By George Lakoff

Each day, the amount of extra energy accumulating via the heating of the earth is the equivalent of 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Each day!”

Yes, global warming systemically caused Hurricane Sandy — and the Midwest droughts and the fires in Colorado and Texas, as well as other extreme weather disasters around the world. Let’s say it out loud, it was causation, systemic causation. Systemic causation is familiar. Smoking is a systemic cause of lung cancer. HIV is a systemic cause of AIDS. Working in coal mines is a systemic cause of black lung disease.

Yes, global warming systemically caused Hurricane Sandy — and the Midwest droughts and the fires in Colorado and Texas, as well as other extreme weather disasters around the world. Let’s say it out loud, it was causation, systemic causation.

Systemic causation is familiar. Smoking is a systemic cause of lung cancer. HIV is a systemic cause of AIDS. Working in coal mines is a systemic cause of black lung disease. Driving while drunk is a systemic cause of auto accidents. Sex without contraception is a systemic cause of unwanted pregnancies.

There is a difference between systemic and direct causation. Punching someone in the nose is direct causation. Throwing a rock through a window is direct causation. Picking up a glass of water and taking a drink is direct causation. Slicing bread is direct causation. Stealing your wallet is direct causation. Any application of force to something or someone that always produces an immediate change to that thing or person is direct causation. When causation is direct, the word cause is unproblematic.

Systemic causation, because it is less obvious, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes. It may be probabilistic, occurring with a significantly high probability. It may require a feedback mechanism. In general, causation in ecosystems, biological systems, economic systems, and social systems tends not to be direct, but is no less causal. And because it is not direct causation, it requires all the greater attention if it is to be understood and its negative effects controlled.

Above all, it requires a name: systemic causation.

Global warming systemically caused the huge and ferocious Hurricane Sandy. And consequently, it systemically caused all the loss of life, material damage, and economic loss of Hurricane Sandy. Global warming heated the water of the Gulf and Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in greatly increased energy and water vapor in the air above the water. When that happens, extremely energetic and wet storms occur more frequently and ferociously. These systemic effects of global warming came together to produce the ferocity and magnitude of Hurricane Sandy.The precise details of Hurricane Sandy cannot be predicted in advance, any more than when, or whether, a smoker develops lung cancer, or sex without contraception yields an unwanted pregnancy, or a drunk driver has an accident. But systemic causation is nonetheless causal.

Semantics matters. Because the word cause is commonly taken to mean direct cause, climate scientists, trying to be precise, have too often shied away from attributing causation of a particular hurricane, drought, or fire to global warming. Lacking a concept and language for systemic causation, climate scientists have made the dreadful communicative mistake of retreating to weasel words. Consider this quote from “Perception of climate change,” by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy, Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.

The crucial words here are high degree of confidence, anomalies, consequence, likelihood, absence, and exceedingly small. Scientific weasel words! The power of the bald truth, namely causation, is lost.

This no small matter because the fate of the earth is at stake. The science is excellent. The scientists’ ability to communicate is lacking. Without the words, the idea cannot even be expressed. And without an understanding of systemic causation, we cannot understand what is hitting us.

Global warming is real, and it is here. It is causing — yes, causing — death, destruction, and vast economic loss. And the causal effects are getting greater with time. We cannot merely adapt to it. The costs are incalculable. What we are facing is huge. Each day, the amount of extra energy accumulating via the heating of the earth is the equivalent of 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Each day!

Because the earth itself is so huge, this energy is distributed over the earth in a way that is not immediately perceptible by our bodies — only a fraction of a degree each day. But the accumulation of total heat energy over the earth is increasing at an astronomical rate, even though the temperature numbers look small locally — 0.8 degrees Celsius so far. If we hit 2.0 degrees Celsius, as we may before long, the earth — and the living things on it — will not recover. Because of ice melt, the level of the oceans will rise 45 feet, while huge storms, fires, and droughts get worse each year. The international consensus is that by 2.0 degrees Celsius, all civilization would be threatened if not destroyed.

What would it take to reach a 2.0 degrees Celsius increase over the whole earth? Much less than you might think. Consider the amount of oil already drilled and stored by Exxon Mobil alone. If that oil were burned, the temperature of the earth would pass 2.0 degree Celsius, and those horrific disasters would come to pass.

The value of Exxon Mobil — its stock price — resides in its major asset, its stored oil. Because the weather disasters arising from burning that oil would be so great that we would have to stop burning. That’s just Exxon Mobil’s oil. The oil stored by all the oil companies everywhere would, if burned, destroy civilization many times over.

Another way to comprehend this, as Bill McKibben has observed, is that most of the oil stored all over the earth is worthless. The value of oil company stock, if Wall St. were rational, would drop precipitously. Moreover, there is no point in drilling for more oil. Most of what we have already stored cannot be burned. More drilling is pointless.

Are Bill McKibben’s and James Hansen’s numbers right? We had better have the science community double-check the numbers, and fast.

Where do we start? With language. Add systemic causation to your vocabulary. Communicate the concept. Explain to others why global warming systemically caused the enormous energy and size of Hurricane Sandy, as well as the major droughts and fires. Email your media whenever you see reporting on extreme weather that doesn’t ask scientists if it was systemically caused by global warming.

Next, enact fee and dividend, originally proposed by Peter Barnes as Sky Trust and introduced as Senate legislation as the KLEAR Act by Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins. More recently, legislation called fee and dividend has been proposed by James Hansen and introduced in the House by representatives John B, Larson and Bob Inglis.

Next. Do all we can to move to alternative energy worldwide as soon as possible.

Submitters Website: http.georgelakoff.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. He previously taught at Harvard (1965-69) and the University of Michigan (1969-1972).

He graduated from MIT in 1962 (in Mathematics and Literature) and received his PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University in 1966.

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Yes, audiences applaud us. But do you?If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts.
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

 

//

Issued by the Emergency Labor Network (ELN)
emergencylabor@aol.com

What has labor received in return?

But what about the big battles that labor has waged over the past couple of years? In Wisconsin, Tom Barrett, characterized by Wisconsin trade unionists as anti-labor, won the Democratic primary and immediately promised that if elected, he would retain the austerity takeaways that Walker had imposed on public employees. Meanwhile, Obama took no position in support of the workers.

The second is that each of these battles had significant repercussions going beyond city or state boundaries. Repressive legislation passed on a state or city level opens the door wider for similar legislation being adopted by other governmental entities. Cuts in pay and benefits by both public and private employers also are likely to get replicated elsewhere.

The third is that the escalating attacks against labor in this age of austerity are part and parcel of the strategy to put the burden on the working class and the poor to pay for the debt and deficits, while the rich and powerful laugh all the way to the bank. Meanwhile purchasing power plunges, impoverishing more and more people, while making a bad economy worse.

 

The millions of Black and Latino workers, both male and female across the U.S., suffer the sharpest edge of the attacks on labor and trade union rights and the brunt of the economic crisis. But even though Obama cannot win ─ in what is shaping up to be an extremely close election ─ without organized labor, women, Black and Latino support, he has not reached out to these constituencies with a program that meets their needs. So it is clear that without an independent labor movement, anchored in these most oppressed sectors of the U.S. working class, labor will not be in the strongest position to effectively pressure Obama for crucial progressive reforms if he should win re-election, or to fight the devastating plans of the right wing Republican agenda directed against us if Romney/Ryan take the election.

 

What Next?

 

The challenge now is to give life to those words and build that independent labor movement without delay. For starters, it would be big step forward for labor to run independent candidates for office at the local or even the congressional level. Labor can also utilize the referendum in some states to rescind repressive legislation, as was done so successfully in Ohio in 2011. And for states whose laws or constitutions do not permit initiatives or referenda, how about campaigns to make the needed changes so that the people can use these instruments of democracy and make the ultimate decisions regarding which laws govern their lives?

Issued by the Emergency Labor Network (ELN)

For more information write emergencylabor@aol.com or P.O. Box 21004, Cleveland, OH 44121 or call 216-736-4715 or visit our website at www.laborfightback.org.

 

 

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Yes, audiences applaud us. But do you?If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts.
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

 

//

A spark of compassion in a world darkened by too much cruelty and indifference.

By Judy Molland, Care2.com

Jack Russell terrier in France had a miraculous escape from death after he was poisoned and buried alive on his third birthday.

For a moment, I thought I was reading a review of Frankenweenie, a recently released comedy-horror film directed by Tim Burton, in which a boy named Victor loses his dog Sparky and uses the power of science to bring him back to life.

But no; this actually happened last week in Charleville-Mezieres, a town about 125 miles northeast of Paris.

Ethan was dug up by a man who was walking on a lakeside pedestrian path and noticed that the ground was moving, apparently the result of convulsions from the dog’s poisoning. The man then got a shovel and dug the dog up. Lucky Ethan — not every random person strolling through the park would react that way!

The anonymous man called firefighters who rushed the shivering dog to a vet who was able to nurse the dog back to life. The terrier was subsequently identified through a microchip that showed all this happened on his third birthday.

From The Guardian:

“It’s extraordinary. We only see this in TV movies,” said veterinarian Philippe Michon. “He came back to life and without a scratch. It’s rather miraculous.”

The vet said when firemen brought the dirt-covered terrier to his office “he was completely cold, he was barely breathing.”

Michon used hot water bottles to warm up Ethan’s seemingly lifeless body. The dog was so cold his veins had collapsed and it was hard to find one to hydrate him but within 24 hours the dog was back on his feet.

Ethan is one lucky dog: between an passerby who noticed the ground moving, the firemen, and a caring veterinarian, the terrier is bouncing with life.

But that leaves the question: why did Ethan end up poisoned and in a shallow grave to begin with?  According to Gawker, Sabina Zamora, president of an animal association in Charleville-Mezieres, Ethan’s owner says he had given the dog away but police are investigating.

France has a remarkable system of health care for people, with all their medical information encoded on to a single computer chip. It’s great to know that animals are covered in a similar way.

Hooray for Ethan!

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/ethan-the-dog-poisoned-buried-and-brought-back-to-life.html#ixzz2AYNy6rhx

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Yes, audiences applaud us. But do you?If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts.
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

 

//

Editor’s Note: The arrival of raging capitalism in the former Soviet Union has meant (as usual) wealth for a handful and poverty and insecurity for the vast majority.  The unleashed forces of Social Darwinism have taken and continue to take an awful toll.  Not surprisingly, the Russian nouveau riche, the native breed of “carpetbaggers”, are now perceived by a new strain of Russian youth, a new counterculture, as the new “Ugly American”—a label that depicts both the marauding American business executive (and his underlings, the meddling diplomats, armies and mercenaries doing the bidding for the global rich), and the local native associated corporadoes.  This disenfranchised, embittered youth have embraced the refrain heard in so many foreign lands—from the Philippines to Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia and so many others— for more than a hundred years, “Fuera Yanquis!” Or, as some homegrown rock bands are putting it, “Kill the Yankees.” Incidentally, and this bears repeating, even among fierce nationalists, there is no real hatred for the American people as such, only their government and globetrotting business elites. Most youth around the world, when not poisoned by invidious ideologies, are naturally peace-loving. Murderous hate, as the famous lyric from the operetta South Pacific reminds us, has “Got to Be Carefully Taught.”—PG

__________________________________________________
FROM THE ARCHIVES

Alexander Tarasov
If you believe what you see on television, no songs of protest are being sung in today’s Russia.

But that’s a false impression. In the hungry, penniless provinces, where social, property and class contradictions are all the more obvious than in Moscow, a particular world, a particular youth culture has evolved, one opposed not only to the present political regime, but also to the “culture” that regime endorses. This youth has created its own culture, including its own music. They have their idols, groups like Che Dance, Mental Depression, AK-47 and others that are never on the hit parades because of the openly subversive content of their songs. That’s understandable; what sane DJ would dare play, say, a song by the group Ilich Ramirez Sanchez with the refrain, “I’d rip Chubais’ balls off”? (Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is the well-known terrorist “Carlos” who is doing a life sentence in a French prison.)

But most popular of all was the late Alexander Nepomnyashchy, a rock singer and one of the leaders of the “new left” organization Violet International. This is a unique phenomenon. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of adolescents (and not just adolescents) throughout the country are crazy about his songs, which have never been played on radio or television.

Nepomnyashchy combines in his music the Russian national tradition with the traditions of Western rock (creating a kind of country-rock). Nepomnyashchy is one of two Russian rock musicians who perform true, unsimplified reggae based on poetry in Russian (“All Who Love Babylon,” “Ja Won’t Leave Us”). The second person who performs true Russian reggae is Umka, the living legend of the Soviet hippies, also totally ignored by the mass media. Umka also hates the new “masters of life.” The essence of market reforms that have taken place in this country are expressed in one brilliant line: “Take the pie with the nails on the shelf – sink your teeth into it” (“I was with my people”).

But the main thing Nepomnyashchy offers is not so much his music, but his lyrics. Here are words from his “Kill the Yankees” (“Ubei Yanki”):

Burn the shop with the American shit!

Advertise the hard-currency store with a brick!

Blow up with a grenade their pretty Chevrolet!

Draw a hammer and sickle on their advertising logo!

Kill the Yankees!

And all who love the Yankees!

This is one of Nepomnyashchy’s most popular songs; thousands in Russia know it by heart.

They stuffed the Stars and Stripes in the john.

There’s no future – there’s Russian punk rock.

Feed the yuppie with “Pedigree Pal” kasha –

And add a little lead, so he doesn’t run away!

Kill the Yankees!

And all who love the Yankees!

This isn’t so much nationalism as it is a “classical approach.” Yankees (and all who love the Yankees) represent the world of the sated, rich, satisfied, the world of the New Russians, managers, businessmen, bureaucrats. Nepomnyashchy stands on the other side of the barricades, with the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, regardless of their nationality or the color of their skin:

Jello Biafra is Russian, born in Moscow,

Kurt Cobain is Russian too, also born in Moscow,

Jim Morrison is Russian, and born in Moscow,

Jimi Hendrix is Russian, born in Moscow.

Kill the Yankees!

These lyrics were printed immediately in several newspapers of the “new left” and even in a radical Komsomol newspaper called Bumbarash-2017. At Nepomnyashchy’s concerts, the audience sings “Kills the Yankees” in unison, as a choir, standing.

The Voronezh “new left” newspaper Mass Protests published the text of another Nepomnyashchy song entitled “All Who Love Babylon”:

Buy Tampax tampons,

Chew Spearmint gum,

Eat a Snickers bar,

Drink Hershey’s –

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you.

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you …

Have a Barbie doll,

Live on planet Reebok,

Smoke Camel cigarettes,

Wash your hair with Procter & Gamble.

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you …

Live in concrete prisons,

Chop up the wood for them,

Save up all the money you can

For a long, well-fed retirement –

No matter what, a bullet will be found for you.

Nepomnyashchy, Che Dance and Nick Rock-n-Roll serve as substitutes for those dissatisfied with former rock idols: Andrei Makarevich, Boris Grebenshchikov and Konstantin Kinchev. The young rebels disdain them, call them “well-fed prostitutes.” Makarevich is especially scorned for his TV cooking show, “Smak.” As one 15-year-old girl from the town of Kalachinsk in Siberia said in an interview, “It’s the same as if Jesus Christ climbed down off the cross to advertise women’s bras and panties. You think that after that there would be even one Christian left on Earth?”

That Nepomnyashchy is wildly popular in the provinces doesn’t mean no one in Moscow knows him. During the war in the Balkans, a group of youths besieged and threw everything they could at the U.S. Embassy; many people printed leaflets with the text of Nepomnyashchy’s “Kill the Yankees” and brought them to the embassy. Next time, they might bring his “Counterculture Blues”:

Behind the scenes, everything’s going according to plan:

For example, the bombing – and the baby will die before morning.

You can’t fight it, it’s fate: The F-16 has taken off with its cargo.

Uncle Scrooge has made his profit, the general has calculated the coordinates,

The Mason’s got his apron and compass, and the wing flashes by as a black shadow –

With the mouse next to the screen, it’s reached “Level 5,”

Mister Architect, kind Prince of this World –

And figures are running around. Except those who don’t want to run …

These kids also have their own rock festival, “Oskolskaya Lira,” based in Stary Oskol. At it, they sing true songs of protest, true political rock. No television program or major newspaper has covered the festival. But those who listen to Nepomnyashchy and come to the festival don’t read Izvestia or Moskovsky Komsomelets. They have their own world, their own newspapers.

They believe the future belongs to them. They believe the day will come when they will kill live Yankees – and all those who love them.

[This is a repost of an essay originally run on April 26, 2000.]

__________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (partial portrait)

The first thing that must be understood about A. Tarasov is that he can’t be easily understood. Protean in his output and interests, a polymath ranging over a number of disciplines, the only thing for certain is that he abhors the current global status quo, is not happy with Putin, and has little patience with anarchists and Neofascist nationalists—a powerful strain in modern Russia. The Wikipedia entry offers the following facts:

Alexander Nikolaevich Tarasov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Тара́сов, born March 8, 1958 in Moscow) is a Soviet and Russian left-wing sociologist, politologist, culturologist, publicist, writer and philosopher. Up until the beginning of the 21st century he referred to himself as a Post-Marxist[1][2] alongside István Mészáros and a number of Yugoslav Marxist philosophers who belonged to Praxis School and emigrated to London. Since in the 21st century the term Post-Marxism has been appropriated by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and their followers, Alexander Tarasov (together with the above mentioned István Mészáros and Yugoslav philosophers) stopped referring to himself as a Post-Marxist.

Tarasov has paid a high price for his iconoclasm. In the 1970s —after founding a new radical underground group called the Party of New Communists, later “Neo-Communist Party of the Soviet Union” (NCPSU), he was imprisoned for over a year by the KGB and subjected to harsh treatment, including beatings and chemical injections that severely affected his health to this day. When “perestroika” started, he soon firmly positioned himself as a professional sociologist and politologist.  Tarasov has penned 1030 publications in sociology (mainly on youth studies[6] , education issues and conflict resolution); politology[7] (current politics, political radicalism in Russia and abroad, mass social movements); history (history[8] and theory of revolutionary movement[9] and guerrilla warfare); culturology[10][11] (popular culture issues, intercultural and inter-civilization contradictions); economics (comparative research). He is also a literary and movie critic (modern literature and cinema, popular culture and politics, history and theory of the cinematography of the 1960s and 1970s). He has been the first to study and describe Nazi-skinhead subculture in Russia.[12][13][14][15] A.Tarasov is the author of the first profound research on the influence of far-right ideas and organizations on the subculture of football fans in Russia[16] (November 2009 – January 2010).

In 2008, neo-Nazis have included A.Tarasov into the list of their enemies who must be physically exterminated. The list was published on radical right-wing sites.[17][18] In 2011, Russian pro-Kremlin group “Nashi” named Tarasov among “168 most loathsome enemies” of this group, of Vasily Yakemenko (group’s leader) and of Vladimir Putin’s regime.[19]

Tarasov is known among Russian anarchists as their consistent critic, first – of the practice of anarchism (as fruitless and unpromising), and partially of the theory (as outdated and unscientific).[20][21][22] Tarasov’s criticism has caused open animosity towards him among anarchists.

Tarasov’s reaction to 2011–2012 Russian protests was negative. He criticized the protests from the left, considering them to be the movement of petit bourgeoisie and “consumers’ rebellion” alien to the goals and objectives of left-wing forces in Russia and irrelevant to the revolutionary struggle against capitalism.
(Summary by P. Greanville)

____________
ADDENDUM

How is this trend being seen by the Western media? Here’s an excerpt from TIME (World) edition:

Rockers of the World Unite!

By YURI ZARAKHOVICH Ivanovo

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,97844,00.html#ixzz2AXLhR0fb

“Kill the Yankee! And all who love the Yankee!” The shrill, hysterical, mawkish voice belting out these lyrics spells out just how the enemy is to be handled: “Burn the kiosk with the American sh–! Advertise their hard-currency stores with a brick! Scratch on the billboards the word ‘pr—‘! Stuff the Stars and Stripes in the latrine! Kill the Yankee! Kill the Yankee!”

Alexander Nepomnyashchy, 32, the author of these exhilarating lyrics, strikes a chord with his audience. He is one of the best know exponents of a new trend in Russian rock: anti-American pop. Nepomnyashchy hails from Ivanovo, a depressed regional center 288 kilometers southwest of Moscow. Once famous for its textile production, Ivanovo was never particularly prosperous, even when it worked to capacity. Now that only some 30% of its industries function, Ivanovo has the look of a dying city. Textile workers mostly get paid in kind. “Will swap three kilometers of calico for a one-room apartment,” runs a typical add in a local daily…(Feb 2, 2001)

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,97844,00.html#ixzz2AXKqq9aV

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Yes, audiences applaud us. But do you?If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts.
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

 

//

By Herman Daly
Simulpost with Daly News and Countercurrents.org

The population problem should be considered from the point of view of all populations — populations of both humans and their artifacts (cars, houses, livestock, cell phones, etc.) — in short, populations of all “dissipative structures” engendered, bred, or built by humans. In other words, the populations of human bodies and of their extensions. Or in yet other words, the populations of all organs that support human life and the enjoyment thereof, both endosomatic (within the skin) and exosomatic (outside the skin) organs.

All of these organs are capital equipment that support our lives. The endosomatic equipment — heart, lungs, kidneys — support our lives quite directly. The exosomatic organs — farms, factories, electric grids, transportation networks — support our lives indirectly. One should also add “natural capital” (e.g., the hydrologic cycle, carbon cycle, etc.) which is exosomatic capital comprised of structures complementary to endosomatic organs, but not made by humans (forests, rivers, soil, atmosphere).

The reason for pluralizing the “population problem” to the populations of all dissipative structures is two-fold. First, all these populations require a metabolic throughput from low-entropy resources extracted from the environment and eventually returned to the environment as high-entropy wastes, encountering both depletion and pollution limits. In a physical sense the final product of the economic activity of converting nature into ourselves and our stuff, and then using up or wearing out what we have made, is waste. Second, what keeps this from being an idiotic activity, grinding up the world into waste, is the fact that all these populations of dissipative structures have the common purpose of supporting the maintenance and enjoyment of life.

As A. J. Lotka pointed out, ownership of endosomatic organs is equally distributed, while the exosomatic organs are not. Ownership of the latter may be collective or individual, equally or unequally distributed. Control of these external organs may be democratic or dictatorial. Owning one’s own kidneys is not enough to support one’s life if one does not have access to water from rivers, lakes, or rain, either because of scarcity or monopoly ownership of the complementary exosomatic organ. Likewise our lungs are of little value without the complementary natural capital of green plants and atmospheric stocks of oxygen. Therefore all life-supporting organs, including natural capital, form a unity. They have a common function, regardless of whether they are located within the boundary of human skin or outside that boundary. In addition to being united by common purpose, they are also united by their role as dissipative structures. They are all physical structures whose default tendency is to dissipate or fall apart, in accordance with the entropy law.

Our standard of living is roughly measured by the ratio of outside-skin to inside-skin capital — that is, the ratio of human-made artifacts to human bodies, the ratio of one kind of dissipative structure to another kind. Within-skin capital is made and maintained overwhelmingly from renewable resources, while outside-skin capital relies heavily on nonrenewable resources. The rate of evolutionary change of endosomatic organs is exceedingly slow; the rate of change of exosomatic organs has become very rapid. In fact the evolution of human beings is now overwhelmingly centered on exosomatic organs. This evolution is goal-directed, not random, and its driving purpose has become “economic growth,” and that growth has been achieved largely by the depletion of non renewable resources.

Although human evolution is now decidedly purpose-driven we continue to be enthralled by neo-Darwinist aversion to teleology and devotion to random. Economic growth, by promising “more for everyone eventually,” becomes the de facto purpose, the social glue that keeps things from falling apart. What happens when growth becomes uneconomic, increasing costs faster than benefits? How do we know that this is not already the case? If one asks such questions one is told to talk about something else, like space colonies on Mars, or unlimited energy from cold fusion, or geo-engineering, or the wonders of globalization, and to remember that all these glorious purposes require growth now in order to provide still more growth in the future. Growth is good, end of discussion, now shut up!

Let us reconsider in the light of these facts, the idea of demographic transition. By definition this is the transition from a human population maintained by high birth rates equal to high death rates, to one maintained by low birth rates equal to low death rates, and consequently from a population with low life expectancy to one with high life expectancy. Statistically such transitions have been observed as standard of living (ratio of exosomatic to endosomatic capital) increases. Many studies have attempted to explain this fact, and much hope has been invested in it as an automatic cure for overpopulation. “Development is the best contraceptive” is a related slogan, partly based in fact, and partly in wishful thinking.

There are a couple of thoughts I’d like to add to the discussion of demographic transition. The first and most obvious one is that populations of artifacts can undergo an analogous transition from high rates of production and depreciation to low ones. The lower rates will maintain a constant population of longer-lived, more durable artifacts.

Our economy has a growth-oriented focus on maximizing production flows (birth rates of artifacts) that keeps us in the pre-transition mode, giving rise to growing artifact populations, low product lifetimes, high GDP, and high throughput, with consequent environmental destruction. The transition from a high-maintenance throughput to a low one applies to both human and artifact populations independently. From an environmental perspective, lower throughput is desirable in both cases, at least up to some distant limit.

The second thought I would like to add to the discussion of demographic transition is a question: does the human transition, when induced by rising standard of living, as usually assumed, increase or decrease the total load of all dissipative structures on the environment? Specifically, if Indian fertility is to fall to the Swedish level, must Indian per capita possession of artifacts (standard of living) rise to the Swedish level? If so, would this not likely increase the total load of all dissipative structures on the Indian environment, perhaps beyond capacity to sustain the required throughput?

The point of this speculation is to suggest that “solving” the population problem by relying on the demographic transition to lower birth rates could impose a larger burden on the environment rather than the smaller burden that would be the case with direct reduction in fertility. Of course reduction in fertility by automatic correlation with rising standard of living is politically easy, while direct fertility reduction is politically difficult. But what is politically easy may be environmentally destructive.

To put it another way, consider the I = PAT formula. P, population of human bodies, is one set of dissipative structures. A, affluence, or GDP per capita, reflects another set of dissipative structures — cars, buildings, ships, toasters, iPads, cell phones, etc. (not to mention populations of livestock and agricultural plants). In a finite world some populations grow at the expense of others. Cars and humans are now competing for land, water, and sunlight to grow either food or fuel. More nonhuman dissipative structures will at some point force a reduction in other dissipative structures, namely human bodies. This forced demographic transition is less optimistic than the voluntary one induced by chasing a higher standard of living more effectively with fewer dependents. In an empty world we saw the trade-off between artifacts and people as induced by desire for a higher standard of living. In the full world that trade-off seems forced by competition for limited resources.

The usual counter to such thoughts is that we can improve the efficiency by which throughput maintains dissipative structures — technology, T in the formula, measured as throughput per unit of GDP. For example a car that lasts longer and gets better mileage is still a dissipative structure, but with a more efficient metabolism that allows it to live on a lower rate of throughput.

Likewise, human organisms might be genetically redesigned to require less food, air, and water. Indeed smaller people would be the simplest way of increasing metabolic efficiency (measured as number of people maintained by a given resource throughput). To my knowledge no one has yet suggested breeding smaller people as a way to avoid limiting births, but that probably just reflects my ignorance. We have, however, been busy breeding and genetically engineering larger and faster-growing plants and livestock. So far, the latter dissipative structures have been complementary with populations of human bodies, but in a finite and full world, the relationship will soon become competitive.

Indeed, if we think of population as the cumulative number of people ever to live over time, then many artifact populations are already competitive with the human population. That is, more consumption today of terrestrial low entropy in non-vital uses (Cadillacs, rockets, weapons) means less terrestrial low entropy available for capturing solar energy tomorrow (plows, solar collectors, ecosystem regeneration). The solar energy that will still fall on the earth for millions of years after the material structures needed to capture it are dissipated, will be wasted, just like the solar energy that shines on the moon.

There is a limit to how many dissipative structures the ecosphere can sustain — more endosomatic capital must ultimately displace some exosomatic capital and vice versa. Some of our exosomatic capital is critical — for example, that part which can photosynthesize, the green plants. Our endosomatic capital cannot long endure without the critical exosomatic capital of green plants (along with soil and water, and of course sunlight). In sum, demographers’ interest should extend to the populations of all dissipative structures, their metabolic throughputs, and the relations of complementarity and substitutability among them. Economists should analyze the supply, demand, production, and consumption of all these populations within an ecosphere that is finite, non-growing, entropic, and open only to a fixed flow of solar energy. This reflects a paradigm shift from the empty-world vision to the full-world vision — a world full of human-made dissipative structures that both depend upon and displace natural structures. Growth looks very different depending on from which paradigm it is viewed.

Carrying capacity of the ecosystem depends on how many dissipative structures of all kinds have to be carried. Some will say to others, “You can’t have a glass of wine and piece of meat for dinner because I need the grain required by your fine diet to feed my three hungry children.” The answer will be, “You can’t have three children at the expense of my and my one child’s already modest standard of living.” Both have a good point. That conflict will be difficult to resolve, but we are not yet there.

Rather, now some are saying, “You can’t have three houses and fly all over the world twice a year, because I need the resources to feed my eight children.” And the current reply is, “You can’t have eight children at the expense of my small family’s luxurious standard of living.” In the second case neither side elicits much sympathy, and there is great room for compromise to limit both excessive population and per capita consumption. Better to face limits to both human and artifact populations before the terms of the trade-off get too harsh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the NCSE Lifetime Achievement Award

 

 

Let’s keep this award-winning site going!

Yes, audiences applaud us. But do you?If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts.
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year.

Use PayPal via the button below.

THANK YOU.

 

//