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Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies
Author: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies
Complexity, Problem Solving, and Sustainable Societies is an extremely influential
1996 paper in energy economics by Joseph Tainter.
It focuses on the energy cost of problem solving, and the energy-complexity
relation in manmade systems. This is a mirror of the negentropic tendencies
of natural evolution, according to ecological economics, notably the arguments
of Donella Meadows and her colleagues on the economic constraints of contemporary
problem solving:
The Limits to Growth, 1972, argued that "to raise world food production
from 1951-1966 by 34%, for example, required increasing expenditures on tractors
of 63%, on nitrate fertilizers of 146%, and on pesticides of 300%. To remove
all organic wastes from a sugar-processing plant costs 100 times more than
removing 30%. To reduce sulfur dioxide in the air of a U.S. city by 9.6 times,
or particulates by 3.1 times, raises the cost of pollution control by 520 times." All
environmental problem solving will face constraints of this kind, Tainter argues.
It is not a question of expending a lot of energy to discover "more efficient" ways
to do these things - that process amplifies the decline.
Attempts to impose the "most efficient" means have other problems.
In The Rise and Decline of Nations, 1982, M. Olson argues that "bureaucratic
regulation itself generates further complexity and costs. As regulations are
issued and taxes established, those who are regulated or taxed seek loopholes
and lawmakers strive to close these. A competitive spiral of loophole discovery
and closure unfolds, with complexity continuously increasing."
"In these days when the cost of government lacks political support," Tainter
argues, "such a strategy is unsustainable. It is often suggested that
environmentally benign behavior should be elicited through taxation incentives
rather than through regulations. While this approach has some advantages, it
does not address the problem of complexity, and may not reduce overall regulatory
costs as much as is thought. Those costs may only be shifted to the taxation
authorities, and to the society as a whole.
It is not that research, education, regulation, and new technologies cannot
potentially alleviate our problems. With enough investment perhaps they can.
The difficulty is that these investments will be costly, and may require an
increasing share of each nation's gross domestic product. With diminishing
returns to problem solving, addressing environmental issues in our conventional
way means that more resources will have to be allocated to science, engineering,
and government. In the absence of high economic growth this would require at
least a temporary decline in the standard of living, as people would have comparatively
less to spend on food, housing, clothing, medical care, transportation, and
entertainment."
"To circumvent costliness in problem solving it is often suggested that
we use resources more intelligently and efficiently," Tainter continues,
but cites Timothy Allen and Thomas Hoekstra, 1992, as claiming that "in
managing ecosystems for sustainability, managers should identify what is missing
from natural regulatory process and provide only that. The ecosystem will do
the rest. Let the ecosystem (i.e., solar energy) subsidize the management effort
rather than the other way around." This was later to be a cornerstone
of the economic strategy of Natural Capitalism.
Tainter argues that this would "require much knowledge that we do not
now possess. That means we need research that is complex and costly, and requires
fossil-fuel subsidies. Lowering the costs of complexity in one sphere causes
them to rise in another."
"Industrialism illustrates this point. It generated its own problems
of complexity and costliness. These included railways and canals to distribute
coal and manufactured goods, the development of an economy increasingly based
on money and wages, and the development of new technologies. While such elements
of complexity are usually thought to facilitate economic growth, in fact they
can do so only when subsidized by energy." (italics ours).
This is the central argument Tainter makes: the energy economy always subsidizes
the product economy and service economy, and any intermediates such as commodity
markets. Without looking at energy costs at every trophic level, and the transfer
between, which appears to be decreasing as more technology is applied, there
is simply no way to discover what is and is not "efficient".
"With subsidies of inexpensive fossil fuels, for a long time many consequences
of industrialism effectively did not matter. Industrial societies could afford
them. When energy costs are met easily and painlessly, benefit/cost ratio to
social investments can be substantially ignored (as it has been in contemporary
industrial agriculture). Fossil fuels made industrialism, and all that flowed
from it (such as science, transportation, medicine, employment, consumerism,
high-technology war, and contemporary political organization), a system of
problem solving that was sustainable for several generations."
"Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always
will be."
Tainter concludes that considerable hardship will be required to adjust to
an economy that is (a) smaller (b) reliant more on individuals to carry out
their own primary production, say in gardens and farms (c) not investing in
problem solving to a greater extent that is warranted by the actual savings
in energy that result out the other end.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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