Is there a model system we can explore that can show us how a Steady State System works successfully over long periods of time? Yes, and it is called the Natural world. The currency of this system is energy and it can show us a lot about how economies ought to work. Nature is a self-sustaining, adaptable, resilience, system. Regulatory feedback systems are built-in without the need for controlling bureaucracies. What this implies of course is that sometimes letting nature work its own magic is often the best management process. A human involvement in such a system would mean that living within the system instead of trying to micro-manage and overuse it. This might be a path of success for the human race. We certainly have no shortage of models to explore this option – i.e. Daly and others since the 1980s and even earlier. If you are rolling your eyes at this point, let me explain the system more clearly.
A model I used in my classes was to show a picture of a clear-cut forest and ask whether it was growing or dying. The more environmental students would lament that the forest was dead until I pointed out some features of the clear cut. Yes, the forest as an intact micro-ecosystem had just been devastated, but providing the soil base was not washed away yet, the resilience of the system was self-evident. Everywhere in the clear cut is new growth rushing to fill the void left by the mature trees. Now many plants rush to fill the potential niches opened up by the clear cut. As the forest regrows, the growth continues with interacting species producing stability and establishing maturing groups of species self-regulating with each other. As the forest approaches a climax community the rapid growth tails off. At this point the forest is no longer growing in a wild random fashion and is a steady state system. It is not a static system! The currency is energy so the plant life maximizes photosynthesis, which the whole forest ecosystem will utilize. While there is no fast growth, the forest ecosystem is a closed system utilizing nutrients in a cyclic system while energy is used and passed through in a open system. If a tree falls over and exposes and new glade with lots of new sunlight reaching the forest floor then the glade will have exponential growth for a short while until the glade achieves a climax and reaches steady state again. So, a climax community in steady state is a dynamic system – nutrients and energy capture are limited factors.
This can be similarly seen in our own human growth. A child grows rapidly, thus consuming lots of energy through nutrients. When that child reaches maturity, they do not become dead or static – they become a dynamic system that utilizes energy and nutrient to continue living – they are a dynamic system (just as you are). Unless that adult overconsumes nutrients’ they will not grow significantly for the rest of their life. This can be equated to the fast growth of our economic system in the 1800s, in that innovation found lots of niches to fill up in peoples’ lifestyles accumulating comforts and material possessions as businesses grew the monetary economy. But you must come to a point where marketing niches are as limited as the resources and energy supplies that manufacture them. Except, we began a system where exponential growth of the economy was not treated as limited. To keep growing we had to begin a system that perpetuated the myth of cornucopia and superabundance. Then add to that the myth of ‘away’ (you throw it away and it magically disappears) and you get our modern world of overflowing trash heaps, oceans awash with plastics and pollution of all kinds, and an atmosphere that even in pristine and remote areas of the planet delivers toxics pollutants to the surface. As far back as 1972, a Club of Rome report was clear about how a growing system is unsustainable. Daly and Costanza in the 1980s gave us ‘Ecological Economics’ that emphasized ‘Natural Capital’ that mirrored the natural worlds capital. A lot has been written since that promotes using the natural world ass a model, yet the belief systems that everything is OK dominates the global neo-classical economic system developed in 1871 when international trade and commerce were in a logarithmic growth phase. We have long passed that phase yet the system continues unabated.
A sustainability paradigm that uses a steady state system begins with the premise that all matter on the planet is a closed finite system that demands we recycle everything just as the natural world does – there is no waste in nature since any waste is food for another part of the system. Energy, however, is an infinite throughput system with the precursor of all energy as we can currently use it originating with the sun’s and its influence on the planet. I read with interest the discussions on ‘Zero Point Energy,’ but that is a whole branch of the rabbit hole for another time. Although a blog post of what free energy might do to the whole infrastructure of the planet would be interesting – look out for a ‘Better than Di-Lithium Crystals’ post at some point. If we have a well-hashed out set of ideas on Ecological Economics, why aren’t we at least trying it out. What would a human world look like in a steady state? Something exciting or a drudgery of limited resources all the time? It certainly would be different from our currently disposable-convenience focused way of living. We are already using environmental economic theory to manage many resource systems. Can we transition to an ecological model? Therein lies much of the problem – we talk transition. This implies that we will move smoothly into a new future. My friend Bill Scott’s blog has been exploring recently how we would use education to create this transition. The one point that always crosses my mind is how do we set up a path for a future equitable society from our current dystopian one. What kind of incentives would we need to change and who will be leading the change (or is it charge)? Will it really need some kind of global catastrophe where the survivors rebuild the system following a new awareness of what went wrong? I certainly hope not. Can we do it equitably from our current position? I definitely think so, BUT we have to stop thinking as we currently do. Too many people are caught up in the illusion of modern living. The elephant in the room here is that most of us think as individuals in a system where everything is separate from everything else. We still keep thinking of sharing and caring as individuals simply living together. I’ve seen enough ‘Intentional Communities’ fail because egoic individuals, with self-righteous messianic zeal, wanted control of what they perceive was the ‘right way’ to do things. Bill Scotts blog outlines the various educational researchers with parameters that our educational process might use, yet this is still prescribed learning goals and objectives. This wasn’t my original direction for ending this post on steady state, but more discussion on education might help elucidate the concept more.
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