Shift to Sustainability could follow Transitions in Complex Systems
Many years ago a friend and myself, like many young engineers at that time, were fascinated by concepts of chaos theory such as strange attractors that describe the state evolution of chaotic systems; we even published a paper on the so-called “Bouncing Ball Problem”¹. What is noteworthy here is that complex systems, i.e. dynamic systems with many cross-coupled dynamic components (notably feedback), exhibit the interesting property that they can flip from a seemingly quasi-stable behaviour, e.g. oscillation around a centre state, into a different one around a very remote state, all very suddenly once a certain tipping point has been reached. Transitions in nature such as weather systems quite often follow this pattern and it appears that both the entire Earth system as well as our global civilisation (coupled to the former) are not too far away from such a tipping point. Could our civilisation transition to a state of sustainability?
Status Quo — Earth
The Earth system has been researched quite thoroughly over the past decades, resulting in a large body of work describing the complex behaviour of many aspects (past and present): oceans and their currents, temperature, acidity; the global water cycle, climate models, etc. For instance, the Earth’s global mean surface temperature (GMST) has risen and fallen over the entire history of the Earth as show in the paper “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature”, ranging from about 10°C to 35°C, and correlated to a certain extent with the CO₂ content in the atmosphere (with varying causality). In the last few million years the GMST has continuously dropped and reached a state with lower variability during the past few hundred thousand years, perhaps of the order of -8°C to +2°C with respect to the average temperature in modern times; over the past 10–12 thousand years a relatively stable system established itself with the result being a very fine-tuned quasi-stable complex Earth system, home to a web of life which humanity is part of.
Throughout the reconstructed history of the GMST in Judd’s paper, using observations from ice cores and other sources as input to a Kalman filter, the estimated temperature changes per annum were very, very small (perhaps of the order of 1°C over a million years), small enough for the web of life on Earth to follow and adapt. There were long periods in which state variables changed little, as well as periods of more rapid change (possibly of the kind found in complex system transitions); the latter often correlated with mass extinctions. Looking at the more recent history, however, the rates of changes to system state variables caused by our global civilisation such as GMST or ocean acidity are several orders of magnitude higher than Earth has experienced before: 1°C increase of GMST in 100 years instead of a million. We may well be both in a period of mass extinction and at the cusp of a serious system transition into an unknown state.
Status Quo — Civilisation
The words “creativity”, “progress”, “growth” used to instil positive sensations in my mind, possibly due to my upbringing in Western society, still influenced by the post World War II “Rebuild Europe” mindset, the Wirtschaftswunder. The underlying world view is that of sustained progress, growth and prosperity: subjugate the Earth to human’s needs. It is at the core of the established world economic system based on free markets and the pursuit of profit, unbridled and unlimited; this belief system is what defines our civilisation. I for one have until recently always believed in it and that technology is the solution to everything as I could get excited about any kind of technology or “miracles” modern humans were able to create. Alas, not any more. After reading Tom Murphy’s Do the Maths, I realised that this belief in unlimited growth in a finite world with humanity on top is all but a myth, merely a story we tell ourselves. ever since I cannot see the world any more as I used to, akin to being told that there is no Santa Claus. There is no going back; I cannot revert that revelation. It would be hard to continue pretending that there is a Santa Claus.
It has become clear to me that the entire system is flawed and not sustainable: a system built on the notion of growth is a contradiction to being on a finite planet, in particular when most economic activity is exhausting non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels, or consuming renewable resources such as fresh water above their regeneration capability, and at the same time polluting the world we live in at a rate much beyond its absorption capability. Climate change due to CO₂ emission from burning those fossil fuels is only as the tip of an iceberg. It appears that our civilisation is trapped in the success of its economic system which did bring prosperity to a lot of people; this is undeniable. If we continue, however, we destroy our life support system as we are pushing it to a tipping point, possibly triggering a complex system transition with an unknown state. There is a chance to change that, however, or in the words of Gaya Herrington:
Our choice is not whether to keep growing or not; it’s whether end of growth will come by design or disaster.
Political and Economic Dilemma
Given the precarious state humanity is in and also given that we are fully cognisant of our predicament, what is keeping us from making the significant changes needed? Well, all human activities are very much intertwined in a global economic system on one hand. On the other, individuals tend to live locally, they want to survive and make a living within global constraints they have little control over. The BBC documentary Amazon with Bruce Parry made that quite clear to me: locals act within a very limited scope to secure their own survival. Farmers in Brazil clear land to produce soy as it offers an economic opportunity; international freight earns money transporting all that produce; farmers in other parts of the world feed that soy to rear cattle; consumers are happy with cheap meat. Consequently, the global system drives all economic agents towards activities that are detrimental to all in the end but provide some local short term gain which nobody would like to change.
My main concern here is the dilemma that impedes any changes. The Western world is characterised by the combination of representative democracy and market economy. As for the former, people determine through representatives at various levels the policies that will be implemented, conceptually a self-regulating system through feedback. Only, there are quite often two snags in the feedback path responsible for bias: first, there is a distortion in representation through lobbying where certain parties influence the outcome for their own benefit using questionable argumentation. Second, candidates for representative positions of the people, aka politicians, are more likely to propose life-improving policies with short term return rather than constraining measures. Everybody votes for growth and not for de-growth.
With regards to market economy, the general idea is that in free markets consisting of economic agents optimising their profits, implicit feedback mechanisms will always balance the system and yield an optimum result; any negative effects will increase costs, or depletion of one resource will lead to efficiency gain and/or substitution. The only problem is that the scope in the cost calculation is usually limited in space and time, in particular by discounting future costs and leaving many negative effects “outside”, i.e. disregarding negative externalities. And by the time these negative effects show their face, business profits have moved on (usually off-shore), and society needs to bear the cost. At some point, the rest of the world has to live with the consequences, even on a global scale. The real problem, however, is that by the time negative effects are fed back into the system (usually only proportional to the effects), it may be well too little and too late given the lag between action and effect.
So what is my gripe with the combination of representative democracy and market economy? Even though both are based on feedback mechanisms (good) there are lags (bad); those lead to instability (in control system terms), possibly to overshoot and collapse. But what is the alternative? Command economy and a benevolent dictator anyone? If the system to be controlled can be exactly modelled, then direct top-down control should yield the most expedient and efficient result (model predictive control). Through the leadership of a wise “world king” the transition to a sustainable civilisation will be straightforward. History shows however that this approach goes pear-shaped in all cases for various reasons: first, forcing a “perceived” solution relies on a thorough understanding of both the objective and the behaviour of the complex system to be governed (merely impossible); second, the implementation generally ignores all feedback from the system over time; third, there are no wise world kings (or people of power) who remain wise. So maybe not, however attractive a strong leader might appear in difficult times.
Speeding up
If the Earth system has been pushed close to a tipping point through the growth-based economic system, how can the system be changed around such that a) the Earth returns into a safer operating space and b) humanity achieves sustainability? Well, perhaps not with incremental linear progression, nor in an unpredictable revolution, nor through complaisance or resignation, but by working with system dynamics: counter tipping points with tipping points. Simon Sharpe’s “Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change”³ provides some insights on how a counter-spiral could be triggered.
Among other interesting points on science predictions versus risk assessments, Sharpe posits that the economy must not be seen through the eyes of equilibrium economics but taken as a complex ecosystem with re-enforcing and attenuating feedback loops that is capable of fast transitions (as it has been seen numerous times). That said, through well-defined scope in geography, time frame and industrial sector as well as a combination of strategic interventions, incentives, taxation and regulation, tipping points towards a sustainable economy can be reached, even cascades of tipping points triggered as positive feedback mechanisms unfold in a complex system with cross coupling.
goals: plausible grounds for hope”, Simon Sharpe & Timothy M. Lenton
Speaking as a control system engineer, I can only insist that “feedback is good”: new information is incorporated as soon as available with some model prior. Closed loop dynamics is determined by the loop gain, i.e. how fast the information circulates in that loop. What is needed is an acceleration of the feedback loop through two factors:
- it is important to act sooner to negative externalities from the moment they are known or models can be established (shorter lag). Counter-action should not only be proportional to those effects, but proportional to their trend; this is known as differential feedback. For example, turn up the thermostat when you observe that the temperature is going down (differential = change of temperature), don’t wait for the temperature to be too low.
- obtain a stronger response, turn up the loop gain, i.e. more pronounced feedback to known negative externalities (proportional and differential). For instance, increase carbon tax to much higher level, ideally at the source, until the desired closed loop response time is achieved. Another example: knowing that large vehicles use more resources and do more damages to the road, install a road tax commensurate with the size and mass of vehicles.
The power of feedback loops can be harnessed to enable fast transitions in order to counter re-enforcing feedback loops already in operation on planet Earth. These loops have to be bootstrapped through incentives, fiscal measures and regulatory framework. The ultimate goal would be a transition towards a sustainable and post-growth society by design (Gaya Harrington); there, all energy and material is taken from renewable flows instead of finite stocks ( Simon Sharpe).
References
- Steiner, W., H. Troger and P. Wurmsdobler: Zur Konstruktion der Hufeisenabbildung im Bouncing Ball Problem. In Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik, Vol 72, №4, pp T106–107, Krakau 1992.
- Geoff Boeing, A Jupyter notebook that demonstrates the Lorenz system and its chaotic solution which was used and modified to produce the image; https://github.com/gboeing/lorenz-system.
- Simon Sharpe, Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change, April 2023, ISBN-10 : 1009568515.
