer be burned after a few more years. (He discusses carbon-capture and storage - CCS - as a way to continue to use coal. Although he sees no reason not to investigate this technology he doesn't think it will prove economically competitive compared to renewable energy sources.)

It is less certain what fuel or technology will replace fossil fuel. Gilding doesn't think it will be nuclear because of problems with waste, terrorism and supply limits. He thinks it will be some combination of various renewable energy sources - hydro, solar, wind, geothermal. Right now, except for hydro, none of these technologies is much beyond the prototype stage. He believes that the economics of one or a combination of these approaches will be proven.

However, in the end, he points out, it is not about economics. Things will change. We will either go off an ecological/economic cliff - in which case, the change will happen to us. Or we will become the active agents of change.

C11 of The Great Disruption - Austrian Economist

Point One - If you believe that The Great Disruption will really happen and that a "one-degree war plan" is necessary then you should do something - should get started with the war.

Point Two - According to the Austrian economist Joesph Schumpeter, markets are engines of creative destruction - "a process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."

Although Gilding compares The Market (my emphasis) to a rain forest he doesn't extend the metaphor to explicitly say that markets are instruments of economic natural selection. Therefore, making the analogy for him - companies, like living organisms, change in response to changes in the environments in which they function.

However...

In natural systems changes are due to random DNA mutations - which either provide advantage or disadvantage in constantly changing environments. If an advantage is forthcoming the organism survives to pass on its DNA; otherwise the organism fails and becomes an evolutionary dead end.

In economic systems changes are made more-or-less consciously by business people in response to changes in The Market - the business environment. When changes work, the business makes money - it prospers. When changes don't work, the business loses money - it fails.

Point Three - Given Point Two, the way to change business and fight the one-degree war is to change the environment in which business operates. Change The Market and at least some businesses will implement the changes necessary to make money. Businesses that adapt will prosper, those that don't will fail.

In the case of the one-degree war, the aspect of The Market most subject to change and control is the regulatory environment. Change that in ways that favor the war and business will follow; it has no choice - like any organism, living or otherwise, business has to play by the rules of the environment.

Of course the present national environment of which the business environment is a part is decidedly anti-government, anti-regulation. That will not change until The Great Disruption creates a wake-up Black Swan event.

(What if Rick Perry is President when the Black Swan event happens?)

C10 of The Great Disruption - The One-Degree War

Accepting the belief (the hope?) that a Pearl Harbor level ecological/economic event will cause The Great Awakening (without triggering disastrous climate feed-back loops), the next step is come up with an action plan. What should these newly agreeing parties do?

Gilding and his friend Professor Jorgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth (and recently The Limits toGrowth: The 30 Year Update) propose an action plan for the next 100 years.

The first action - likely undertaken with or without a plan - will be to reduce greenhouse gases. Climate warming will probably be seen as the cause of the Pearl Harbor style ecological/economic event. Given that the definition of this event includes the capacity to rouse the old order to action it therefore follows that the old order will be roused and will act.

Since greenhouse gases are responsible for warming the question arises: how much warming can be allowed? What should be the goal? The current consensus is that two degrees centigrade rise over pre-industrial revolution levels can be allowed - not because it is "safe" but because it is the best we can do politically.

Gilding disagrees. Quoting Winston Churchill, Gilding says we must do "what is necessary" - not just what is politically expedient. A two degree rise is likely to produce great damage and disruption. A one degree cap is safer. Gilding thinks this will be politically feasible given the impact of The Great Awakening (that results from The Great Disruption).

Estimates are that the Great Awakening Event will occur sometime around 2018 (no one knows for sure - it could be next year in 2012 or it could be 2028 - although if the latter, even more damage will have been done). In any case, using a 2018 as an arbitrary starting time, Gilding says that the following actions need to occur in the time frames indicated...

Years 1 -5 (2018 - 2023) Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. Not only will this begin to clean up the atmosphere and start the cooling process it will shock our political and social systems into action. Following are some specific goals recommended for the first five year period:

Cut deforestation and other logging by 50%
Close 1,000 dirty coal power plants
Retrofit 1,000 other coal power plants with carbon capture and storage
Ration electricity and increase gas mileage
Erect a wind turbine or solar plant in every town (if only for psychological boost)
Create huge wind and solar farms in suitable location
Ration use of dirty cars to cut transport emissions by 50%
Strand half of world's aircraft
Capture or burn methane
Move away from climate unfriendly protein
Bind one gigaton of CO2 in soil
Launch a government and community-led "shop less live more" campaign (hard to imagine old order sanctioning this)

Years 5 - 20 (2023 - 2038) Move world to net zero climate emissions. Requires technological and social innovation

Years 20 - 100 (2038 - 2118) Achieve a stable climate and a sustainable economy. Reverse emission; remove CO2 from atmosphere.

Obviously all this seems impossible. Gilding says to look back the changes brought about WWII. (One struck me. Four days after Pearl Harbor the government ordered a halt to the production of private vehicles. )

C9 of The Great Disruption - When the Dam of Denial Breaks

In the last chapter Gilding moved from despair to hope by believing that we have the power to prevent The Great Disruption from becoming The Great Collapse.

He believes that in the near future, an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor will break us out of denial and despair, move us to the Great Awakening.

Note: Re-reading this and other chapters I see that it is I who predict an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor, not Gilding. The response by people and government that he believes must happen will result from a tipping point of awareness - when it becomes obvious (to intelligent people of good will?) that we are heading toward a cliff and something must be done. He thinks that after-the- fact this awareness might be attributed to an economic Pearl Harbor - a single black swan event - but probably not at the time. That will be magic.

The implication is that this black swan event must be bad enough to convince even anti-government conservatives that action is necessary. It will require death, destruction and economic disruption. But it must stop short of triggering ecological feed-back loops that result in total climate collapse.

In other words we will have to be lucky - if you can call a Pearl Harbor style event luck. That is what Gilding requires you to believe.

So, in this spirit of belief...

After the event occurs (maybe it will be a series of lesser events symbolized by one dramatic Pearl Harbor event) the "dam of denial" will break. We will move to a war-time footing.

Action will take place on two fronts. The old economy and systems will react first. Driven by a vested interest in maintaining established ways, yet aware now of the extent of the problem, this part of our society will fight the initial tactical battles. Spending great sums of money, expanding the power of government, the old order will attack the problem of greenhouse gas emission, or whatever it was that pushed us to the edge. Such actions might even create a period of financial growth.

Gilding believes that in this war-like atmosphere, almost anything can be accomplished - at least in the short term. However, he thinks that the old order will not willingly give up the idea of continued growth. The old order will accept that continued material consumption cannot go on, but will believe (as it believes now) that material growth itself can continue - maintained by new technologies and efficiencies. The old order will argue (as it argues now) that we are basically a greedy, competitive species and that this style of economy suits us best.

This is where the second front of the war comes in. Knowing, as Gilding knows, that the laws of physics do not allow unlimited material growth in a finite world, some people will coalesce around a new economy and style of living. This new order will fight the strategic long term battles - over a period of 40 or so years. It will move us past consumerism and stuff.

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