Why we will finish eating the planet [View all]

[GliderGuider]

Last edited Fri Feb 22, 2013, 02:50 PM - Edit history (4)

In 1975 the American ecologist Howard T. Odum presented a natural principle that he called the Maximum Power Principle (MPP), that governs the structure and development of all open, self-organizing systems. In his book Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy he showed how this principle governs the development of thunderstorms and the structures of river systems, as well as the shape of human societies.

For living systems, including human ones, everything begins with the energy-seeking behavior that's essential to all life. The MPP governs the nature of that behavior (given the environment and the energy sources of the organism) and feeds the fitness criteria so that natural selection determines the evolutionary outcome. In bald terms, organisms that use the most energy most effectively prevail over those that do less well.

Through natural selection the MPP gets encoded at the base of the genome, but it's really more of a structural principle than a genetic driver per se. As the organism evolves, the expression of its energy-seeking patterns evolve as well, to ensure the optimum efficiency at producing power. This has natural consequences, such as the development of hierarchies (which are not simple human failings, pace anarchists).

Our evolutionary development of conscious awareness, abstract thought and strong problem-solving ability was done in the context of these structural principles of energy-seeking and power maximization. As a result, our cultures also developed within this framework, which operates throughout the human experience at a level we can barely perceive.

This is why it took a genius like anthropologist Marvin Harris to correctly recognize that human culture is primarily driven from the bottom up rather than the top down. The environment and the technology that directly implements energy-seeking and the MPP forms the basis for our culture. Most of our social structures, thoughts, values and beliefs are formed in response to that basic physical level. They either support it, as in our economic, political, and educational systems, or they rationalize it through our values and beliefs. Our thoughts arise in the context of the energy and resource pathways that are available, and are largely directed toward promoting supportive beliefs, values and practices. (This is a very hard thing for those steeped in the traditions of humanism to accept.)

Natural selection operates at the cultural level as well as the level of the organism. This is why, for instance, capitalism won out over communism - not because it is a more humane system, but because it represents a more efficient approach to maximizing power. It's why agriculture superseded hunting and foraging. It's also why we have constantly increasing levels of hierarchy. Hierarchic systems are more effective than egalitarian systems at controlling the increasingly complex processes that are required to transform large amounts of energy into work.

And it's why we have climate change deniers and no progress on CO2 reduction. It's not because people are evil, it's because addressing climate change would require us to immediately reduce our use of fossil fuels. Such a reduction represents an energy devolution that is antithetical to the principle at very foundations of the human organism, and as a result to our culture that evolved from the same principle.

It also explains why we drive towards energy efficiency the way we do. Efficiency improvement represents an improvement in the amount of work that can be done in a unit of time with a unit of energy - i.e. power. The MPP drives us always toward maximizing our production of power (hence its name). It also explains why efficiency improvements never cut our energy consumption - life always strives to use more energy more effectively in order to ensure its survival.

The MPP plays an essential role in every self-organizing system, whether human or not. That's why I use the analogy between the MPP and gravity. The MPP is a fundamental force on the same level as gravity, and with the same pervasive influence on how things develop.

And in the end it means we will not be able to avoid eating the rest of the planet. The desires of environmentalists like Amory Lovins and Lester Brown, the resistance of deep green activists like Derrick Jensen and Edward Abbey, or the walking-away of the "new story" advocates like Daniel Quinn and Paul Kingsnorth - they amount to farting in a hurricane. Not even an encounter with physical limits will stop us from fulfilling this thermodynamic destiny. The Maximum Power Principle will keep working even in the presence of rising pollution, unfolding climate change, and growing food and resource shortages - just like gravity.

Best wishes for an aware future,
GliderGuider