Climate hazards too much for the current governance paradigm to handle

11/22/2018 , , , , , 0 Comments


Life on Earth is under enormous stress from a rapidly changing environment and climate. A recent study in Nature show how human societies are already impacted by a changing climate in at least 467 different ways. For example, increased water evaporation and increased air capacity to hold moisture, due to warming, have lead to extreme drought in places that are commonly dry (California, Middle East and Southwest Asia) that have lead to higher risk of heatwaves and wildfires. Warmer ocean waters enhances evaporation and wind speeds thus intensifying downpours and the strength of storms and risk of flooding from storm surges aggravated by sea-level rise. 

The cumulative changes from a disrupted climate are so massive and the speed at which they are occuring so rapid, only comparable to when a meteorite killed the dinosaurs som 65 million years ago, that many species will have a hard time adapting. Species must either tolerate the change, move, adapt, or face extinction. We know that species on land are moving polewards by 17 km per decade and marine species 72 km per decade. And just like terrestrial mountainside species are moving upslope to escape warming lowlands some fish species are driven deeper as the sea surface warms. This in turn impacts human well-being and is already forcing people to migrate.


The current socio-economic paradigm has not changed in accordance with occuring biophysical changes and will not be able to handle the mounting pressure unless it adapts or transforms into something new. A rapidly changing world cannot be navigated by concentrated, rigid, hierarchical, short-term social systems that resist change and tries to maintain status quo. We know this to be true of all living systems, including human societies. Civilisations fail to adapt to changing environmental conditions because they try to maintain high levels of sociopolitical complexity (large armies, bureaucracies, social stratification, occupational specialisations) and focus on expansion instead of dissolving into decentralized, smaller, more flexible and innovative units that are able to respond to change more effectively. That's why corporations, with global scope, are doing better than nation states. And why local communities and municipalities are responding more effectively to changes than governments. 

However, the limiting conditions, resource availability, under climate change make adaptation in place difficult since entire regions are becoming increasingly uninhabitable. Thus forcing people to migrate, just like other species do. This in turn puts extra pressure on national governments as social tensions increase over remaining resources. States that fail to provide essential services for their citizens eventually foster uprisings and risk internal conflict and collapse. We already see this occuring in the Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Isreal/Palestine, Egypt). 

Unless governments take seriously the need for fundamental change of the sociopolitical system they will be unable to handle to shift to a post-carbon society able to cope with climate change. Trying to expand and pile on further sociopolitical complexity to the system will not work.
Climate Hazards

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When greed and growth kills

11/14/2018 , , , , , , , 0 Comments


The capitalistic system only has two modes of operation, either expanding or collapsing. That's why people are so obsessed with growth, because it stabilises the system. Capitalism is premised on the logic of never ending growth: debts are made on the basis that they can be repaid with future income, and profits are invested to gain future profits. It's the only super-exponentially expansionary socioeconomic system in the history of humanity. And its only made possible by consuming and depleting finite fossil fuels. But it's now coming to an end.

The absolutely religious idea that a nation must grow its economy by 2-3% and population each year only emerged over the last 100 years. The idea of social progress only came about because people attacked peoples spirituality and wanted to replace it with materialistic values and short-termism, viewing the world as a machine, nature to be dominated, and people of as slaves to the system. Taking away everything of real value to people meant it had to be replaced by something else, and that became economic structures, commodification of life. Instead of people's well being and survival focus shifted to financial flows.

Now we pray to the measure called GDP because we have no higher purpose than to be debt slaves until we die. A tragic fate that people strangely cling onto no matter what the costs. We don't even blink when 70% of insects gets annihilated, I mean we all have to make money so whatever….right? No, not if you want to be able to eat in the future. Fishing out the oceans, filling them with plastics, and eroding half of the Biospheres topsoil and people say we should not question material growth!?

The idea of perpetual expansion has taken over our language and infiltrated our subconscious, talking about “green growth”, “personal growth”, “smarter growth” etc. These oxymorons shows how desperate we are to continue lying to ourselves that “everything is fine” and we “only have to make small adjustments” to our way of life. 

Under crude capitalism, stagnation leads to exploding debt, followed by a crisis and austerity for the people while the rich escape safely. And thats what will happen again and again as the world economy gradually contracts until it breaks abruptly and people really start to suffer. And then when you are dirt poor and could have really used a healthy piece of land with access to freshwater to grow food on and insects to pollinate those crops there are none, because you already destroyed them, and so you have to fight for the last remaining resources left to survive. 

That's whats happening in Yemen right now, where millions of people are starving, because they are being bombed to pieces, there is no access to energy or water and people cant afford food. Of Yemen's population of 30 million, 17 million are in desperate need of food aid, and seven million Yemenis are at risk of famine, many children already starving, which the UN has warned would be the worst the world has seen for 100 years.


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Inequality and economic crisis leaves democracies open to totalitarianism

11/11/2018 , , , , , , 0 Comments



The central assumption of the neoliberal economic model that material consumption and industrial expansion can continue without devastating political and environmental consequences is known to be false. Yet, every politician on Earth is pushing for further material growth which in a time of resource scarcity only leads to rapidly increasing income inequality. This in turn undermines the stability of society. And vulnerable societies that suffer major economic downturns are known to elect dangerous people and do some crazy stuff.

Overexploiting and degrading both ecological and social capital to gain ephemeral financial capital is the pathway to collapse of a society. Anthropological and agent-based modelling studies have shown that any society that undermines its ecological base runs into declining marginal returns from further material growth. When a threshold is passed, and net energy starts to fall, society can no longer afford to maintain its social organisation and infrastructure and starts to decay. If the ruling elite refuses to give up on trying to push the economy to grow the remaining resources will simply be swallowed up by the resource sector and benefit only a small minority of rich elites while the majority grows poorer over time. This will of course cause political turmoil as even the middle class starts to voice their dissatisfaction. And the entire process makes any democracy open to totalitarianism, a form of government in which the state has no limits in authority and does whatever it wants.

Full collapse from over-depletion and high levels of inequality. Source: Castro et al. 2014
“Democracy is first and foremost about equality: equality of power and equality of sharing in the benefits and values made possible by social cooperation” (Sheldon Wolin, 2010, p. 61).

Most societies have no mechanisms for sharing power and the benefits of cooperation in a time of involuntary degrowth, which we are currently in. Every government policy since the 1970s have only worsened the issue by promoting the enrichment of the capital owning class over the worker class through financialisation. Giving out cheap credit has masked the systemic issues and kept the middle class happy for a while, as they get to continue consuming resources in the moment, but its a giant ponzi scheme that will collapse eventually. Meanwhile, the working class has only suffered since the 70s, with falling living standards and increasing poverty, and thus started to heavily mistrust the ruling elite.

Furthemore, wealth equalizing institutions, such as income taxation, has become ineffective in a globalised world. Big corporations and rich individuals can escape national laws and continue to enrich themselves at the cost of everyone else and nature. The world's richest 1 percent now owns as 82% of global wealth, while the poorest 3.7 billion people saw no increase in their wealth in 2018.

When people are desperate for change, ideology becomes a powerful weapon. If people have no way to influence the political system, no equality in control of the instruments of persuasion, other than voting every four years it cannot be called a true democracy. Private control over the media and higher education are examples of public loss of instruments of persuasion.

Rising inequality opens up a power vacuum that is easily filled by leaders of business or populistic parties in order to extract what they want from the system. The rich business elites usually claim the “trickle down” doctrine or that “government is the problem” to justify deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. While populistic parties (left and right) exploit the working class hate of elites and fuels polarisation and division in society while arguing for a centralised strong government. We see this type of development all over Europe and in the US.

The only way to combat this negative development, as I see it, is to promote decentralization of power and strengthening local economies with circular resource flows that stay within certain boundaries through for example a local currency. And promoting self-sufficiency. Also trying to even the playing field by offering alternative stories through online platforms when the mainstream media is failing. I know that many instead are calling for global governance to reign in multinational corporations but that won't be possible in a resource constrained world and it's certainly not what people are going to vote for. 

If no credible options are put forward as the old story breaks apart there is a high chance that people will turn to “strongman” governance in their desperation for change. With potentially catastrophic consequences for peace and security. It's now 100 years since the end of World War I and we are again living in very dangerous times. Europe is so fragile that it feels like any shock could trigger something major, especially if we have a major financial collapse. Unfortunately, such a financial crisis looks increasingly likely as the global debt bubble has started to unravel. I hope there is still some sanity left among people to resist another major war.

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The Middle East on Fire

11/09/2018 , , , , , 0 Comments

Source: FAO Aquastat, Oxford Analytica


When people from the West and its mainstream media try to analyse what's happening in the Middle East all they talk about is armed conflict and war. But never do they mention the deep fundamental drivers of energy, water scarcity and climate change. 

Many countries in the Middle East are extremely vulnerable and on the verge of break down because they cannot deal with mounting economic/energy and environmental costs. Only a little disturbance is needed to make these states fall apart and then all hell can break loose. It has nothing to do with what type of people they are, its simply a matter of survival that brings out the worst in people. When water resources dry up, agriculture collapse, there's no way to make and income and food becomes unaffordable people tend to riot no matter which country. Thats what happened during the French revolution, after 1 million died from famine and peasants turned on the ruling elite.

Displaying a complete lack of understanding of the situation, and utter lack of morality, the imperial powers decided to try and grab the regions oil resources by getting rid of Saddam Hussein but instead created a power vacuum that was filled by al-Qaeda extremists who rapidly transformed into the Islamic State. Then followed by a proxy war over resources and power between many different actors in the region. Never ending fighting with no real benefits for anyone involved. The US "divide and rule" strategy is an utter failure. 

Intensifying the fight against extremists doesn't deal with the fundamental drivers of why they exist in the first place. Instead its producing more extremists as the conditions that laid the groundwork for the rise of IS are worsening. The long-term ecological crisis of especially water stress is worsening in the region. Severe drought conditions intensified by water mismanagement and climate change have led to failed crops and lack of clean drinking water. Leading to increasing food import reliance and pushing people to move into the cities where there are no job opportunities, creating tensions. Then government subsidies for food and fuel get slashed as state revenues from falling oil exports decline. This at a time when oil and food prices have steadily risen and have had major spikes on the international market. That's the perfect storm. 

Absolutely nothing have been done to build local capacity to cope with extreme weather or manage ecosystems more sustainably. The conditions of deepening water scarcity are projected to intensify in coming years and decades. Meanwhile population keeps growing. And that's why the future in the region looks bleak. The US idea of turning Iraq into a booming oil economy is simply nonsense. Even if there is still more oil left in Iraq, compared to Syria, Yemen or Egypt, they too will face peak oil within a decade or so. Hedging your entire future on oil is utterly idiotic and as we witness very destructive.

Yemen reached a production peak in oil in 2001 and has now practically collapsed. Acute water scarcity and lack of food is reaching levels of mass famine. Nationwide fuel shortages are routine and economic activities have come to a halt. Livelihoods are destroyed, people starve and live in misery, and yet the US and UK support Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign of the country. 


The Conflict Shoreline by Eyal Weizman. Shows the aridity line, areas of about 200 millimetres of rainfall a year, considered the minimum for growing cereal crops on a large scale without irrigation, and western drone strikes in red dots


Egypt has become a net importer of oil and food and is struggling to pay its bills for a growing population. Poor water management (irrigation, pollution, dumping of waste) and growing demand has led to water scarcity in the country. Cairo residents don't have access to water for large portions of the day. The U.N. World Water Development report for 2018 warns that Egypt is currently below the U.N.’s threshold of water poverty and dramatically heading towards absolute water scarcity (500 m3 per capita).

Even if we are able to limit global warming to 2 degrees the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will become unbearably hot and many parts unlivable in the coming future. Prolonged heat waves and dust storms will plague the already arid region. Destroying much of the region's agricultural potential. Researcher are expecting a climate exodus from the region. Of which we have seen only the beginning. 

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Earth System Sensitivity

11/05/2018 , , , , , , 0 Comments

Annual global temperatures from 1850-2017. The colour scale represents the change in global temperatures covering 1.35°C. Credit: Climate Lab Book, 2018



The Earth System

Earth is a complex dynamic system. Earth system dynamics can be understood in terms of trajectories between alternate states separated by thresholds that are controlled by nonlinear processes, interactions, and feedbacks. For example, over the past 1.2 million years Earth has remained in a state of glacial and interglacial cycles. The current temperature change at 1,2°C above a preindustrial baseline has already pushed Earth out of the next glaciation cycle.

Furthermore, Earth is a water planet and incredibly inert. The time lag between cause and effect, between the heating and the final change in temperature, is large. The full warming effect of a large emission pulse may not be felt for several decades or centuries. As a result, the currently observed change in temperature represents only a part of the eventual expected increase in temperature resulting from already released greenhouse gas emissions.

Exactly where a potential planetary threshold, between a livable state and a hothouse state, might be is uncertain. Steffen et al. (2018) suggests 2°C as the critical limit, stating that passing two degrees could trigger tipping elements in the Earth System that could cascade, triggering further tipping elements, causing rapid warming beyond human control. 

Thus, actions taken over the next decade could significantly influence the trajectory of the Earth System for tens to hundreds of thousands of years and potentially lead to conditions that would be inhospitable to humans and to many other species.

Main point: Earth is tracking a hothouse pathway



Earth System Sensitivity


How the climate system will respond to increasing CO2 levels depends on time-scale and which feedbacks we consider. Taking into account fast feedbacks such as clouds, water vapour, snow cover change, and aerosols we get a climate sensitivity of about 2-4.5°C to a doubling of CO2. But this does not include slow longer-term feedbacks such as ice sheet disintegration, changes in carbon cycle (e.g. permafrost thaw), vegetation cover changes, or changes in oceans ability to store carbon. If we include all feedbacks, both fast and slow, we get a Earth System Sensitivity of 3-6°C.  

Estimated temperature changes from fast and slow feedbacks. Source: Schmidt, 2016

Studies of past climates in Earth's history show that long-term feedbacks play an important role in Earth's overall climate. For example, during the mid-Pliocene some 3-4 million years ago, when global mean temperatures were about 3-4°C warmer than preindustrial and sea levels 10-25 meter higher than today, CO2 levels peaked at 450 ppm. Our current concentration levels stand at 410 ppm CO2, but temperatures have only risen about + 1,2°C, so Earth is likely to warm up at least to similar levels eventually. And we would over millenia have sea-level rise of up to at least 10 m.

The reason why most people don't talk about ESS is due to the fact that its presumed to take centuries or millennia for these slow feedbacks to kick in. But the issue now is that the rate of change is many times faster than any natural rate in Earth's history. Only comparable with catastrophic rare events such as the meteorite strike that took out the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. This means that longer-term “slow” feedbacks such as melting of ice sheets and changes in permafrost carbon stores are starting to occur now, much quicker than expected, and will likely impact humanity during this century.

Which means that on top of some more warming from rapid feedbacks that has yet to be realised due to thermal inertia we also face the consequences of slow feedbacks already coming into play. These biogeophysical forces are incredibly strong and could become dominant in driving the system. Thus limiting the range of potential future trajectories.


Main point: Earth's climate is more sensitive to forcings than standard scenarios of future warming assumes


Biogeophysical Feedbacks


Some of the key negative (dampening) feedbacks such as carbon uptake by land and oceans and reflectivity by ice and snow that have maintained the Earth system in favourable conditions are weakening. We are now witnessing ever more systems close to or passing a threshold, tipping point, causing abrupt change. The challenge with tipping points is that they're often easiest to identify in retrospect.


For example, Arctic sea ice crossed a tipping point in 2007 and is now in terminal decline and could be gone during the summer by 2040 or earlier. Due to the loss of reflective ice the dark oceans are now absorbing more energy, in turn accelerating regional warming, further melting ice and snow. It also influences jet stream patterns causing more extreme weather events in northern latitudes. The loss of Arctic sea ice has also flipped the Barents Sea from acting as a buffer between the warmer Atlantic and colder Arctic ocean to now being essentially an extension of the Atlantic.

A warmer Arctic also leads to thawing of permafrost in the region. Before believed to be a rather gradual process, new studies show abrupt (decades) thaw in Alaska and Siberia due to the formation of thermokarst lakes. Releasing CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere and accelerating warming. 

The Greenland ice sheet is now melting rapidly, the ice caps melting irreversibly. Accelerated surface melt has doubled Greenland's contribution to global sea level rise to 0.74 mm per year since 1992–2011. The interior ice sheet could cross a tipping point slightly under 2C warming. Global sea level rise has accelerated to 4.8 mm/yr. 

The Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has already crossed a tipping point and is melting irreversibly. This will likely trigger a collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet on decadal time scales. Leading to at least 1 meter sea level rise this century. Partial deglaciation of the East Antarctic ice sheet is likely for the current level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, contributing to about 5 metres of sea level rise in the first 200 years.

Melting freshwater pouring into the Atlantic has slowed down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that transports heat from the Gulf of Mexico to Northern Europe. Slightly cooling northwest Europe and piling up heat along the southeast waters of the US. This in turn increases temperature differentials between tropical and sub-polar waters that can drive stronger storms. 


Main point: Abrupt changes are already occurring in the climate system, passing 2°C would likely prove catastrophic

Human feedbacks on the system


As I have explained above, the climate system is much more sensitive to even small perturbations than most people think. Another way of showing this fact is to look at human impacts on the climate before industrialisation. 

Since the rise of agriculture, human activities on Earth have played a role in shaping ecological and climatic conditions. There is good evidence to suggest that the rise of agriculture actually had a positive (amplifying) feedback on early climate, hindering a new ice age to occur. 

Atmospheric CO2 and CH4 increases during the last few millennia are anomalous compared to preceding interglacial periods. The same time period when agriculture spread across the continents and emitted greenhouse gases by clearing forests for crops and pastures, domesticating livestock and burning crop residues. Suggesting that emissions were large enough to warm climate and prolong the natural interglacial warmth.



Ruddiman et al. (2016) show evidence for what seems to be a trend brake in naturally falling CO2 and CH4 concentrations some 6000-5000 years ago, towards increasing concentrations most likely driven by anthropogenic forcing.


We know that agriculture spread across the world during this time period. Agrarian civilisations started to flourish along the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Yellow River some 7000-5000 years ago. Cultivation was dependent on flow and ebb cycles that in turn relied on seasonal rains and melting snows packs in the mountains. These formed the conditions for production of surplus food (energy) which allowed societies to expand and grow more complex.



Ruddiman and colleagues show how the development of irrigated rice paddies in Asia and widespread livestock domestication some 5000 years ago coincides with increases in methane emissions. Just like today, forests were cut down, vegetation slashed and burned to make way for agriculture all across Eurasia, Africa and the Americas. This generated CO2 emissions which in turn impacted climate. 

Archeological data records a shift from forest cover to more open vegetation in northern and central Europe that began som 6000-5000 years ago and was complete by the start of the industrial era. Similarly, early deforestation was likely caused around the Mediterranean by extensive land use by Greek and Roman civilisations. In Britain and France, forests had already been reduced to near-modern levels by 2500-2200 years ago.

East central China had widespread forest cover until 8000 years ago, followed by a persistent decrease especially after 6000 years ago. Archaeological sites, proxy for population density, in central China increased thirtyfold between 8000–7000 and 5000–4000 years ago. By 4000 years ago, coal had come into use as a fuel source in the Yellow River Valley because of lack of wood. Deforestation of southern China during the spread of rice agriculture after 5000 years ago added to the ongoing CO2 increase.

In India, sedentary farming and clearance emerged between 5000 and 3500 years ago, with especially rapid settlement expansion on the Deccan Plateau and in the Ganges plains. 

All this evidence provides support for the idea that large-scale deforestation led to a rise in CO2 during the middle and late Holocene. Many models have missed this because they assume low population numbers and small forest clearance per person and thus show low emissions. But this doesn't fit with historical evidence of larger per capita forest clearing 2500-1000 years ago than during industrial times. Probably because land use was inefficient and required large amounts of land but became more intensive over time as agricultural methods changed.



The simulation above indicates much greater deforestation during the millenia preceding the industrial era in agreement with pollen evidence. In contrast, standard reconstructions that assume small constant per capita clearance during preindustrial times show 40-80% of forest cover still persisting in Europe by the year 1800. Meaning massive deforestation must have taken place within the last 200 years to explain current low forest cover. But this doesn't fit with historical evidence of pervasive reforestation in western and central Europe since 1800, not deforestation. 

Main point: The Holocene climate was partly a consequence of human feedbacks on the climate system


Climate Change Adaptation


Changes in temperature and precipitation have always impacted people by affecting what they could and couldn't grow to harvest food (energy) for survival. 

The climate stabilised about 7,000-5,000 years ago coinciding with the flourishing of agrarian civilisations along the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Yellow River. Cultivation was dependent on flow and ebb cycles that in turn relied on seasonal rains and melting snows packs in the mountains. These formed the conditions for production of surplus food (energy) which allowed societies to grow more complex.

But agrarian societies have always been vulnerable to climatic changes. Sudden cooling events or extended droughts caused widespread famines and sometimes collapsed entire communities. Especially vulnerable were those who relied on single crops or undermined the ecological base for survival for example through intense deforestation. 

For example, a sudden cooling that happened around 3,700 to 3,000 years ago greatly influenced populations in Asia. The most dramatic changes were seen in high latitude and high-altitude areas in Mongolia and the Tibetan Plateau. Crops started to fail and widespread famine took hold. This forced people to migrate, shift to more cold resistant crops, or turn to pastoralism. Cooling temperatures also affected Northern China between AD 291-360, a time when the Chinese capital was relocated from Xian to what is now Nanjing, in the south. Again, people would have had to adapt by migrating, changing crops, herding cattle or trading. It was not an easy process and lots of conflicts arose.

The difference now is of course that the rate of change is much more rapid and that its becoming hotter, not colder, which humans have had less of an experience adapting to. Furthermore, there are no virgin lands left to move to when one region becomes uninhabitable, the world is full and most ecosystems severely degraded. Using migration as a tool for adaptation doesn't work that well anymore. We have also become heavily reliant on just a few crops and undermined diversity by eradicating species. This makes our current civilisation very vulnerable to a changing climate.

Main point: Humans can adapt to a changing climate but this time the rate of change is much more rapid and migration is not a good option


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Involuntary degrowth and its consequences

11/04/2018 , , , , , 2 Comments



We are in a double bind. Growing the economy will cause catastrophic climate change and massive biological extinction. But not growing the economy will lead to lots of suffering under the current neoclassical economic structure. Of course, we could chose to change our entire economic system so that its in line with the biophysical reality we live in, i.e. we would have to give up on growing materially and lower our consumption radically but do so in a more orderly and just fashion. But no, we have made no such decision, instead every government on Earth is trying to push its economy to grow further while dabbling in some greenwashing on the side.

Because we, especially the ruling elites, don't like the alternatives we have to choose from in this dilemma we have tried to maintained status quo at any cost. With the consequence of rapidly rising inequalities, failing infrastructures, collapsing ecosystems, climate disruption and failing states. But now this strategy has reached its end game. The global economy which has been stagnating and on life-support by central bankers stimulus for over a decade is starting to fall apart. All the while people around the world are electing unsavory authoritarian leaders “strong men”, that promote heavy extractive practices, due to increasing mistrust of the ruling elite. The latest example being Brazil.

And nowhere in the mainstream media or from elected politicians do we hear about the underlying issues of our current predicament. About how net energy decline restricts growth and forces the economy to contract. The fact that trying to push for further material growth now costs more than it benefits society. Or that it's simply not possible to fuel our current overconsumptive, overpopulated and destructive techno-industrial society with renewable energy. Not to mention the fact that it's not desirable since it would destroy the ecosystems upon which our very survival depends.

Using total factor productivity as an indicator of returns on innovation, Bonaiuti (2018) has shown how industrial nations have gone through three industrial revolutions of which the latest is now coming to an end. After the peak in the 1930s, when global oil and gas EROI hit a peak, productivity decreased until it reached only 0.34% in the period 1973-95. When US oil production peaked and massive privatization and debt accumulation took off to fund further consumption. The third industrial revolution, known as ICT, has not been powerful enough to compensate for the declining returns of the second industrial revolution. This is evidence that advanced capitalist societies such as the US, Europe and Japan have entered a phase of declining marginal returns or involuntary degrowth with detrimental impacts on societies capacity to maintain its institutional framework.


Total Factor Productivity % of the Private Non-Farm Business Sector (1750-2014). Source: Bonaiuti (2018)





Historical estimate of the global EROI of oil. Source: Court and Fizaine (2017)



In other words, fundamental resources are becoming scarce and expensive and we are becoming poorer and cannot afford to maintain or grow our current society so it starts to crumble. This shows up in the economy in terms of increasingly expensive basic resources like food, rising levels of debt, rising income inequality, underinvestment in infrastructure (e.g. health care, education, railways), and higher unemployment etc.

People are experiencing their living standards falling while politicians are telling them everything is just fine as is, or that the issue can be solved by tweaking the system. But this is no longer enough, people are fed up with false promises and incompetent governments. And rightly so, but the thing people don't realise is the fundamental drivers of our current situation and the fact that no matter how much more they exploit and destroy nature will it improve their lives. Actually, the opposite is true, it only undermines their own wellbeing in the long run. Only investments into low-energy infrastructure and restructuring of the entire economy, focusing on increasing social and ecological capital, can lessen people's suffering. Yet people around the world are voting for violent idiots that promises economic growth by aggressive exploitation of the remaining ecosystems that sustain all biological life.

For example, if the new president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro has his way the Amazon rainforest will be decimated to give way for unsustainable soy plantations. The biodiverse rich region and home to traditional peoples will be destroyed and the ecosystems capacity to oxygenate the planet and store carbon will be greatly impacted. Bolsonaro also has plans to legalise the use of weapons on a wider scale which will probably lead to further indiscriminate killings of people trying to safeguard the Amazon and promote wide scale illegal logging. This of course will only undermine Brazilians wellbeing but the majority believe the opposite to be true.

Economic decline led by net energy decline doesn't have to result in despotism, although it can. A number of other factors are likely influencing how politics in resource scarce times turns out. Weak institutions, dysfunctional media, high levels of inequality, high population growth, high levels of private debt, a powerful military, and high vulnerability to changes in environment are other generic factors likely playing a role. Other factors tied directly to energy include: high dependency on food imports, government budgets tied to fossil fuel exports, high per capita energy use, and high dependency on energy imports.

There are several measures governments and organisations can take to reduce the risk of a society falling into the hands of a dictator. For example by promoting independent media, investing in low-energy infrastructure, reducing political polarization, strengthening democratic institutions, discouraging inequality, building local food production capacity, decentralising the economic and political system, limiting population growth, and reducing financial instability. In other words, the opposite of what many governments are trying to do currently. So people need to wake up to the realities of our situation and demand change, but such change needs to be guided by the understanding of biophysical realities. Otherwise it is doomed to fail, will only promote further violence and destruction.

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Getting rid of lawns - Planting Meadows

11/01/2018 , , , , 0 Comments


There are many ways in which we as individuals can impact biodiversity and ecosystem health. One simple positive change would be for households to change their monoculture grass lawns into biodiverse meadows. 

In Sweden, 52% of the urban green areas are lawns and in the United States lawns cover about 2% of the land area. Lawns may cover as much as 1.4% of the global grassland area and lawn grass is the largest irrigated nonfood crop. This is a extremely wasteful use of resources simply to maintain lawnscapes that does not promote biodiversity or food production.



Gardens could have many positive impacts, for example: providing habitats, storing carbon, air purification, nutrient cycling, water filtration, that are ruined by destructive management practices such as power lawn-mower, irrigation, pesticide use and chemical fertilizers. Lawns usually have very little biodiversity because they are monocultures. 

Lots of studies show that allowing gardens to become more wild, i.e. more diverse like natural ecosystem, by for example planting meadows or food forests would help promote biodiversity while providing us with vital ecosystem services such as fruits, healthy soils, pollination, cleaner air etc. Biodiverse healthy garden ecosystems also provide tremendous aesthetic and cultural values that are achievable without lots of money. Not only that it gives us joy and mental reprieve in a time of enormous social stress.

In many industrial societies, gardens have an enormous potential to provide habitat for many species on the verge of extinction due to the loss of traditional landscapes. Meadows and food forests require very little intervention, are beautiful and provide habitat for a number of threatened species. In a temperate climate like Sweden, meadows that bloom from spring to autumn are a suitable replacement for lawns and would provide relief for many species that once were common in the days of open pastures and small scale non-mechanical farming.

There is now a practical handbook in how to cultivate a meadow in your own garden from the Swedish University of Agriculture that can be found here.
 


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Ecocide - Give Nature Rights

10/31/2018 , , , , 0 Comments



By giving nature legal rights could we halt the ongoing onslaught on vital ecosystems that sustain us? There is currently an upswing in proposals of giving legal rights to ecosystems all around the world as a response to the ongoing onslaught on the natural world.

Ecocide is the loss or damage to, or destruction of ecosystems of a given territory, such that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished.

The power of laws to prevent ecocide is that it creates a legal duty of care that holds peoples responsible to account for the wellbeing of ecosystems. Its an evolving legal approach that wants to change the traditional legal systems description of nature as property to only be used for human benefit. And its based in the recognition that humankind and Nature have co-evolved and co-exist on the planet. It's basically an attempt to create better stewardship of ecosystems by using the legal system. Also known as Earth jurisprudence. 

The basic assumptions are that all living beings have fundamental “rights”, including the right to exist, to have a habitat and to participate in the evolution of life on Earth. These so called rights are limited by the rights of other beings to the extent necessary to maintain the integrity, balance and health of the communities where they exist. 

I have discussed in a previous post about how there are no metaphysical, god given, rights only applicable to humans as believed in the 17th century. Rights are a human construct. So we have to use moral philosophy, ethics, to derive moral values that can guide our conceptions of rights and duties. Most people in the western world today acknowledges that every human has the same fundamental rights independent of sex, ethnicity, sexuality etc. Many countries also have animal rights and environmental protection but to a very limited extent. This reflects how our values have changed over time, yet they are still entirely human centered. A western legacy that is different from native peoples perception of nature.

The idea that a river is a living being is a strange concept to most westerners but it's nothing new to indigenous and traditional peoples. Thats because indigenous philosophical systems tend to see humans as a part of nature not as separate or dominant over nature as the western system does. 

There are several examples of countries that have applied the indigenous idea of “Rights of Nature” to ecosystems. In 2008 Ecuador wrote in Nature rights into the constitution, acknowledging that all life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles. And Bolivia adopted its Law under the Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well in 2012. In 2017, New Zealand passed the Te Awa Tupua Bill which granted the Whanganui River the rights of legal personhood. And in India the holy Ganges and Yamuna Rivers where also granted legal personhood status. In practice this means that if the rivers are threatened by human activity there can be a legal case in court on behalf of the rivers. The fact that such rights could become a reality depend to a large extent on indigenous peoples strong connection to the ecosystem. They have a spiritual connection to the river, see it as sacred, and have a wish to protect it from human destruction. 

There is a shift in values all around the world, driven by non-western traditions and peoples, that will influence legal systems around the planet. Because western ideas and philosophy has failed to halt the ongoing destruction of the natural world people have turned to other sources of inspiration. 

The main goal for many proponents is to achieve an international law against ecocide, habitat destruction, that could safeguard current and future humans and Natures wellbeing. A proposal to amend the Rome Statute, Article 5 - crimes against peace, to include an international crime of Ecocide into the UN legal framework was put forward in 2010. If achieved the crime of Ecocide would be included in Article 5 along with the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crime of aggression. The idea is actually not new, but has been downplayed and dismissed since the 1970s.

”The immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombing, by large scale use of bulldozers and pesticides is an outrage sometimes described as ecocide, which requires urgent international attention. It is shocking that only preliminary discussions of this matter have been possible so far in the United Nations and at the conferences of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where it has been taken up by my country and others. We fear that the active use of these methods is coupled by a passive resistance to discuss them”.- Olof Palme Swedish prime minister 1972

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Rapid loss of life on Earth

10/30/2018 , , , , , 0 Comments

Turtle caught in plastic pollution in the Ocean.

Humanity's population explosion and massive overconsumption of natural resources is killing off wildlife at an unprecedented rate. In the 2018 Living Planet Report by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) we come to understand that there has been a 60% decline in species population sizes since 1970. Especially hard hit are the tropics in South and Central America, which have seen a 89% loss compared to 1970. And freshwater ecosystems, like rivers and lakes, have experienced the largest decline of 83%. We have killed off 83% of all mammals and 50% of all plants since the dawn of civilisation, and its irreversible on human timescales. It is truly a biological annihilation as coined in a scientific study published by Ceballos et al. in PNAS last year.



In 2017 the world lost an amount of forest area equivalent to the size of Italy, destroying habitats, causing biodiversity loss and polluting the environment. There is a growing number of scientists that are now calling for a global deal for nature, creating vast nature reserves to prevent biological armageddon.



The loss of biodiversity is a tragedy in itself but it also threatens the survival of civilisation says experts to the Guardian. People don't understand that biodiversity underpins ecosystem health and thus human health. We already see a dramatic rise in chronic diseases caused by unhealthy diets and pollution. Around 93% of the world's children under the age of 15 years, 1.8 billion children, breathe air so polluted it puts their health at risk and tragically about 600,000 children die from acute lower respiratory infections every year. Studies have also shown that it's not just seabirds that have plastic in their stomachs but we humans have it too. 

Can we turn this development around? We only have until the year 2020 to get our act together according to the WWF-report or it will be too late. Governments need to increase investments several fold into safeguarding biodiversity on land and in the oceans. Protected areas should be expanded to cover at least 20 percent of natural habitats on land and 30 percent of habitats in the ocean. But I'm having a hard time seeing that happening in a world of depleting resources and growing population. Do we have foresight enough to safeguard life on Earth for our own survival? It remains an open question I guess...



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Eating fossil fuels - Failing food security

10/30/2018 , , , , , 0 Comments

Silage windrows in a field in Brastad, Lysekil Municipality, Sweden. Credit: W.Carter (CC0 1.0)

Multiple stressors are converging to make the current industrial food system increasingly unsustainable and vulnerable to perturbations. Of course, the food system is in and of itself a leading cause to what is now threatening its future survival. Climate disruption, freshwater depletion, biodiversity loss, soil erosion and falling EROI on fossil fuels all point to the demise of industrial agriculture. This is well understood by biophysical economists and systems ecologists but often neglected in public or political discussions about food security. Most agricultural policies worsen the problem by making small-scale local agroecological farming unprofitable. Thus dooming large swathes of the population to become reliant on a dying system that costs more than it provides in terms of surplus energy.

There is a big misconception in the world about how modern technology has made us more efficient in agriculture. We think that big machines and lots of fertilizers are a better use of resources than employing more people. While large scale farming may seem efficient at first glance our perceptions are opposite of reality. How efficient the production of food is depends on the amount of energy expended on its development. The EROI, Energy Return on Investment, shows us the true nature of our efficiency in producing and consuming food. 

In hunter-gatherer societies, the relevant EROI metric is the caloric value of the food captured or gathered, versus the caloric expenditure of the hunt or gathering expedition. Studies of hunter-gatherers show an EROI of 10:1 to as high as 50:1 (Glaub 2015, Glaub & Hall 2017) depending on effort and final consumption. Large prey eaten directly by the hunting party only would yield a large energy profit while meat provided to support the hunters families would yield lower EROI ranging between 16:1 to 6:1. Nevertheless, this relatively large energy profit ratio probably allowed for the leisure time often associated with gathering societies. But limited capacity for food storage and settlement hinders development of a larger society. 

High population and overexploitation of resources was likely a driver of early domestication. In pre-industrial agriculture, dependent on peasant farmers, the EROI was 5:1 or less (Day et al. 2018) as it required intense efforts over long periods with often variable results. Much time was spent on production of food, fodder and fuelwood. But farming had the benefit of food storage which led to established settlements and concentrated labour. Fuelling population growth and specializations. 

Early industrialized societies benefited from high EROI from fossil fuels and large energy surpluses. Capital and energy substituted for labour. Food, fodder and fuel could be provided with fewer workers, permitting an expansion of non-primary sectors. The range of goods and services expanded. In the United Kingdom, energy and food expenditures fell to 20% as a proportion of GDP in 1830 from 50-80% prior to the industrial revolution (Day et al. 2018). But EROI of global oil reached its maximum value of 50:1 in the 1930s and has fallen since then to about 10-15:1 today (Court & Fizaine 2017). Modern industrial high-tech agriculture now consumes a staggering 10 calories of energy for every calorie of energy (food) delivered to the market, i.e. EROI of 1:10. Rending much of agriculture a net energy loss and completely unviable without fossil fuels.

As EROI of fossil fuels continues to fall an increasing amount of energy will be needed simply to provide energy and food to society. Leaving less energy over for other sectors of the economy such as education, health care etc. The only way to get out of this trap is to switch to renewable energy sources and promote small-scale, local, agroecological food production that can generate high yields but in a more diffused manner. Just like renewable energy technologies. Thus there needs to be a transition from centralised to decentralised energy and food production. Very few believe we can replace all fossil fuels with biofuels or electricity, especially in the agricultural industry that is very reliant on diesel as transport fuel. Furthermore, even if some farms could make such a shift in fuel use they would still be unsustainable if they continue to erode soils, eradicate biodiversity, deplete freshwater sources and pollute the environment. Even FAO recognizes this dilemma and now promotes agricultural practices in line with ecosystem-based management. 

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Is there such a thing as natural rights?

10/25/2018 , , , , , 0 Comments

Garden of Gods. Credit. John Fowler CC-BY 2.0

Europeans have for the last 30 years lived in their own little bubble of financial scams protected by American hegemony, but that is now imploding by debt deflation and utter disgust with the ruling elite. And while criticising the current neoliberal economic paradigm is one step in the right direction there still seems to be an unwillingness to reflect upon our deeper values, about rights and freedoms, that ultimately led us here.

We live on a finite planet that is now full of people but running low on resources. Our social contracts and economic frameworks developed during a time when the world was less crowded and had plenty of resources. Disregarding biophysical realities is not an option anymore. Therefore one must ask, are those social constructs of ours still valid?

Well, we know that our economic framework certainly is not. There's plenty of evidence to prove that. But how about our ideas about so called “natural” rights?


Social contract theory


The political ideology called liberalism, that we now take for granted, arose from 17th century European ideas about natural rights and social contract theory.

The idea and theory of a social contract gained prominence in Europe when it became one of the leading ways of explaining and delimiting peoples duty of obedience to their government and of their right to resist and overthrow government when it became oppressive. It was an attempt to explore the best form of government and its justifications. What should laws require? When do people have a duty to obey decent government? And when may they justly exercise their right to resist oppressive government?

According to the early formulations of social contract theory citizens may justly exercise their right to resist governments that flagrantly and systematically fails to perform its basic tasks or preserve fundamental rights. And laws are only legitimate when they are generated by the institutions and procedures that are part of the terms of the social contract.

Until the end of the 17th century the social contract was understood in communitarian terms. It was not understood in individualistic terms. The government received its legitimate power in a grant from the community as a whole, not from the the individuals comprising that community. And governments only have legitimate authority when that community consents, through its rightful representatives, to transfer its power to the government. Therefore, the right to resist an oppressive government was only justified by the community as a whole, not individual persons.

But then Thomas Hobbes came along and dropped a bombshell in his famous book Leviathan. He rejected the communitarian aspect of the social contract tradition and claimed that rights belonged to individual persons but that they are at constant war with each other, due to human nature being fundamentally egoistic, and therefore needed to grant power to a strong state that in turn would ensure protection. He believed such a social contract therefore needed to be non-liberal and absolutist-authoritarian.

During the early 19th century the idea of metaphysical natural rights came under attack. Utilitarianist like Bentham rejected the idea that any objective, universal and moral rights possessed by humans in virtue of a common human nature existed. More people agreed with Rousseau's ideas that human nature changed through history. Hume claimed that very few people had actually ever consented to be governed and that it was hard to see how such consent could ever be fairly proved. Furthermore, they argued, that society is much more like an organism which develops without conscious control by its parts than it is like an artificial machine controlled by some outside force. The claim of god given natural rights were believed to have led to bloody wars and revolutions that reigned terror upon Europe and so metaphysical rights and social contract theory were both out of fashion by 1815.

In the Americas, thinkers were slower to reject natural rights and social contract theory than in post-1815 Europe. But by 1861 the idea of natural rights came under scrutiny as it was suspected that the theory had contributed to the South's attempt to secede from the Union and its commitment to states founded on racial slavery. But the doctrine of natural rights continued to be widely popular throughout the period. Many anti-slavery arguments appealed to natural rights. And many pro-slavery arguments did the same, arguing that which legal rights anyone had depended on their natural rights, but slaves were not genuinely human, and so did not have the natural right not to be enslaved!

In Latin America, the idea of natural rights were seen as a obstacle in trying to create a stable government by the 1870s. They rejected the idea in favour for the liberal principles of J.S Mill and Herbert Spencer, as well as those of Auguste Comte´s authoritarian socialism.

The massive and seemingly pointless slaughter of the first world war came to be blamed on the organic theory of the state and society. That blame, along with modernisms distaste for evolutionist models, dethroning Darwin and makine Einstein king of scientific thought, eventually overthrew the organic theory. But utilitarianism continued to predominate in secular moral theory and political thinking, especially after the Great Crash of 1929 when people were sympathetic to socialist and collectivist premises.

But by the 1960s, utilitarianism were overthrown and in the 1970s collectivism was abandoned and replaced by individualism. Natural rights and social contract theory returned to the stage. This was much due to the US unjust war in vietnam killing hundreds of thousands of innocents. People blamed it on deranged utilitarian thought. Unfairly utilitarianism itself was blamed for the US morally corrupt reasoning. And so people turned to Rawls, Nozick and Dworkin's ideas of individual rights trumping collective-utilitarian policies and the Kantian view that governments main duty is to give equal respect to all its citizens.


Modern critique

Given what we know today one must reject the old fashioned ideas of natural rights and social contract that originated from the 17th century and came back to force during the 1960s.

First of all, these ideas came into being in a world that still had plenty of resources and healthy ecosystems to support the population. It was a world were only white men were allowed to take part in discussions, where slavery was rampant, and humans believed themselves to rule over nature.

Our understanding of the world is much better today. We now know that we live in a world that is completely beholden to physical laws such as thermodynamics, conservation of mass, evolution, and diminishing returns of complexity.

We know that there are no such things as objective god given or natural rights, we made them up. We know that people in the past used the claim of natural rights to justify slavery because they didn't want to give up the “free” energy that generated their wealth. Similarly, they didn't recognize that all humans come from a common ancestor and that we are part of the larger animal community. Or that females often chooses the male, not the other way around. Neither did they consider the fact that without healthy ecosystems humans wouldn't survive.

We have to move away from the old reductionist thinking that treats humans and other organisms as isolated parts in a big machinery. We know that the world doesn't work that way. We are part of a whole that interact and feedback on each other. Outcomes are an emergent phenomenon that cannot be derived from studying parts in isolation. Depending on guiding principles, incentive structures, we get different outcomes. Our current incentives tells us to destroy ecosystem for profit so that we can consume even more resources until they run out and we starve. That's simply suicidal.

Moreover, we know that human nature is not just based on selfishness. Humans are capable of both egoistic and altruistic actions but incentives guide them to behave in one way more than the other. It is true in a strict biological sense that humans try to maximize their own and kins net energy in order to survive and thrive but we also know that reciprocity and cooperation has had an evolutionary advantage. By hunting or farming in groups, bigger prey or larger fields can be used to gain a larger energy surplus. Thus being an advantage also to the individual. But a society is much larger than any tribe (say 250 people) and so eventually one cannot rely on personal trust and reciprocity to maintain order. Therefore people invented social constructs like culture and religion to guide human behaviour. Later one, as societies grew ever larger they instituted authorities to oversee that these incentive structures were being followed.

In a full world, there is no room for individual rights over collective outcomes if we wish to avoid mass suffering of both humans and nature. Of course, people will react to this and say “look at all the dictatorships” bla bla etc. But they forget that they will eventually have to kiss their so called “individual rights” goodbye anyway if we continue on the current track. Fossil fuels and other resources are depleting, making us poorer, more unequal and more at risk of death from climate change. Resource limitations often lead to competition, conflict and war. Something we have already started seeing. The neoliberal capitalist ideals born out of the 1960s return to 17th century ideas about natural rights have been an utter failure.

And if we want to talk about rights we must admit that they are made up by humans and can be changed. From an objective perspective, a human has as much right to live as a hedgehog or an oak tree. Either that, or none of us has any rights at all and matters of mass killings or mass extinctions are simply a tragic fate of natural laws.

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