Transportation

The Upside of Down

Posted on June 12, 2009. Filed under: Books, Community, Consumerism, Health, Nature, Peace, Social justice, Transportation, Uncategorized |

Another book review – sorry it’s quite long, but worth it I think.  Be sure to check out the link to the CBC to Gwynn Dyer’s series, Climate Wars, which revisits most of these issues with current examples of how these stresses are being played out on the world stage.

BOOK REVIEW

The Upside of Down : Catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization

by Thomas Homer Dixon

This book is a fascinating, albeit unsettling analysis of how economic, environmental, sociological, and political forces in contemporary society could interact to challenge our current lifestyles and lives.  It’s more than an environmental wake-up call, but incorporates the social forces, including disparity between rich and poor, and increasing connectivity that affect and will be affected by environmental and/or economic catastrophes.

It’s interesting to note that this book, published in 2006, predates the current economic meltdown we experience in late 2008 – yet Homer Dixon’s predictions about the consequences of this kind of phenomenon are being played out in much the way he describes.

Here are my notes from this book.

There are five tectonic stresses accumulating deep beneath the surface of our contemporary societies:

1. Population stress arising from differences in populateion growth rates between rich and poor societies and from spiralling growth of megacities in poor countries
2. Energy stress from increasing scarcity of conventional oil
3. Environmental stress from worsening damage to land, water, forests, fisheries
4. Climate stress from atmospheric changes
5. Economic stress from instabilities in global economic system and ever widening income gaps between rich and poor

Any combination of these five stresses in combination with what he calls multipliers will make breakdown more likely, widespread, and severe.  These multipliers are:

1. Rising speed and global connectivity of our activities, t3echnologies, and societies
2. Escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people

Globalization’s  face today is about  a virtual vertical rise in the scope, connectdness, and speed of all humankind’s  activities and impact  (speed of disease spread infestation of insects, and human mightration

Globalization has created benefits but also huge challenges. Allows for disruptions to cascade outward like with SARS. Especially worrisome is the spread of lethal technologies  tha have raised destructive power of angry and violent people.  Technologies that provide killing power to fanatics, insurgents, and criminal gangs. Never before has it been possible for small groups to destroy entire cities.

This one fact will ensure our future is entirely different from our past.

Stresses and multipliers are a lethal mix that boosts the risk of collapse of the political, social, and economic order in individual countries and globally – what he calls synchronous failure.

Convergence of stresses makes  synchronous failure  more possible.

In the past, one or two major challenges might occur at once. But today we may face an alarming variety like oil shortages, climate change, economic instability, and mega-terrorism at the same time.

Synchronous failure is disaster on a grand scale and something we must do our best to avoid.

We usually respond to this by 1) denial; and then 2) reluctant management

Most experts working on global problems advocate management response – doesn’t help much because we need changes to existing economic and political order.  Staunch opposition from powerful and entrenched interest groups so are hardly ever carried out.

Need to make our technological, economic, and social systems more resilient to unexpected shocks (like de-centralized energy generation)

Prepare to take positive advantage of breakdowns that do occur by being well prepared, nimble, and smart and by learnikng to recognize warning signs.

The central purpose of this book is to help us recognize the signs and prepare for breakdown. See theupsideofdown.com to join the conversation to do so.

Sometimes, in the face of crisis or upheaval, new, more innovative, and better systems evolve.  He calls this categenesis – the reinvention of our future.

The future cannot be predicted but we know it wll include elements of surprise, instability, and extraordinarily change.

We need to change our conventional ways of thinking and speaking; the idea of being able to understand and manage everything is dangerous partly because we then lose our capacity for self-criticism and self-reflection. We need to adopt an attitude toward the world, ourselves, and our future with the knowledge that constant change and surprise are inevitable – what he calls having a prospective mind.  A prospective mind recognizes how little we understand and how less we control it.  It’s not a relentlessly pessimistic viewpoint – we shouldn’t approach the future with fear.

A prospective mind looks to prevent or forestall horrible outcomes through management but most importantly by imagining and implementing more radical solutions.  Good men and women must be prepared to act, to make us more resilient to shock, and moresupple in response to rapid change.

In the near future we’ll be faced with one critical junction after another in rapid succession.

As the Roman empire declined,  architectural monument construction ceased, , institutions and social structures became simpler, peasants became more tightly tiedl to local landlords in feudal relationships, taxes dropped, civil administration declined, and everyone travelled far less.

In 1950 there were about 2 poor people for every rich person on Earth; today there are about 4; and in 2025 there will be nearly. Grave implications for world peace

Discrepancy between rich and poor and the poor’s knowledge of it  because of technology. Migration of young men especially at interfaces between rich and poor regions (US and latin America; Timor and Australia; North Africa and Europe. Many die trying to get to the richer region but most feel it’s worth the risk.

In rich countries, immigration laws are getting tightened up to restrict movement.

Wealthy societies have experienced only a tiny fraction of the immigration pressure they’ll face in the coming decades.

Features of rapid urbanization in poor countries (43/% of whom live in slums) and their inherent problems includes; (weakness  of governance and police, crime and gangs, extreme income discrepancies – rich resorts and gated communities next to slums);  also the growth and number of mega-cities.

Young men, out of school, out of work and charged with hatred

15-29 year old cohort of young men is 40% or more of the population in  Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Makes up 50% or more in the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, and Yemen

Organized violence by the urban underclass is more likely when big cities suffer a sudden economic shock  due to currency devaluation, debt crisis, or increased energy prices

Association for Peak Oil and Gas

Alternatives to oil:

1. Natural gas, stocks now seriously depleted; in some other places (middle east, Siberia, and Central Asia supplies are far from ppl who could use them. Shops to transport gas would need to be build as would receiving tyreminals all of which would greatly reduce its EROI. These terminals would also be appealing targets for terrorists.
2. Coal – there are immense deposits but at huge environmental cost,
3. Solar – currently very expensive but could be competititve with conventional energy within a decade or two; but sunlight is not consisten and not available year-round.
4. Nuclear – security risks; also waste disposal problem
5. Nuclear fusion, idifficult to harness on Earth
6. Hydrogen – Storage and acquisition costs and technical problems

No really good alternatives to oil so we need to work on the demand side; i.e. conservation

We need to get away from the idea that our society and economy depends on high rates of growth for well-being. As long as we’re addicted to strong economic growth, our energy consumption will not go down even if we steadily improve energy efficiency

As oil beomes scarcer and costlier, peak oil will present itself this way. A period of recurring prices surges, recessions, international tensions, and growing conflicts for access to critical oil supplies

Social breakdown will become steadily more likely as world’s accumulating tectonic stresses  especially energy stress combine to overload our societies.

Scholars say that revolutions happen when inflexible societies experience multiple shocks

Unalloyed and simplistic optimism about the future is really just denial in another guise.

Social causes of denial. Self-interest of powerful groups – corporations, government agencies, lobbyists, religious institutions, unions. NGSs have a vested interest in a particular way of doing things or of viewing the world. If evidence doesn’t fit their worldview these groups work to deny this evidence.

Homer Dixon explains why we keep thinking we need ongoing economic growth

Economic elites don’t just encourage consumerism. Through their influence on media and political process, they create, reproduce, and justify a pervasive and interlocking system of rules and institutions from property rights and capital markets to contract and labour laws – that promotes growth and that, in the process, buttresses their power and privilege . A particular language of capitalism – a “discourse” of economic rationality and competition that penetrates into every nook and cranny of our economies, societies, and lives – helps us understand and abide by these rules and institutions.  This language says that people maximize their pleasure from consumption and that they make decisions as if they were calculating machines, constantly weighing costs and benefits to evaluate their choices.  Also says that our labour is a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace. Equates our personal identities with our economic roles in that marketplace. Taken as a whole, modern capitalism’s system of rules, institutions, and language is formidably resistant to change. Economic elites have learned to  protect their status by creating a system of incentives and a dynamic of economic growth that diverts political conflict into manageable, largely nonpolitical channels. As long as the system delivers the goods – defined by capitalist democracy as a rising material standard of living and enough new jobs to absorb displaced labour – no one is motivated to challenge its foundations. We find it easier to play by the reules if we believe in the legitimacy and reasonableness of the larger system that creates these rules. We become invested in the capitalist worldview, without which our modern world wouldn’t make sense, we wouldn’t know our social and economic  roles and it would be hard to connect and communicate with people.  The interests of business prevail over all others.  So our economic system generates pervasive insecurity; this insecurity impels us to play by the rules and justify them.

We shouldn’t expect any challenge to capitalism’s tenets to come from the top of our social hierarchy. Members of economic elite rarely have qualms about the prevailing economic worldview because it sustains their status and they believe they’ve achieved that status through their superior intelligence, guts, and drive.  The conviction that one’s advantages re entirely fair seems a condition of membership in the rarefied upper strata.  A cycle of delusion and denial. Economic growth is seen as a panacea for all our social and personal problems.  Growth equals  health.  This perspective is the opposite of what HOMER DIXON says we need  in a prospective mind to lead us wisely into the future.  Compare to the Heliocentric cosmos where more and more elaborate and far-fetched theories were raised to try to justify the inconsistencies of the heliotropic worldview (i.e. that the universe revolves around the earth) pp.  216-219

Our societies are faced with more problems simultaneously and that the pace at which these unfold seems to be3 increasing. A growing number of problems chained together and that reinforce each other in unexpected ways.

Holling posits the world is on the verge of some kind of systemic crisis

3 reasons:

1. Collapse is usually part of the story about how complex systems evolve
2. Rapidly rising connectivity within global systems both economic and technological increases the risk of deep collapse.
3. Rise of mega-terrorism to kill huge numbers of people and produce major disruptions in world systems.

Think of humanity as one immense social-ecological system.

A build-up of pressure from multiples stresses, a series of shocks and weakening of resilience can push a society over the edge.

Dislocated lives, worseneing poverty,  and wider income gaps affect the motivation to participate in violence by providing fodder for extremist leaders. They create in people general feelings of frustration and anger that leaders can shape and focus into powerful resentments against governments or specific groups. Income gaps are especially good at doing this, because people care more about that relative than their absolute status. People on the losing side of the gaps or who strongly identify with those who are can be made to feel profoundly humiliated.

Likelihood of violence in our world is the power shift allowing fewer people to kill large numbers of people more quickly than ever before. This is particularly visible in poor countries that have been flooded with small arms and light weapons. This gives militias, ethic groups, political factions, and gangs the opportunity to wreak havoc.  Places like Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and eastern Congo have experience this resulting in the virtual collapse of govt authority. Organized crime and armed militias have quickly filled the vacuum

As American leaders realize how the shift from a high-EROI to a low-EROI world jeopardizes their country’s dominance, they’ll do what Rome did: use every means including force to organize and control the world’s territory to permit the extraction of energy. (think tar-sands)

In the next decade, while the US desperately tries to extract energy resources around the planet  and likely get into fights as a result it will be faced with terrorist threats.

What Homer Dixon describes next is a possible social earthquake scenario  actually was occurring in 2006-7.

Chi na’s predicament immediately relevant to the rest of the world. The international economic crisis involving rupture of the dollar relative between US and China – a twin bubble symbiosis

China sells 40% of its exports to the US market; then, by buying treasury bills, corporate bonds, and short-term securities which they then use to lend money back to the US, some of the import dollart; this  helps finance US budget and trade deficit, stimulating domestic demand while propping up the US dollar relative to Chinese currency and holding down US interest rates. Low interest rates discourage US from saving; instead Americans speculate on real estate and borrow on increasing household equity, which frees up dollars that are then used to buy more Chinese goods.

Next Homer Dixon describes what could happen if there was a sharp decline in the US economy, something which began in late 2008

A sharp decline in the US economy would be bad for China because it has a trade deficit with other countries. It would lead to a run on banks, stoke nationalistic fury against Taiwan and Japan, and could lead to bitter conflict

A heavy debt burden boosts vulnerability to external shocks by creating appalling discrepancies between rich and poor.

In Europe, similar population discrepancy circumstances exist between itself and North Africa. Currently the areas where North Africans live in European cities are dreary suburban enclaves with high unemployment, failed assimilation, resentment, and strong group cohesion.

European energy is vulnerable and dependent on external systems. Climate changes stresses in Europe because of its location with respect to changes in ocean heat circulation could hurt European agriculture. An economic downturn could lead to dreadful ethnic violence – another social earthquake

Social earthquakes are a series of events that occur from fear, greed, bigotry, and people seeing the world in black and white

Things could go one of two ways in a social earthquake:

1. Fanatics could frame reality and define a tumultuous future
2. Social creativity could shape the future

In order to achieve #2 above, we need to enact 4 steps:

1. Reduce underlying stresses (population imbalances, energy shortages, environmental damage, climate change, income  gaps) We need more integrated approaches to these problems. Need risk of weapons of mass destruction; secure and destroy enriched uranium (perhaps the most urgent). We’re unlikely to weaken these stresses enough to significantly reduce the danger we face so we need to prepare for social earthquakes
2. Cultivate a prospective mind – we need to be comfortable with change, surprise, transience; exercise our imagination otherwise we’re more likely to be afraid
3. 3. Build a resilience into all systems critical to our well-being.  Gi ve up extra efficiency and productivity to achieve resiliency (i.e. draw on support and resources from elsewhere BUT be self-sufficient enough to provide for essential needs in an emergency). We need to boost the resilience of the weakest societies, namely those with damaged environments, endemic poverty, inadequate skills and education, and those with weak and/or corrupt governments. Otherwsie the entire global socio-ecological system will become increasingly vulnerable to disease, terrorism, economic collapse. These goals go against the ideology of global capitalism (which calls for larger scale, faster growth, less government, more efficiency, connectivity, and speed). We currently work against resiliency by piling on debt, building track housing on agricultural land, use distant sources of energy, and “fill every nook and cranny of our days with so much junk information and pointless running around that we don’t have time to reflect on what we’re doing or where we’re going”.

1. Rich countries need to find alternatives to blind commitment to economic growth which is incompatible with the Earth’s long term viability. Globalized capitalism sees economy as separate from nature and acts like a machine whose operation is linear, predictable, and reversible. We need to recognize there are no good substitutes for biodiversity and a benign climate. We need to find ways to give these explicit economic value so that people are motivated to protect them. Conventional economics is dominated  by intellectual rationalization of today’s world order.

Characteristics of adaptive complex systems :

1)      Extraordinary diversity

2)      Decentraliation of power and decision-making

3)      Systems are unstable enough to experience unexpected innovations yet orderly enough to learn from their failures and successes.

Systems with these three characteristics stimulate constant experimentation and generate a number of problem-solving strategies.

The internet provides us with the potential for this kind of system. Unfortunately, we have barely tapped the potential of the internet because instead of its being used for problem-solving, adaptation, and social inclusion, it has turned into a venue for “a screaming cacophony of electronic narcissism”.

Open source materials need to be used fro problem-solving, not just technical programming.
“In western liberal societies, public discussion of values is dreadfully impoverished”

Re: consumerism: we get drawn into discussions about superficialities because of this dearth of value debate.  This serves the interests of the political and economic elites who value growth above all else.

Only a broader and deeper democratic practice will develop the expansive moral commonwealth essential to our collective e survival.

We must acknowledge that our global situation is urgent and begin wide-ranging and vigrour discussion about what we can and should do.