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Orrery Software 1 NTF Layered Society

Layered structure of a sustainable modern-but-just society

NOTE TO FILE:

Garvin H Boyle

Dated: 140202

Revised: 140729

Contents Layered structure of a sustainable modern-but-just society ............................................................................................................................................... 1

References: ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Purpose ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 2

Description of Slides ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Slide #1 – Title slide ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Slide #2 – Defining the Arena of Interest ................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Slide #3 – A Pre-Modern Simple Society at Carrying Capacity ................................................................................................................................ 8

Slide #4 – Our Modern Unsustainable Society in the First Half of the Age of Oil .................................................................................................. 11

Slide #5 – A Sustainable Modern Society in the Post-Oil Age ................................................................................................................................ 14

Slide #6 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the “Post-Oil Age” ............................................................................................................... 17

Slide #7 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the "Post-Oil Age" ............................................................................................................... 21

After Slide #7 – So Now What? ............................................................................................................................................................................... 21

ANNEX 1 – Some Background Ideas .............................................................................................................................................................................. 23

Entropy As I See It ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 23

Anthroposphere ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 27

Biosphere ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31

Sources and Types of Energy ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 32


The phenomenon of the 20th

Century ........................................................................................................................................................................... 34

Social Justice ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 36

Bringing These Ideas Together ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 37

Mathematical Models? .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 41

References: This note goes with the slides of the same name. In addition, I have drawn on ideas from these sources, at least:

Hubbert curve, and peak oil theories

The book “Peak Everything”

CAS Hall and other Biophysical Economists, EROEI etc.

William Rees, ecological footprint

H T Odum and the Ecological Economists, maximum power principle

Piketty and his graphs, return of the gilded age

V Yakovenko and the econophysicists, social implications of entropy

Boltzmann, Shannon, and my expanded concepts of entropy production

Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter , and their theories of complex societies

John Michael Greer, and his theory of catabolic collapse

UN report describing planetary boundaries

Purpose “What does a sustainable society look like, in consideration of the reality of the ‘planetary boundaries’ and the carrying capacity

of the Earth?”

The purpose of this NTF and the slides it describes is to capture, in picture and in words, my thoughts about this question.

These slides are my attempt to capture and record the background image that I have been developing, implicitly, as I comment

on various materials, answer questions and do research, on those somewhat rare occasions that I can, these days, in support of

the folks at Foundation Earth.


I know these ideas are not 100% correct, but I think they are a better representation of reality than what I have seen elsewhere.

They are a kind of synthesis of all those ideas I have come across and with which I have had some agreement. None of these

ideas are totally my own, but, I suppose, the way I have knit them together is a creation of the machinery at the back of my

unconscious mind, working diligently when I sleep, This summary of the combined ideas is what that machinery has produced.

The annex to this note contains some key ideas that make the slide descriptions make sense. Perhaps it should be read first. It

was written first, and then moved to the annex.

Description of Slides There are a total of seven slides in the associated slide deck. Each is described in more detail below, but here is the quick

version:

1. The title slide for the deck

2. Venn diagram for the biosphere and the anthroposphere

3. Energy band diagram for a pre-carbon sustainable society

4. Energy band diagram for our modern unsustainable society

5. Energy band diagram for a fictional post-carbon sustainable society

6. Modified version of slide 5 to include social justice premium

7. Modified version of slide 6 to include a long-term stability premium


Slide #1 – Title slide It is self-explanatory.


Slide #2 – Defining the Arena of Interest

This slide simply shows a Venn diagram of the biosphere and anthroposphere. Define the biosphere as all living organisms on

Earth. This includes all of humankind, of course. See the supplementary material in the annex.

Define the anthroposphere as all of humankind, plus all of its organizations, all of its machinery, and artifacts. In addition,

include all of those organisms that are used by humankind for any and every purpose. My purpose in defining this is to specify

that part of the Earth’s globe that is of interest is a discussion of sustainability. I realize this is a bit of a fuzzy definition, but it’s

the best I have at the moment.

A similar contained circle could be drawn for each species in the biosphere. For this exercise, my focus is on our own species.

The inward- and outward-pointing arrows around the edge of the anthroposphere represents the dynamic tension between

humankind and the rest of nature in the biosphere. Each species in the biosphere competes against others for a share of the flow

of mass and energy that makes continued life possible.


Slide #3 – A Pre-Modern Simple Society at Carrying Capacity

This slide is a simple template for the more complex slides that follow. In this and other slides the interpretation of energy

bands is similar.

The height of the green rectangle represents the total energy that flows through the biosphere in, say, a year. The width of the

rectangle has no real meaning. The two-toned green rectangle represents the biosphere, and the dark green portion at the

bottom represents the anthroposphere, which is a subset of the biosphere.

The sloping angle of the line that separates the anthroposphere from the rest of the biosphere is a reminder that the definition of

the boundary of the anthroposphere is fuzzy, and not really clearly defined.

The light green arrows pointing downwards represent the fact that humankind’s competitors, predators, parasites and diseases

would try to usurp the flow of energy that humankind enjoys. The dark green arrows upwards indicate that humankind would

usurp the flow of energy that is currently enjoyed by the rest of the biosphere. All societies, whether simple or complex, exhibit

some ability to increase flows of mass and energy via, e.g., agriculture. They also all exhibit some ability to defeat predators,

parasites and diseases. In a world in which the flow of energy is relatively constant, such as was the case in a pre-carbon

society, this tension is real, as any movement of this line upwards or downwards represents a change in the relative size of the

anthroposphere.

The red arrows represent the planetary boundaries. The portion of the biosphere which shows above these boundary markers

represents that portion that is needed to support the rest of the biosphere by the absorption of wastes such as CO2 and the

production of life necessities such as O2. I realize that the dynamics around planetary boundaries are a lot more complex than

this. But a simple point can be made with a simple diagram. My simple point is that the anthroposphere cannot function if too

much of the rest of the biosphere is destroyed.

I think there is a difference between carrying capacity as determined for one species (say wild pigs) in one locale (say a

mountain valley). While it is possible for pigs to destroy their local ecosystem and cause the extirpation of many species

therein (by eating all young trees, all grass roots, all roots of any kind, before they die of starvation, it is not very likely. In

general, one species cannot cause an ecosystem to be pushed past a tipping point, causing a change of phase of the system.

Predators, parasites, and lack of access to the means of life in timely fashion will halt the rise of the population of pigs before


destruction happens. When considering introduced species, however, for which predators and parasites are not locally present,

and for which there is a massive endowment of the necessities of life that local species do not exploit, it is possible to push the

system past such tipping points. We say such an introduced species is in a state of ecological escape. The extirpation of local

species by introduced species is a common example of this. When we are considering the carrying capacity of the Earth with

respect to people, we have to view it in the same way as we do the introduction of a species in a state of ecological escape. We,

humanity, are in a state of ecological escape. The “balance of nature” has been disturbed and is in flux. It is not clear who will

survive, and who will be extirpated, or, in a global frame, extincted. (Is that a word?)

The purpose of this slide is to show that, in a simple society, the bulk of energy that is under the control of the society and flows

through the society is spent on providing the simple necessities of life. Those are, food, shelter, and other necessities such as

simple tools, clothing, or toys, that are here represented by the word ‘clothes’.

It is the evolutionary imperative of all life, including human life, to produce more offspring than have a reasonable chance of

survival. You may look around and doubt this, but think of the fact we have overshot the capacity of the Earth to support

humans, and still we produce children. Hundreds of millions are malnourished world-wide, and still we produce children. In

other words, it is the evolutionary imperative of every species to press upwards towards each its own carrying capacity, and to

consume not just its fair share of mass and energy that flows through the biosphere, but more than its fair share. In the pre-

carbon era, human populations were at the carrying capacity available to them with their technology. But, here is the real point.

In order to expand our population, we had to divert a share of the flow of mass and energy that belonged to the wild places of

the Earth, and make it our own. It was a zero sum game. When we took more, they got less. So, this evolutionary imperative,

in the hands of man, kept us at carrying capacity, and expanded that capacity by usurping a share of the mass and energy flows

that was external to our own business.


Slide #4 – Our Modern Unsustainable Society in the First Half of the Age of Oil

While this slide looks somewhat similar to slide 3, the dynamics behind it are dramatically different. Our need for an expanding

share of energy flows was dramatically and exuberantly met with fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) as well as smaller amounts of

wind, solar, nuclear and hydro-electric energy. We are no longer chiefly dependent on our muscles, or those of our beasts of

burden, to get things done, but rather, machinery of all kinds does it for us. With this machinery we have built massive globe

encircling infrastructures and systems. Also, with this machinery we have been able to vastly expand the amount of energy that

can be put into primary needs such as food, shelter and clothes, again building global systems to meet these needs, so our

population has mushroomed. BUT, with more people we also need a greater share of the flow of mass through the biosphere,

and so we have converted much of the wild lands to agricultural or urban lands. The result is, in spite of our abnormal access to

energy, we have encroached dramatically on the wild places of the Earth. What is not shown in this diagram is the way that our

waste stream has increased so that, the wild places that remain are very very sick – many of them sick to death. The oceans

have dead zones. Many major rivers run dry before they reach the ocean. Glaciers are disappearing. Species are being

extirpated and made extinct at an alarming rate.

I have added one layer, in silver, that did not appear in slide 3. To the right there are two text boxes associated with this layer.

The bottom box names some social systems that are directly needed to make our modern global economies operate. These are

the things that economists worry about. Above those, I add the things that are of less interest to economists and of more interest

to sociologists.

These systems of our modern complex society are very sophisticated and very expensive to build and maintain, in terms of a

share of the flow of mass and energy through the anthroposphere. Much of that energy currently comes from our large

endowment of fossil fuels. But, we must look to the near future when that flow of energy will falter as it becomes clear that it is

too expensive. In fact, it would seem that it started to falter and fail about 1970-1980. However, all of the mass, in the form of

food and water, construction materials and operational equipment and supplies, comes from the former wild places of the Earth.

I call these premiums, because the cost of maintaining these social systems is in some sense in addition to the cost of

subsistence living. But, I am slightly uneasy with this characterization. Without these modern business and social systems, our

global systems for production and delivery of the basic needs (food, shelter and clothes) would be impossible on the scale

required. So, these extra costs are a premium payment that is no longer optional, but is now necessary for continued survival of

the modern way of life.


In this first half of the age of oil, we have raised the roof on carrying capacity, and that has enabled us to build very impressive

and very expensive business and social support systems (i.e. expensive in terms of mass and energy consumption). It is no

longer based on a division of a fixed flow of energy among trophic levels of the biosphere. We have our own free flows of

energy that have enabled the creation of all the wonders of the modern world that exceed the wonders of, say, the days of Queen

Elizabeth I in 1600, in the pre-carbon era.

The planetary boundaries are placed at the point on the left-hand scale at 1.0 Earths. This is William Rees’ ecological footprint

scale. In our state of ecological escape, we have, almost magically, but certainly only temporarily, pushed past several

ecological boundaries of the Earth. Biodiversity is in free fall. The ability of the biosphere to push back against the expanding

anthroposphere is gone, as forests and glaciers disappear. The business and social systems that are needed to maintain such a

massive anthroposphere are also consuming what remains of the wild biosphere without pushback as mining, forestry and

fishing interests make inroads into the most remote places in the world.

Again, I am trying to capture a very complex dynamic with a static picture. The picture seems inadequate, but it is already

pretty busy.


Slide #5 – A Sustainable Modern Society in the Post-Oil Age

General This is the first of three slides in which I try to build up a picture of a socially just and dynamically stable and sustainable

modern economy. This is the base slide, in which I represent sustainability. Then the next two slides add what I consider

necessary levels of assigned and protected bands of energy flow to achieve the utopian goal of social justice, and the dynamic

goal of long-term stability.

It may be merely wishful thinking to believe that such a thing as a sustainable modern society is possible. Certainly, it will be

much different from our present unsustainable ‘modern’ society, as depicted in slide 4. I will describe it from the top down.

Wild Places The wild places must be preserved and protected. The light green area above the planetary boundaries represents the necessary

portion of energy flow allowed for untamed biosphere. Moral and legal proscriptions against encroachment must be strong,

with severe penalties. So, the number one characteristic of a sustainable modern society is extremely strong protection of wild

places, and the biodiversity they support. Why? Because, without these, we go extinct.

In order to achieve this, the current size of the anthroposphere must first be shrunk in size. We MUST have a smaller human

population. And the wild places must increase in size to a sustainable level. They cannot be held static at their present-day

levels, because they are currently dying for lack of protection, and that trend must be reversed. This slide assumes that the

necessary allocation for the wild places has been determined and achieved.

The slanted line between the silver area and the light green area indicates that we may not know at this point exactly where the

line should be drawn to achieve sustainability. That lack of vertical arrows along this line represents my conviction that, once

determined and achieved, this line must NOT be allowed to be encroached upon. Scientific studies must be undertaken to

establish the size of required wild places, and the means to defend them. The concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ is the first step

in this direction.

Anthroposphere Commercial and Social Systems Below that, the silver area represents the flow of energy needed to maintain our global commercial and social systems. The

human systems are no longer gobbling up the share of the flow of energy that belongs to the wild places. But, in this diagram,

we are still at carrying capacity, pushing dangerously against the planetary boundaries. If our population continues to grow, we


are not allowed to push up into the green area above, so we must convert some of the energy flows currently assigned to

maintenance of our business and social systems (e.g. maintenance of infrastructure, operation of education and health systems)

and turn it to food production. This means, maybe, taking people out of the cities and putting them back on the farms, tearing

up roads and planting seeds there, that sort of thing?

The vertical arrows along the edge between the silver area and the dark green area represent this dynamic tension that must be

maintained between population size and the commercial and social systems required to service them in a modern society. The

energy diverted to health and education systems, for example, must be limited and scaled down to what is affordable. This

implies some very serious rethinking of the rights of access to health and education.

The dark green area at the bottom of the slide, again, represents the band of energy needed to provide our basic needs of food,

shelter and clothes. Again, these needs are met by global systems that are massive in scale, and are necessarily supported by the

commercial and social systems identified in the silver band above. This is an intrinsic part of our modern society. The angle of

the line dividing this dark green area from the silver area is slanted to indicate that it is difficult to determine exactly where this

line is. Perhaps that is not important, but it may be. For example, when determining how many people the planet can support,

the green band might be considered the ‘profit centre’ of a modern sustainable economy, while the silver band may be

considered a ‘cost centre’. However, when considering the cultural and physical benefits of living in a technically sophisticated

society, the classification of cost vs benefit would change.

Major Deficit There is a significant problem with this scenario, if we think this is a definition of a utopian society. When left unregulated, the

global systems of the modern era are ‘entropy-driven’, in the sense described in the annex to this note. This means they will

eventually self-organize to exhibit distributions of wealth, land, energy consumption and political power in which a small elite

population control most of it, and the bulk of humankind will have insufficient access to it. While such a global economy might

be eminently ‘sustainable’, in the sense that follow-on generations would theoretically have equivalent access to the Earth’s

endowments as the present generation, access to those endowments would be extremely uneven within a generation. For most

people, they will be disenfranchised, and life will be brief and difficult. This is a socially unstable circumstance.


Slide #6 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the “Post-Oil Age” This is almost the same as slide 5 but with an additional energy band added, called the ‘Social Justice Premium’.

I have made a few adjustments to slide 5 as follows:

The height of the dark green energy band associated with basic needs has been reduced. This is meant to imply that a

smaller global population can be supported, and it therefore consumes less energy.

The height of the silver energy band associated with modern commercial and social systems has been reduced. This is meant

to imply that a smaller population needs fewer services, so less energy needs to be allocated to maintenance of such systems.

It also signifies, however, that we must monitor the efficiency of such systems and ensure that they remain less than fully

efficient, due to the unavoidable trade-off between efficiency and social justice, and so some level of inefficiency in energy

used per service delivered must be a goal.

I have added an energy band (purple) called the ‘social justice premium’ which is allocated the portion of the energy flow

that is no longer allocated to basic needs or social and commercial systems.

The slanting line between the social justice premium band and the global life support systems band is meant to imply that we

still do not know exactly how much we need to allocate to global life support systems, and we need to do research to figure this

out. The vertical arrows between the social justice premium band and the social and business (silver) band indicate that there

will be a dynamic tension here is a sustainable society.

The height of the band for social justice premium is equal to the lost height in the other two bands of the anthroposphere. Social

justice has an energy cost, because social justice requires extra expenditure of energy in the faith systems, justice systems, and

governance systems, as well as less efficiency in the commercial systems. Since the total energy available does not change, just

because we want to live in a just society, the sizes of those pre-existing bands must adjust to pay the social justice premium.

As pointed out under the discussion for slide 5, entropy-driven processes produce undesirable distributions of wealth, land,

political power, and access to energy. The only remedy to this would be a systematic generation-by-generation redistribution of

those things that are concentrated in the hands of the elite by all identifiable entropy-driven processes. Such redistribution

would be managed by the elite, and for this to happen at least two significant adjustments need to be made:

The ‘free markets’ that have been largely unregulated to this point in the history of the world would need to be carefully

regulated in such a way as to slow the concentrating effects of those entropy-driven processes. Since maximum entropy


production is correlated with maximum efficiency in a market, this means the market must be regulated to be somewhat

inefficient.

The ‘faith system’ that dominates the behaviour of the elite would, of necessity, need to include morals about sharing and

redistribution of wealth and power for the sake of humanity and for the sake of life on the planet. I think such altruistic

moral guidance has been part of many indigenous cultures of the past and present. In addition, the ‘faith system’ that

dominates the behaviour of the less elite would, of necessity, need to include acceptance of reduced rights, such as

reproductive rights and ownership rights.

Such ideas are anathema to modern-day industrialists as well as to modern-day libertarians. I would consider both of these

groups to be adherents to extremist secular faith systems. Our modern faith systems, whether religious or secular, seem to be

strongly oriented towards our own ultimate destruction. This is, perhaps, not surprising, as they assumed their present form and

orientation during the very unusual period of immense flows of free energy (i.e. free profits) of the 20th

century. The implicit

assumption that such conditions of life are normal has lead to the development of unsustainable belief systems.

What are the implications of this?

Faith systems are the most serious problem, especially the secular faith systems. Followers of religious faith systems, for the

most part, try to do altruistic good. It is not so with secular faith systems, which currently put a premium on personal or

corporate or national aggrandizement. Sustainability looks like a secular problem that a body like the UN can just vote away,

with the support of most governments. This is not the case. We cannot just simply scale down our global society and economy

by a factor of 1/1.6 and then carry on with business as usual. We must radically change our ways. But how? Much of what is

covered in this, my vision of a sustainable society, requires a deeper level of scientific knowledge of how social and economic

systems work. Far too much economic theory is just quasi-religious pseudo-scientific talk that wears the robes of science

(taught at major universities, dressed up in mathematical equations). Its practitioners have about the same chance of giving

good advice as back-woods witch-doctors. And yet, all the leaders of the world go to them for advice. Economists do far more

damage in the world now, and cause more misery and death, than the most evil-minded witch-doctors ever did or could. Social

systems experts do not even have that much credibility. Maybe that's a good thing. We must turn our scientific research onto

solving the riddles of social dynamics and economic dynamics.

Problem


I am troubled with one more issue. This diagram, in its simplicity, hides a lot of dynamic inter-dependencies that we do not

really understand. Even supposing that we can control the size of our population, establish an altruistic secular faith that

includes defence of the biosphere and social justice, find ways to control the immensely powerful entropy-driven processes, and

learn to live in such a sustainable society - even supposing all of that - what if we have it wrong somewhere? What if we

accidentally expand our activities in the anthroposphere across some as-yet-unidentified planetary boundary, past a tipping

point, and it all falls apart. What if there is some subtle entropy-driven process with positive feedback (a bad thing in dynamic

systems) that we fail to control pushing us over a known boundary. Civil unrest, natural calamity, failure of moral constraints -

any of these could push us over one of many such planetary boundaries, and we lose it all. This kind of brinkmanship is

irresponsible.


Slide #7 – A Sustainable and Just Modern Society in the "Post-Oil Age" This slide is just like slide 5 but with one additional energy band. To resolve the problem of lack of understanding of the

immensely complex dynamics of a fully functioning biosphere containing a modern but sustainable anthroposphere, and

faulting on the side of caution, I have added an energy band called ‘no brinkmanship premium’.

This gives the life support systems of the world some chance of survival if we fail to understand the dynamic systems with

which we are tinkering. To make room for this safety band, this ‘margin for error’ as it is called in the descriptive box to the

right, each of the other energy bands in the anthroposphere must be shrunk.

After Slide #7 – So Now What? So, now that I have a picture of the vision of a sustainable global economy, what do I think of it?

The 4-5 Gap, and Catabolic Collapse There is a gap between slide 4, the modern situation, and the vision of slides 5 through 7. Slide 4 is patently unsustainable.

Slide 5 represents a sustainable population of people, with a sustainable society, similar to that seen in slide 3. How do we get

from 4 to 5, and then to 6 and 7? Each step along the way involves reduction of our population size, and reduction of the

systems and infrastructure of the anthroposphere.

There are only three substantially different outcomes to slide #4, when judged from the point of view of the continuance of

humankind:

The world as we know it comes to an end with a major extinction event that includes humankind;

The world passes one or several tipping points (it may have already done so) and the world as we know it comes to an end

with the total collapse of all social systems, resulting in world-wide famine and disease, leaving a small remnant of humanity

to carry on in a desolated world;

We constrain ourselves, apply ourselves to the problem, and manage a ‘soft landing’ of some kind in which some semblance

of a modern sophisticated science and technology-based society survives, and in which there is social justice, as envisioned

in slides 6 and 7.

John Greer describes a process he calls catalytic collapse, by which the superstructure of a complex society shrinks by stages

and restores, as I see it, a balance between the ‘needs’ and the ‘wants’ of society. At each such stage of collapse, society


becomes a little less complex, and is more sustainable based on the current access to energy and mass. If such a process

continues to total catalytic collapse, then we will end up with a pre-carbon style of society. Think of Europe in the 1600s.

The problem with uncontrolled catalytic collapse, as I see it, is that it could turn into total social anarchy at any one of the steps,

and we would have a return to world-wide dark ages. I don’t see that as a cheerful and heart-warming vision of the future. So,

the only kind of scenario I can imagine that I find tolerable, the only vision I can buy into for my descendants, is one involving

controlled catabolic collapse, a la Greer.

How could we do that? Aside from all of the other things that today’s ecologists and scientists are working on and worrying

about:

We would need to tame the evolutionary imperative that demands we produce too many offspring.

We would need to tame the entropy-driven processes that demand that societies (and economies) evolve to become unjust

and unstable.

We would need to align the incentives that guide the actions and decisions of world leaders to align with the establishment of

a sustainable modern society; and

We would need to learn how to trigger and manage the steps in catabolic collapse.

Utopian, or Dystopian? The REALLY BIG problem that now confronts me is this. This vision of the only realistic and acceptable path to future

sustainability sounds very much like a description of all of the dystopian societies imagined by the authors of futuristic fictions.

In all of those visions, freedom of individual thought and action are limited by the needs of society as a whole.

Is it a necessary component of a future modern sustainable society that we also evolve, individually, to be less creative and

more ant-like in our demeanor? Must our society become more hive-like? Must our civil governance become more repressive?

In the fictions we write, and read, and watch on TV and in the movies, such a future is abhorrent and rarely stable, from our

point of view in our western secular faith systems.


ANNEX 1 – Some Background Ideas There are some background ideas that need to be recorded if the slides are to be

understood.

Entropy As I See It I have struggled for years to understand this concept. I think I am finally getting

there. This is my own version of entropy.

Every dynamic change that ever happens involves energy. Energy is either moved

from one place to another, or converted from one form to another as things change.

But, in all these changes, energy is never created or destroyed. [For this to be true,

mass must be considered a form of energy. For the sake of this discussion, we will

exclude the process of mass/energy conversion. ] The total amount of energy in a

closed system never changes. A closed system is one to/from which energy cannot

enter/escape. Energy cannot disappear into nothing. It cannot appear from

nothing. This is the first law of thermodynamics, the law of the conservation of

energy.

In most cases, during these changes energy degrades. It starts at a higher grade,

and finishes at a lower grade. The probability that it will degrade is so close to one

as to be considered as good as certain. This is precisely the same level of certainty

we have that time will move forwards. When energy degrades, entropy in the

system rises. High grade energy is able to do a lot of work, or to cause a lot of

change, proportionally. Low grade energy is able to do little work, or to cause

little relative change.

I can define the grade of energy for a closed system, but I haven’t figured it out for

an open system, yet. In a closed system, define the entropic index as IS = S / SMax

where S is the entropy of the system, SMax is the maximum possible entropy for

this closed system, and IS is the entropic index. Then define the grade of the

energy in this closed system as GE = 1 – IS. IS and GE are both numbers, indices,

really, between 0 and 1.

In a closed system, entropy will always rise (the grade of the energy will always

fall) until a maximal level of entropy is approached asymptotically (until the grade

of energy reaches zero). Energy that has a grade of zero has no ability to do more


work in this situation. This is my interpretation of the second law of

thermodynamics.

When entropy in a closed system of ideal gas molecules rises to its maximum

possible value, the distribution of energy contained in the atoms of the gas are

distributed in a characteristic shape. A very small number of atoms have very high

levels of energy contained in them, and the bulk of atoms have a very small level

of energy contained in them. This was described by Boltzmann and Gibbs.

Perhaps, one can define a concept I shall call ‘social entropy’ based on wealth,

rather than energy. This is not in text books.

When social entropy in a society rises to its maximum possible value, the

distribution of wealth owned by the people of the society is distributed in a

characteristic shape. A very small number of people have a very high level of

wealth owned by them, and the bulk of the people have a very small level of

wealth owned by them. This was described by Victor Yakovenko and his

Econophysics colleagues. When wealth has a grade of zero, it has no more ability

to ‘do work’ in the economy. I am not exactly sure what that means, theoretically,

but, when I look around, I know exactly what it means in practice.

One can define another kind of entropy that we might call, just to give it a name,

“national energy consumption” entropy.

When ‘national energy consumption entropy’ in the world rises to its maximum

possible value, the distribution of energy consumption by the nations of the world

is distributed in a characteristic shape. A very small number of nations have a very

high rate of consumption, and the bulk of the nations of the world have a very

small level of consumption of energy. Victor Yakovenko described this. When

the grade of ‘national energy consumption’ is zero ... Hmm?

The same fundamental mathematical process that underlies the second law of

thermodynamics and gives the distribution of energies in a gas the Boltzmann

distribution – this same fundamental mathematical process automatically causes all

societies to develop an extreme distribution of wealth in which the bulk of

members of society hold little wealth, while a few hold great wealth. And, this

same fundamental mathematical process causes unequal access to consumable

energy in the global economy.


H T Odum discovered that energy flowing through an open ecosystem (causing

entropy to rise) will cause the ecosystem to self-organize such that energy is

degraded and mass is consumed (eaten, digested, integrated, and then discarded) at

a maximum possible rate. This is called the Maximum Power Principle. He also

believed this was active in open economic systems. This is counter-intuitive, given

the above ideas. I believe that the same fundamental mathematical principle is at

work to make this happen in open systems. The chief difference is the open nature

of the systems now being considered. If energy is degraded at a maximum rate in

an open system, then entropy is ‘produced’ at a maximal rate. This is tentatively

being referred to as the “Maximum Entropy Production Principle” (MEPP) for

open systems.

What happens to this ‘produced’ entropy? Entropy is not local, so it baffles me to

say it flies away. Is it dissipated? I have seen that there are those that argue that

information (which I have not discussed here) is conserved, in the same way that

energy is. Is entropy conserved? I don’t think so. I really need to dig into that

further! In a few weeks, maybe!

About terminology: I don’t know the words that make some of the sentences I am

about to write both brief and correct, so I will resort to expressions that are brief

and clear, but somewhat incorrect. Entropy rises and falls. Entropy is a measure

like height. It cannot be produced. It cannot be driven, or drive anything. I will

refer to the self-organizing processes that cause atoms to move energy around, that

cause wealth to redistribute in a society, or that cause consumptive ability to move

around amongst the nations of the world as entropy-driven processes. What this

really means is that there is a fundamental stochastic mathematical process that

causes energy/wealth/consumptive ability to shift about (and degrade??) as

changes happen, and those changes drive entropy upwards in the most probable

direction until a maximal value is reached.

So, let me be absolutely clear about this. I am making up some of this. I did not

find it all in text books. In fact, I find many texts about entropy almost

unintelligible. I have read a few selected papers and written several notes. This is

my synthesis of it. I could be a little more careful about open and closed systems, I

guess, but this is more-or-less how I think entropy works, and exactitude is not my

goal here.

So, what is the incredibly powerful mathematical process that drives global

societies to such excesses of social dystopia? Here is the most simple case.

Imagine two sets of agents (atoms, people, or countries), one with eight members


and one with two members. We can represent this state with the ordered pair (8,2).

You randomly choose an agent in one pile and move it to the other. It is most

probable that you have moved an agent from the pile of eight (making it seven) to

the pile of two (making it three). Entropy is calculated as a weighted average.

Formula for entropy Probability of transition

S(9,1)=[(9/10)*ln(10/9)] + [(1/10)*ln(10/1)] = 0.325 0.200

S(8,2)=[(8/10)*ln(10/8)] + [(2/10)*ln(10/2)] = 0.500

S(7,3)=[(7/10)*ln(10/7)] + [(3/10)*ln(10/3)] = 0.610 0.800

The entropy of the (7,3) state of this system is more than the entropy of the (8,2)

state of this system. In any such random change, it is probable that entropy will

rise.

That’s it! That’s all! When the most probable change happens, entropy rises and

energy degrades. When an improbable change happens, entropy falls and energy

engrades (I made up that word also?). In general, entropy always rises over any

measurable duration of time involving many probable transitions. This is the

source of the ‘arrow of time’. It cannot go backwards. And, this is why perpetual

motion machines are not possible.

Now, here’s a crazy thought! It is equally probable that entropy will fall, and that

time will go backwards.

P(entropy will fall) = P(time will recede backwards)

Here’s another wild thought. If time is infinitely divisible and if the interactions of

atoms can be viewed each as happening at a precise time, then, for the roughly 1080

atoms in the universe, one can estimate that each has about 107 interactions with

other atoms every second. Consider each interaction as a change of state, with a

distribution of probable next states. The most probable of those 1087

change of

state outcome happen most often and time goes forwards, but, for some

exceedingly small percentage, an improbable change of state occurs and time steps

backwards, just a little, just for a moment, before resuming its march forwards.

Within the universe such falters must happen many times every second, because an

exceedingly small percentage of 1087

can still be a very very large number. In fact,

such improbable events must happen fairly often, per second, within the trillions of

cells in my body. Would time really step backwards, ever-so-briefly, for each

falter? Then time would move forward in a kind of biased random walk in which

we all cruise along at roughly the same speed.


Back to reality! One more fascinating and keenly important concept. When

energy flows through a small subsystem of a large system, the entropy in the large

system will rise as the energy degrades, but the entropy in the subsystem wherein

the energy is flowing may experience a local decrease in entropy. Often such a

subsystem self-organizes. Here’s an example. A seed and the ecosystem around it

self-organize to produce a tree in the ecosystem. The entropy of the ecosystem

rises, while the tree can be considered a low-entropy (improbable) artifact of the

degradation of the energy.

On terminology, again, when I call a physical object a ‘low-entropy’ object (e.g. a

tree, a building, etc.) if it is the product of this sort of self-organization that creates

highly improbable assortments of atoms and molecules in a locale at the expense of

(or due to) more probable distributions of mass and energy elsewhere. As the

energy from the Sun flows through the leaf of a tree, sugar and starch molecules

are created locally as energy degrades, and some part of it flies off as infrared

radiation, to be lost in space. It is NOT true that such an object, in thermodynamic

terms, is a low-entropy object. An object has entropy (like I have height) but

entropy is not contained in an object. What comes in here is the interpretation of

entropy from information theory. Such an object would take a lot of words to

describe it, and so contains a lot of information, and so is low in informational

entropy. Perhaps that is what I mean. But, what I really mean is that it is a highly

improbable collection of atoms, or a highly improbable event, if not found in the

midst of a biosphere. You would say that such an object, a tree or building, is an

artifact of the emergent process of self-organization active as energy degrades

locally and entropy rises universally. But, to avoid that long-winded description, I

will call them low-entropy objects, or low entropy artifacts.

Anthroposphere According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposphere ) the

anthroposphere is defined as follows:

The anthroposphere (sometimes also referred as technosphere) is that part

of the environment that is made or modified by humans for use in human

activities and human habitats. It is one of the Earth's spheres.

As human technology becomes more evolved, so do the impacts of

human activities on the environment.

Examples: deforestation for housing, land setup, etc.

I have some difficulty with this concept ‘anthroposphere’, but, at the same time I

see it as an important and necessary concept to ponder. This is a subset of the

biosphere, but where is the edge of it? In the practice of project management the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposphere


concepts of ‘scope of influence’ and ‘scope of control’ are important to understand.

Scope creep is probably the most common cause of project failure, and it usually

creeps because the distinction between influence and control is poorly understood

and managed. The definition of anthroposphere makes it sound like it is the scope

of control of humanity. Certainly, especially in recent history, humankind has

been able to influence the entire biosphere. But, experienced project managers

know that the duo of influence and control are not a binary pair, but, rather, the two

ends of a continuum of influence. When does increased influence start to morph

into control? When does weakening control morph into mere influence?

When legitimate activities within the scope of control of a project appear to control

concomitant changes outside of the scope of control, it is natural to consider those

things to be also within the scope of control, and so, the scope of control creeps

outwards. The perennial problem is this: the incremental inclusion of each such

thing at the edges of the scope of control of the project causes an increase in

project complexity hugely out of proportion to the size of the scope change. To

combat this, the project manager must refuse to allow such scope creep, and,

usually, this means acting like a bit of an asshole, denying the client large potential

benefits at apparently small cost. Nevertheless, to truly manage the problem of

scope creep, a project manager must draw a line in the sand and say, this is under

my control, and on this side of the line I am king, and my scope of control will not

change without my agreement.

Similarly, to understand the nature of our influence on the remnants of our once

vibrant wild biosphere, we need to draw that line in the sand, for the sake of the

biosphere, and maintain acute awareness of its implications in every decision we

make. That line in the sand is the edge of the anthroposphere. This is certainly

NOT happening now, and we have ‘creeped’ the biosphere to near extermination.

Every time we extend our scope of control we hugely damage the biosphere and

hugely increase the complexity of the anthroposphere, and the problems of

managing it.

My point is NOT that we cease to influence or care about the portion of the

biosphere outside of the scope of control, outside of the anthroposphere, which is

just and simply defined by that arbitrary line drawn in the sand. My point is that

drawing such an arbitrary line, and then defending it as if it is a fortress wall, is the

best, most effective and time-tested means of stopping scope creep, of stopping the

slide down the proverbial slippery slope, of ensuring that a project has a chance of

success. I have saved many projects from failure by being that asshole standing at


the edge of an arbitrary line in the sand and arguing like a fool that it cannot be

erased and redrawn, because we would all regret it if we did.

So, to try to put some meaning into that ‘edge of the anthroposphere’ concept, one

asks what is included, and what is excluded?

This is messy, but here’s a shot at it.

In terms of organisms, all of humanity, all of our livestock, and all of those

organisms that are integrally a part of our biological functions such as the micro-

organisms in our gut and on our skin. I have heard that approximately 90% of all

of the DNA in the human body actually belongs to this micro-ecosystem in our

bodies. The same is true for our organisms in our livestock. It would also include

all of the organisms and micro-organisms in our farms of all kinds, drug factories,

breweries, composting facilities, or other such facilities.

Food is tricky. The anthroposphere includes, I would think, all foods which are the

products of organisms both within and without the anthroposphere once the foods

have been harvested. Harvested wild animals and their products become part of

the anthroposphere once harvested.

Those wild animals that could be harvested but escape should not be included.

They are on the edge of our somewhat arbitrarily drawn line, just over the line, and

appear to be within our scope of control, but are just massively influenced thereby.

Similarly, I think the anthroposphere would not include wild animals that live

among us or in distant wilderness places; it would not include parasites that reside

within us; and it would not include many organisms on which we depend for our

continued lives. It also excludes unfarmed populations of fish, crabs, kelp, and

other ‘seafoods’. These are organisms that, in the course of pursuing their own

existence in accordance with the evolutionary imperatives, happen to perform so-

called ‘ecological services’. Mankind has not planned or controlled their location

or function, but benefits therefrom. It also excludes the photosynthesis-capable

micro-organisms in the oceans of the world, as well as grass and trees in wild

places that convert light and CO2 into O2.

I realize this is a fuzzy concept, and whether a particular organism is or is not

included might be up for debate. But if we focus on mankind, its livestock, and the

contents of our farms and factories – those organisms that we directly control –

that catches the bulk of the organisms in the anthroposphere.


In terms of the components that are not living, the anthroposphere includes all of

our roads, buildings, farms, tools, manufactured goods, art works, social systems,

scientific and technical processes, cultural events, and recreational activities. I

would also be inclined to classify our wastes as part of the anthroposphere.

This seems like a very reasonable scope of control for this project we call

sustainability.

So. There we have it – our scope of control. What does this mean for us as project

managers? The implications are in the descriptions of the slides, I think, but, to

make a point, let me be, now, that asshole-of-a-fool standing on the beach,

defending this line I have just drawn in the sand, as if it was a fortress wall, and

arguing that we DO NOT want to redraw that line or we may all regret it. Parasites

and diseases are out of scope for this project we call ‘sustainability’. As a project

manager I would stop all research in this area. Our streams of waste are in scope.

I would redirect all of the funds, educational resources, institutions and flows of

mass and energy now being spent on those out-of-scope activities towards research

on how to effectively and efficiently re-integrate all of our waste streams into the

biosphere from which we took them.

That would be the right decision, professionally, as a project manager, and morally

and ethically, as a right-thinking member of a society that is destroying all life on

Earth with our waste streams while trying to save the lives of a few more wealthy

people suffering from disease. When viewed in that light, research on diseases and

parasites starts to look like busy work, rearranging the chairs on the deck of the

Titanic, as they say, taking our minds off of the catastrophe that is underway. Such

decisions are extremely difficult, with immense moral implications, but failing to

take corrective action when you know it must be done is immature, irresponsible,

and arguably grossly immoral as well. Are we between Scylla and Charybdis, or is

that a delusion?

Here are a few more important thoughts about the anthroposphere. All major

components of the anthroposphere, whether organic or not, require a constant flow

of mass and energy to extract mass from the biosphere, create them, operate them,

maintain them, and/or keep them active and/or usable or alive, and, ultimately,

return them to the containing biosphere. Roads, buildings and farms must be

constructed and maintained, and this requires a flow of mass and energy. Tools,

manufactured goods and art works wear out and must be replaced. Our social

systems such as justice, education, transportation or energy collection and

distribution systems all require mass and energy for construction, operation and


maintenance. The less substantive components such as cultural acts are fleeting

things that dissipate quickly, but they require an expenditure of energy obtained

from food.

Such a flow of mass and energy results in the dispersion of locally-concentrated

deposits of many kinds of mass, the degradation of local energy, and a rise of

universal entropy. All human activities, all human organizations, all components

of this anthroposphere require a constant flow of mass and energy to keep them

functioning or they wear down, stop functioning, decompose and disappear. Visit

the Mayan ruins of Mexico and you will be faced with this. One of the great

ponderables is this: entropy production is the cause of self-organization, but also

the cause of decay, decomposition, corruption and relentless destruction. In fact,

the necessary decomposition of our wastes and reintegration into the biosphere via

entropy also requires a constant stream of energy through the wastes.

All components of the anthroposphere are the product of self-organization. All are

low-entropy objects, in the sense described above. All are highly improbable

physical structures, events or processes that would be very surprising to be found

were humans absent. Just to make the point, consider the insubstantiality of a

cultural act such as singing in English. If you hear a song (a series of sound waves

of a certain kind) you expect to find a person singing. If you send a probe to Mars

and hear a song in English on the wind, you would have to assume that it is created

by mankind or one of our machines. Such a thing would be very highly

improbable as a random collection of pressure variations in the Martian wind. This

is NOT impossible, just highly improbable. Such an extremely improbable event

is a cultural event, and part of the anthroposphere, and, in my brief-but-not-very-

accurate terminology, a low-entropy event.

Biosphere Again, drawing from Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere ), that

fount of all knowledge, here is a definition of the biosphere:

... By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is

the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their

relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the

lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated

to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoesis (life created

naturally from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds)

or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5

billion years ago. The earliest evidences for life on Earth are graphite

found to be biogenic in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere


discovered in Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in

3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.

It is not clear in this definition, but, for the purposes of this NTF I will consider the

artifacts of living organisms, and the waste of living organisms to be part of the

biosphere. Then, I can view the anthroposphere, in its widest definition, to be

wholly a subset of the biosphere. Like the anthroposphere, the biosphere is

composed of low-entropy organisms, and their artifacts (shells, dens, trails, organic

products). For example the ‘rabbitosphere’ might be defined as the bodies and

artifacts caused by the existence of all rabbits. It is only mankind that gets to name

its own artifacts as the anthroposphere. These organisms and their artifacts are all

‘built’ (i.e. grown) and maintained by a stream of energy, just as for the

anthroposphere. That energy arrives as light from the Sun (mostly). It is

converted to highly localized energy in the chemical bonds in sugars, starches, and

fats via photosynthesis and follow-on processes. By a series of ‘chemical

pathways’ it degrades step-by-step (as entropy rises and more probable low-energy

chemical molecules replace the highly energetic and less probable sugars, starches

and fats). As it degrades, the functions of cell life are executed. Eventually, the

energy exists as waste heat in tissues, and is expelled from the body of organisms.

In the atmosphere, the waste heat in the form of infra-red radiation eventually rises

and escapes into space. Energy also flows through the biosphere as predators and

parasites consume the energetic bodies of other organisms. Here, I consider

herbivores to be a type of predator that eats plant organisms.

Without this flow of energy, life would come to an end as rising entropy would

cause the improbable but highly structured assortments of atoms and molecules to

disperse into a more probable soup of unstructured bits. The biosphere is a

massive local self-organized low-entropy system that is able to exist just because

the flow of energy allows it to continue to self-organize, and resist the unrelenting

action of energy dispersion and rising entropy that dominates the universe.

Sources and Types of Energy I can classify energy in a few useful ways:

High-grade and low-grade is one interesting classification.

Ingestible by humans, and non-ingestible by humans is another.

Available as needed, or available by annual quota.

Recently Sun-derived, geothermal, nuclear or fossilized sources.


For the difference between high and low grade, it’s covered in the discussion of

entropy above.

Ingestible by humans is a feature of our evolutionary history. Only a very small

percentage of the Sun’s energy that is captured via photo-synthesis is, in fact,

ingestible by humans. We expand that by expanding agriculture and fish-farming

and things like that. But most plants and animals are indigestible, or unpalatable.

Some streams of energy are available in any quantity whenever needed. We just

have to dig them up and process them as quickly as needed. Fossil fuels are of this

type. So is nuclear energy. Some streams of energy pass us by at a fixed rate, and

we can capture a percentage of this stream up to a maximum. Energy captured via

photo-synthesis is of this type.

Different sources vary in their ingestibility and availability.

In the pre-carbon era, prior to 1750, say, the flow of energy through the biosphere

(and contained anthroposphere) was largely limited to that part of the Sun’s rays

that could be captured via photosynthesis. Some of that was ingestible by humans.

Some energy was captured by technical means such as wind mills, or water wheels,

and directed to mankind’s needs and goals, and this energy was non-ingestible.

Some stored energy in non-ingestible form was used when wood or peat moss was

burnt. The size of the anthroposphere was limited by the size of the flow of

energy. Mankind lived close to the global carrying capacity, which was

determined by the relative amount of the energy stream that could be converted to

ingestible energy and diverted to human consumption, or applied to build

humankind’s necessary artifacts such as houses and clothes. In those days most of

humanity lived a subsistence-level kind of life that was miserable, and often brutal,

and short.

Energy in the modern world comes from several sources:

The Sun’s rays, captured as sugars via photosynthesis, some of which becomes

ingestible by humans;

The Sun’s rays, captured using technical tools such as solar panels, water

wheels, dams, wind turbines and wind mills, tidal gizmos;

Geothermal energy released at vents of various types, or tapped using deep

wells;

Fossilized organic matter such as coal, oil, gas, deposits of peat moss, etc.


The phenomenon of the 20th Century Since the increased use of coal, oil and gas, the relative size of the anthroposphere

has exploded. Our ability to apply this immense endowment of ‘take-as-needed’

energy to increase our share of the ingestible energy, our elimination of predators,

and our defeat of many parasites and diseases has radically lifted the carrying

capacity of the Earth, with respect to people. We are in a state of ecological

escape. The sky is the limit! The anthroposphere is expanding and destroying the

other ‘spheres’ that, in union, make up the biosphere as a whole.

Our population has jumped massively in size due to the greatly increased flow of

energy of all kinds through the anthroposphere. The carrying capacity of the Earth,

with respect to people, has been greatly increased in two ways:

A great deal of non-ingestible energy has been applied to usurping a larger and

larger portion of the energy flow from the Sun that could produce ingestible

energy (i.e. food). We use oil to make high-energy fertilizers, pesticides,

herbicides, fungicides. We use oil to make farm machinery. We use oil to

build food system infrastructure such as roads, storage facilities, ships and

harbours and docks, and stores. We use oil to transport food, and dispose of the

waste.

A great deal of non-ingestible energy is used to build the necessary artifacts of

the expanding anthroposphere.

There is a phenomenon in evolutionary observations called genetic drift. When

there is no selective pressure on certain aspects of the phenotype, a great deal of

variation will randomly appear. When the selection pressure is on, genes all march

in the direction through genospace of ‘better adapted’. But when the pressure is

off, genes tend to just wander off and explore the genospace in which they exist.

During the 20th century, I postulate that a similar thing happened to the global

society. The super-abundance of both ingestible and non-ingestible energy made it

possible for humankind to usurp whatever portion of the energy flow in the

biosphere we wanted. And we have done that. The lid was blown off of the

carrying capacity of the anthroposphere, using our massive endowment of

fossilized energy sources. It was possible to expand the anthroposphere to absorb

almost the entire biosphere.

However, there is another end to the maw of the anthroposphere – the anus. Our

stream of waste mass must be received by the biosphere, and, via the processes

enabled by energy flows and rising entropy, recycled for reuse. We have increased


the ability of the Earth to feed us, but not to take away our waste. Both

energy/mass consumption, and waste production are out of control, and destroying

the biosphere. We have diligently researched how to increase food production and

defeat disease, but we have neglected research on how to recycle our wastes.

So, in this first half of the age of oil (borrowing from the idioms of CAS Hall) we

have been living well below the new carrying capacity, have enjoyed a surplus of

energy flows, and have built a very complex and sophisticated society

characterized by rising levels of consumption of energy and mass. This is NOT the

dynamic environment in which either the MEP (Maximum Entropy Principle for

closed systems), or the MEPP (Maximum Entropy Production Principle for open

systems) produce their characteristic distributions. The effects of entropy-driven

processes have been partially, or largely, mitigated due to the ability of our modern

society to continually increase the flows of mass and energy throughout the 20th

century. In a state free of the distribution-shaping forces of entropy-driven

processes, we have been able to experience many things never-before seen on the

face of the Earth. I list these things because I know they existed, and were even

marveled at, when I was younger, and are now passing, or gone. These are the

marvels of the 20th

century that I postulate are the result of excessive availability of

energy:

The middle class grew to be large, wealthy, and happy, but is now fading away

again.

Unions gained strength to empower the poor and raise them to the middle

class.

Consumer products were designed for the luxury of the middle class.

Art and culture for the middle class blossomed.

Health and educational systems for the middle class were complexified. (I

don’t know if that is a word, but, for now it is.)

The middle class has enjoyed a level of access to land, wealth, political

power and personal self-determination that has never existed before, to my

knowledge, in the history of the planet.

The understanding and practice of science rose, and is now fading, having been

infiltrated and corrupted by many pseudo-sciences.

Diverse languages have failed as a few mega-languages have dominated.

People have become very mobile, for pleasure or to avoid distress.

Regional disputes became global wars.

Fiscal power has moved from nation states to trans-national corporate states.

Professional news collection and presentation organizations rose to power, but

now are fading from sight again.


I postulate that these historical aberrations are all because of the excessive flow of

non-ingestible energy from sources that were both cheap to harvest and of high

quality. This free energy provided enough wealth to spread around, and enough

wealth to relieve us of the pressure of entropy-driven processes, for a while.

That period of wild expansion of our population, of the complexification of our

technologies, and of the growth of our economies is now coming to an end. The

best and easiest sources of fossil energy are depleted. In the words of CAS Hall,

we are now entering the ‘second half of the age of oil’. Sure there is still a

plentiful supply of hydrocarbons in bitumen deposits, in oceanic deposits of

methane, in deep sea oil deposits, or in shale deposits. But these are either of very

low quality, or extremely expensive to access. Our global population is now

approaching that higher carrying capacity of approximately 11 billion people, but,

at the same time, as the flow of cheap high-grade energy declines the ceiling will

start to lower. At the same time we have overtaxed the ability of the Earth to

absorb our wastes, and this is destroying the rest of the biosphere that we have not

usurped. The carrying capacity of the Earth, with respect to people, will fall back

towards, or below, the levels of the pre-carbon era.

From the above discussion, and with sustainability of a modern society in mind, I

underline these points:

Complex social or business systems consume energy;

The carrying capacity of the Earth, with respect to human populations, changes

as the flow of energy through society changes, and is currently artificially raised

by the use of fossil fuels;

The age of oil is coming to an end;

If we want to maintain a complex modern society, in an age of reduced access

to cheap high-quality fuels, then energy must be diverted from other uses (e.g.

food) to build and maintain the complex social and business systems.

Social Justice Another concept – At almost every scale, human society evolves to display

probability distributions that are consistent with, and possibly indicative of, being

driven by the fundamental mathematical processes that cause entropy to increase.

One indication of this is, for example, a large spread in wealth or income, with the

bulk of humanity being very poor and economically disenfranchised. This has

occurred in all societies past and present, was briefly suppressed in western

countries during the first half of the age of oil (as discussed above), but is now

resurgent in our modern society. Another indication is the different access to


energy around the world. The distribution of rates of consumption also are

approaching a predictable shape which conforms to shapes indicating maximum

entropy. In particular, the deregulation and globalization of economics has

hastened the approach to this distribution. In both cases, it is clear that the natural

forces that cause entropy to increase inevitably are the same forces that cause

serious lack of social justice. Rising entropy is a natural phenomenon which also

causes an increase in efficiency of processing of energy and mass. The power of

an unrestrained free market is evidence of this. To establish a just society, one

must fight against the natural processes of increasing entropy, or, in other

words, one must fight to reduce the efficiency of the processing of mass and

energy. Our modern business drive to ‘squeeze out the costs of production’ are a

wonderful example of how we have intentionally enabled this entropy-driven

process on a massive scale. Our intentional adoption of the ‘creative destruction of

capital’ is another example. We are enthusiastically helping entropy to do its dirty

work.

From the above discussion I underline these points:

In every society the development of unequal access to energy, land, wealth and

political power is as natural as water running downhill.

A socially just economy is NOT maximally efficient, and not natural, in that

sense.

There is a premium price to pay (in terms of the efficiency of energy used) to

turn such a socially unjust society into a socially just society.

This means some of the available flow of energy must be diverted from other

uses to pay for the reduced efficiency in the society.

Bringing These Ideas Together So, let me try to put these ideas together with the concepts of sustainability and

planetary boundaries:

1. Life requires a steady flow of energy (e.g. about 2000 calories of energy in

food, per person, per day) and the size of the available flow of energy

determines how much life (how large a population) can be supported.

2. The anthroposphere is a subset of the biosphere, and the anthroposphere has

expanded to usurp much of the energy flow formerly used by the rest of the

biosphere;

3. There is a physical limit, a maximum carrying capacity, to the size and form of

the biosphere that can be supported on this Earth, and that limit is approximated

by, or represented by, the ‘planetary boundaries’. Those boundaries have been

exceeded a few times in the past, at which times extinction level events (ELEs)

have occurred. We are now living through a fast-developing ELE.


3.1. Sustainability requires that we do not overtax the ability of the Earth to

supply a steady flow of such energy. This has not been possible until the

arrival of the modern technological age, as we have access to massive stores

of coal, oil and natural gas, and other technology-enabled sources of energy.

The diversion of a significant portion of this unnatural flow of energy to the

production and distribution of food has raised the carrying capacity of the

anthroposphere by an order of magnitude, if not more. E.g. for a back-of-

the-envelope calculation, if 90% of the embedded and contained energy in

our food comes from fossil fuels, then we have increased the carrying

capacity of the anthroposphere by a factor of 90/10 = 9. When the energy

ceases to flow and the carrying capacity falls again, we must reduce the

number of people to former levels.

3.2. Sustainability also requires that the flow of wastes produced does not

overtax the Earth’s ability to absorb them. We have spent enormous

amounts on scientific research on increased food production and resource

extraction and health, and relatively little on waste management. The result

is, we have totally and completely overwhelmed the ability of the Earth to

absorb the waste stream coming from this expanded anthroposphere. We

have not just expanded the flow of natural biodegradable wastes, but we

have added to it a flow of chemical toxins, non-biodegradable wastes, and

biological super-nutrients that the biosphere cannot process in a timely

fashion.

4. Thinking about food:

4.1. Embedded energy is a concept espoused by H T Odum and his students,

including CAS Hall.

4.2. Using an apple as an example, an apple may contain 100 calories of

ingestible energy.

4.2.1. But the orchard from which it came was planted by a team of workers,

the apple was harvested by a team of workers, it was washed and waxed

and gassed and packaged by equipment, it was transported and

warehoused and distributed and held in stores run by a team of workers.

4.2.2. All of those workers had to be fed, and expended some of those

calories so obtained on this apple.

4.2.3. All of the harvesting, washing, waxing, packaging and transportation

equipment had to be mined, manufactured, marketed by people and,

finally, powered by some energy source.

4.2.4. All of the warehouses, garages, and stores involved in the growth and

harvest and marketing of this apple had to be built and maintained.

Now, the apple can only be assigned a small part of this contained

energy.


4.3. Embedded energy is not, in fact, in the apple, but is an account of energy

that has been degraded and released to the atmosphere as waste heat during

production and presentation of the apple to the consumer.

4.4. Sustainability requires that the energy spent on the capture of energy into

the apple, and delivery of that apple to your fridge, be less than the energy

contained therein.

4.4.1. Suppose the embedded energy is 10 calories, and the contained energy

is 100 calories, then the energy returned on energy expended (EROEI)

is 100/10 = 10.

4.4.2. Hunter and gatherer societies are estimated to have had an EROEI of

about 18, which allowed them to spend a lot of time lying on rocks

getting warm and being happy.

4.4.3. However, studies have shown that the embedded energy in our North

American food is 9 times the contained energy.

4.4.4. The EROEI of our food is 100 / 900 = 0.111. From the point of view

of energy costs, our modern food system is less efficient than a

primitive hunter-gatherer society by a whopping factor of 9x18 = 162.

This, of course, defies our intuition. How can this be? The answer is,

we cheat. We have not spent ingestible energy to obtain ingestible

energy, as did the hunter-gatherers. Rather, we spent free fossil-fuel-

based non-ingestible energy to obtain ingestible energy.

4.4.5. For every calorie we eat in our food, we spend nine calories of non-

ingestible energy, on average.

5. Focusing on food a little longer: much of the energy in our global food supply

(about 90%) does not come directly from the Sun, but rather comes from fossil

fuels, and enters the food system directly (as ingestible energy) or indirectly (as

so-called embedded energy) in some way such as via construction, production

and/or use of fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, irrigation systems,

transportation, warehousing, wholesale and retail businesses, equipment

manufacturing and sales, or waste management facilities (sewage systems). So

the support of our life functions requires a vast expenditure of fossilized energy

far beyond what was historically spent via the muscles of man and his

domesticated beasts.

6. The establishment of complex business-support systems and social support

systems that are required to make a complex society function also requires

energy, so some of the flow of energy that could, in a simple minded way,

support a larger population of people, must in fact be diverted from that purpose

to be spent on:

6.1. The business-support systems that make the complex economy (with its

associated food system) function. These include transportation systems,


energy generation and distribution systems, communications systems,

financial systems, water purification and distribution systems, and more

waste management systems;

6.2. The social support systems that shape and control the behaviour of people

to make these sophisticated business-support systems work. These include

the education systems, justice systems, health systems, faith systems and

recreational systems; and

6.3. The life-support systems of the biosphere of the planet itself that maintain

the trophic network – that little-understood but oh-so-important pyramidal-

shaped biomass of which we are the top predator, that diverse bio-

machinery that takes our non-edible-energy inputs and converts them into

edible-energy-outputs, that diverse bio-machinery that converts the CO2 that

we breathe out into the O2 that we breathe in. We absolutely must, for the

sake of avoidance of our own extinction, preserve the biodiversity of the

trophic network that gave rise to our existence and that now supports our

continued existence, and preserve the wild places in which this trophic web

exists and thrives.

7. Again, as naturally as water flows downhill, complex societies will evolve to be

maximally efficient at processing mass and energy (will evolve to be

consumption-oriented) until concentrated endowments of suitable mass and/or

energy are depleted, at which point the complex society will collapse. Prior to

such collapse:

7.1. A population that has an overabundance of such endowments of mass and

energy (such as existed in the early days of the Roman Empire when there

were vast areas of land to be conquered, lands occupied by much simpler

societies, or such as existed during the colonial era, or such as existed in the

19th and 20

th centuries due to technological advancements) will expand and

complexify to create an ever larger flow, and consume ever larger amounts,

ever more efficiently. In such conditions, a large percentage of the

population may have easy access to energy, wealth, land, and political

power, and a large ‘middle class’ may develop.

7.2. But, a population that does not have such an over-abundance of such

endowments (such as existed in most places in the pre-carbon era, and such

as we are now entering in the second half of the age of oil) will

nevertheless, under the same unavoidable pressures that cause universal

entropy to rise, will evolve to be more efficient in the processing of

available flows of mass and energy, and such an entropy-driven evolution

will produce a ‘gilded-age’ disparity in access to energy, land, wealth and

political power, along the lines described in the works of Piketty and

Yakovenko.


8. If we are to establish a ‘just society’ as well as a ‘sustainable society’ then we

must resist the entropy-driven evolutionary forces that cause ‘gilded age’

disparities in access to land, energy, wealth and political power. Such an effort

requires that we embrace a less than fully efficient rate of consumption of mass

and energy. This implies a diversion of energy from population-support to

support of social justice (as opposed to legal justice) in a complex society. I

call this the ‘social justice premium’.

Mathematical Models? I am sure one could write differential equations about all of this. Maybe later. But

the size of the flows of energy and mass are dependent on complexity of society,

which is, in turn, dependent on the size of the flows, in a positive feedback loop,

until the endowment is consumed. Then all falls back to a level supported by the

natural rates of generation (Sun and photosynthesis for energy; geological

processes for earth, minerals, water; evolutionary processes for replenishment of

lost biodiversity).

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