REPLY Limits to Growth Plan B (SD6985)

[SDMAIL j-d]

Posted by  j-d <jaideep at optimlator.com>

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:33 AM, SDMAIL Stephen Wehrenberg
>  Has anyone modeled Lester Brown's solutions to the LTG problem?  I

My Ph. D. work almost 15 years ago (1993-1996 - three hard years)
started out with recognizing the problems Lester Brown and WorldWatch
Institute had been talking about for years. I won't go into details
here - one may search out system dynamics mailing list archives for
references to the Ph. D. work or email me directly and I can send the
reference to you.

First of all, the problems Lester Brown (LB) describes are quite
complex and one can only look at subsets of these problems. I did not
look at taxes, climate change, wars, and many other problems; but
looked at how North and South blocks of countries may evolve over time
assuming what Lester Brown et al say turns out to be true (for
example, more resource use by the South creating resource pressures on
the North, and the effects on the whole world). I modeled North and
South blocks using structures similar to LTG and also looked at
possible conflict situations between the North and the South (the
scenario that is playing out now and will be so in the future).
Conflict situations were modeled as dynamic games where players may
cooperate, dominate (Stackleberg) or be indifferent (Nash).

My conclusions in short were:

1. There is a serious data and understanding problem in these issues.
For example, most of the relationships (underlying state equations) in
LTG (hence my models) will not pass econometric tests of validity. So
exact relationships (how does a mathematical function look like) and
parameters (statistical confidence) are ill-understood. That doesn't
mean we cannot and should not model these problems - Barry Richmond
and Jay Forrester have given solid arguments as to why - our minds
handle only limited relations at one time - computers allow us to see
the logical conclusions of many of our working assumptions put
together, sort of looking at things with a big mind. Bad news is that
with larger models, problems multiply when data and structure is not
very good. So my initial idea was - more data, better data, better
econometric analyses on top of which system dynamics models may be
built. The standard SD community response was - data is not important,
insights from models are important, so much so that people would ask
for insights where there were none, or ask for relationships to be in
the model where econometrically there was no need for them. Having
built the models and worked closely with the equations in the book
Dynamics Of Growth in A Finite World, I realized the weaknesses in the
model and felt strongly that for policy purposes none of these
conclusions would be useful. To improve the limited insights from the
model, and to make them useful for policy applications, more research
was needed.

The above is also the standard argument used by policy makers against
dealing with global warming and other issues - we need more data and
research!

2. On the other hand - political and financial considerations mostly
drive the policies that are undertaken. In my view, the problem is not
necessarily lack of data and insights, but the will to do something.
Starting with LTG, and following up now to Lester Brown and company,
and Jim Hanson in Climate Change, etc. the problem is not lack of
insights but the desire to do something, even implementing cost-less
energy efficiency measures (kind of stuff Rocky Mountain Institute has
been talking about forever). In my view, the insights were there
(resources are limited, the party cannot go forever, greenhouse effect
is real etc.), but the political desire is not there, many times
because of because of corporate financial interests.

The above problem is like the problem of war - do we need more models
and more insights to tell us war is generally a bad idea. No, but
still wars happen because of political and financial interests. I
don't think we need more academic modeling and research for these
problems, but more buy-in (consultants of SD recognize this word well)
from the concerned people.

3. If the buy-in from top-level politicians and corporate CEOs is not
there, the other solution to problems of resources/global warming etc.
is for concerned people to make small changes in their own backyard.
This has limited application because of Prisoners Dilemma problem - am
I a sucker to pollute less when you are polluting anyway for both of
us? With his kind of mentality, one can see a positive feedback loop
(vicious cycle) driving things to the bottom. Unfortunately that is
what seems to be happening right now. I don't think modeling is a
solution to Lester Brown's problems.

Jaideep

Jaideep Mukherjee, Ph. D.
Posted by  j-d <jaideep at optimlator.com>
posting date  Thu, 1 May 2008 16:34:59 -0500