REPLY Limits to Growth Plan B (SD7065)

[SDMAIL Jack Harich]

Posted by  Jack Harich <register at thwink.org>


SDMAIL Mike Fletcher wrote:
> If we look for the root problem of how population, technology and
> capital interact, 

Hi Mike,

Very thoughtful post. Thanks.

What methodology are you using to find the root causes? Your post is 
very interesting, but it seems to be intuitively grasping for the 
necessary insights by meandering around in a plausible fashion.

For example, at the beginning of Collapse, Diamond states he will be 
using the comparative method of analysis. This looks for correlations 
between inputs and outputs. Diamond compared population groups that 
collapsed to those that did not.

> perhaps anthropologists might be able to help. That
> is not my field, 

No problem. Even if it's not your field, if you have a method of problem 
solving that guides you to the nuggets, then you don't have to be an 
expert in a field. This is especially true if you are studying the 
system (ie the real world) instead of anchoring your study on the 
literature of a field.

Besides, what happens if you have a multi-disciplinary problem? How may 
people are experts in three or more fields? To solve the environmental 
sustainability problem seems to entail economics, politics, ecology, 
countless aspects of the social sciences, system dynamics and other 
analytical tools. I doubt that anyone is an expert in all these fields. 
I'm not even an expert in one of them. :-)

Take heart. It's been said that the big breakthroughs come from the 
young or those new to a field. Thus there are factors that are much more 
important than field expertise.

> however, to my knowledge, most anthropologists don't
> concern themselves too much with estimating when loop dominance
> shifts. It's probably that some of this has been studied
> statistically, but I'm not aware of any System Dynamics perspectives
> on these type questions. But then again what I don't know far exceeds
> what I do know, so I could well be wrong there (as well as elsewhere
> for that matter.)
>
> We do know that have been periods of relative population equilibrium,
> but there were also periods before industrialization when population
> growth was relatively rapid for short periods.  We also know that
> there are several cultures today where population growth is flat or
> even negative. The good news is that anything that exists is possible.
> The bad news is that the signals in cultures which naturally stabilize
> and control population growth do exist, but the signals may be weak,
> inconsistent or delayed - the point of being 180 degrees out of phase
> at times.
>
> If we look for the place in human history where the loop dominance
> shifted towards population growth, Jared Diamond, generally a pretty
> insightful gentleman, suggested  (if I interpreting him correctly),
> that the tipping point was simply the development of organized
> agriculture.   This conjecture is not particularly radical; however,
> if true, the implications for long term stability of human populations
> might be somewhat ominous. In short - human populations might be
> inherently unstable - or at least have strong tendencies to move into
> regimes of behavior which are not stable when "natural" decision rules
> are allowed to run the show.
>   

There's a lot of good reasoning here, but let's think at about it from 
an efficiency of analysis viewpoint. When one is in the stage of 
searching for root causes, it helps to define what a root cause is, so 
you will know when you have found them. That's why I was so careful to 
define root cause on this page: 
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/RootCauseAnalysis.htm

 From this definition one can see that the invention of agriculture 
10,000 years ago is not a root cause, because it cannot be resolved. One 
cannot "uninvent" anything so pervasive or introduce a new force that 
negates it entirely. Such elements of the human system can be considered 
just as unchangeable as the forces of physics. However, their inputs and 
outputs (effects) are subject to change.

But then again, thinking in these directions is productive, because 
clues may turn up nearby. The big clue I see when thinking of the 
invention of agriculture, writing, gunpowder, the printing press, etc is 
that these triggered phase changes in the human system. What is the 
structure of that system that allows that to happen repeatedly? That 
line of inquiry may lead to useful insights.

A word about the Collapse study. The comparative analysis method is, 
unfortunately, a black box method, unlike the glass box method of 
approaches like system dynamics. I mention this on page 8 of "Learning 
from Past Societies: The sustainability lessons are there, if only we 
can find them" at 
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/008/LearningFromPastSocieties.htm. 
More importantly, the Collapse study has low process maturity for the 
type of problem it tackles, as discussed on page 4.

What this informal paper does is devise a model of process maturity and 
then use it to rate Collapse and a similar study. 11 process elements 
are rated, weighted, and summed. Collapse scores 3,481 out of 10,000 
which is medium process maturity for problems of this type. This is too 
low to reliably solve problems like the goal of Collapse, which was to 
find out “What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to 
collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fate?” It answered 
the first part of this question well but not the second, and thus 
achieved only medium success.

> It is not too much of a stretch to state that organized agriculture,
> for the first time, allowed for sufficient accumulation of capital,
> population density and food production capacity to allow for the long
> term dominance reinforcing loops in population. Unlike humans, most
> species exist in relative long-term equilibrium. Successful species
> populations, as others have commented on, tend to have modes of
> dampened oscillation.  Human populations, to date at least, have not
> shown any sign of smooth population transition of any kind. Perhaps
> that is because of the big Archimedes Lever of technology - which allows
> for, among other things, the manipulation and use of energy beyond
> that which we naturally possess. We have it - other species do not.
> There are those who still believe the human population will transition
> to equilibrium in a smooth S-Curve, but that position seems difficult
> to support with the signs of overshoot now becoming painfully obvious.
>   

A nice clue. But where does it fit into your method of analysis or your 
growing model of analysis results?

> Oscillation has been observed in human populations, but I'm not sure
> if anyone has defined that in our terms. We can, for now at least,
> rule out dampened oscillation as the underlying mode.  Again, I'm not
> aware of everything that has been done in this area, but if we look at
> the balancing loops right now, they appear to be very weak until the
> limits are very close - that could imply some kind of limit cycle
> perhaps? Even a regime of exploding oscillation is not inconceivable
> in conditions where technology loop stays strong even after a
> population crash - assuming that the policies that manage population
> do not change appreciably.
>
> Additionally, we simply have the fact that human decision making has a
> rather poor grasp of the implications of accumulations. Generally
> human decision rules in population management are largely rather naive
> reactions which manage the short-term adjustment of the inflow
> (births).  This is typical intuitive human short term decision making
> of course.  We know that people have difficulty conceptualizing the
> long-term impact of the accumulation, or effectively consider how
> inflows and outflows interact.  Simply put, it was these informal
> population control heuristics which placed us in our present position,
> so relying on these weak signals (even if we artificially strengthen
> them) to manage population is probably not a good strategy.
>   
Yes. Sounds a little like diagnosis by exclusion.... :-)

Beautiful thoughts here and throughout this post. It has been a pleasure 
to read it several times.

> Humans are a interesting species, sometimes quite brilliant, but not
> nearly as brilliant as we would like to think. We can combine
> unbounded technology use with decision heuristics which are totally
> dominated by local short-term optimization within an often
> deliberately limited information space. That is a very dangerous
> combination of characteristics. Essentially, we are blind in one eye.
> We lack the "depth perception" to plan effectively in the time horizons
> required to reach an equilibrium with the earth - in fact we are still
> struggling to even conceptualize what such an equilibrium could look
> like. But we must do so. We have developed some tools to address this
> issue and I would count SD among them.
>
> The accumulation of population itself present the most urgent dilemma.
>   

Hmmmm, why is this so? One of the points the World2 and 3 models made 
was that there is no one policy solution, at least at the level those 
models modeled. Solve one aspect of the problem, like population, and 
another driver runs society over the same cliff.

Scenario 9 of World3-03 required 12 parameter changes to achieve a 
somewhat sustainable mode. No one policy change appeared to be overly 
dominant.

> The paradox is that the only lever that we have is the inflows, and as
> shown in LTG and elsewhere, even relatively radical policy changes to
> address the inflow do not influence the stock sufficiently within time
> frames that appreciably change outcomes.
>
> The immense inertia of the stocks make that task appear nearly
> impossible on the surface. Unfortunately, the dire alternatives mean
> we cannot abandon that task simply because we believe it to be nearly
> impossible. After that herculean task is solved we might have the time
> to devise policies to maintain equilibrium, but before we do that we
> have to put our hand on the flywheel.
>   
Yes. Due to system momentum, some of the catastrophic effects of 
overshoot are now unavoidable.
> Unfortunately, we need to go beyond even that level of thinking to
> what I would call the "Real Plan B."  If we look at the huge stock
> accumulations, and the time-constants involved (and the current slow
> rate of policy implementation) we should admit realistically that
> overshoot and collapse is not just likely - it is the most probable
> scenario at this point. Let me say that again, it is the most probable
> scenario at this point.
>   

Millions of people have come to this conclusion, some decades ago. Their 
conclusions and attempts to spread their insights has made little 
difference. So far. I wonder why?
> To put it crudely, rationally, we have to consider not sustainability,
> but survivability. To do otherwise is simple psychological denial. We
> have to consider that our well intentioned efforts to design "soft
> landing" policies, while not abandoned - have a low probability of
> success. They could be efforts that amount to rearranging the deck
> chairs on the Titanic. Rationally, we must provide for plans that
> start building sea-worthy life boats. The modes that result from
> overshoot are pretty well understood. Since the exact future is not
> known, rationally we must must make plans for all eventualities. We
> must even go so far as to understand the scenarios involving
> extinction and near extinction - so that these possibilities can be
> avoided.  The stakes are too high to do otherwise.
>   

Your post started with a look at the system and leverage areas, and has 
now drifted into a call to arms. I've seen this pattern before. I was 
alarmed when I spotted it in my own work, and immediately stopped 
everything to find out why. The answer was I has slipped into the 
standard mode of what can be called Classic Activism. This is discussed 
in the paper mentioned above. Briefly, Classic Activism is unproductive 
except on easy problems.

So I can't help but wonder, once you see yourself in the mirror and can 
see what meta process you are following, what you will do.

I see what follows is mostly step 3 of Classic Activism.
> More optimistically I would recommend the  "The Real Plan B." That is,
> start designing AND BUILDING, small robust, self-sustaining
> low-energy, high-tech regional communities which can sustain
> themselves in a world which is 3 degrees hotter than today and with
> enough "slack" engineered in to stay clear of their environments'
> carrying capacity, and sufficient culturally supported long-term
> planning to make it happen.
>
> Real change happens by doing things differently - not talking or
> writing about it. Instantiating such communities and showing they work
> might mean that the idea starts to catch on.
>
> We return again to changing ways of thinking.  If it can clearly be
> shown that people can live very differently than today, perhaps with
> different fundamental social goals and still enjoy a quality of life
> equal or better to today, it could provide a workable model. Again,
> once it exists, it becomes possible.
>
> Clearly some different mode, much different  than today, will emerge
> in any case, but if it is allowed to develop "naturally" it is very
> like to be a highly undesirable one. The good news is that there is
> still time - perhaps 20-40 years to design and build the future  -
> plenty of time for a world which is just about out of time.
>   

A good way to end. We probably do have about this amount of time 
(actually I think it's about half this) before the human system becomes 
weakened, distracted, and demoralized to solve the environmental 
sustainability problem.

Some have called this new mode the Age of Transition to Sustainability.

Thanks for such bold, sweeping thoughts.

Jack
Posted by  Jack Harich <register at thwink.org>
posting date  Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:13:50 -0400