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Energy Efficiency project

System Traps that Led us to the Anthropocene

Sources: 

  • "Thinking in Systems," Donella H. Meadows

    • Donella Meadows description of system traps

  • "The Shock of the Anthropocene," Christophe Bonneuil

  • "Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization," Roy Scranton 

    • Three significant periods in which humans did not fully consider consequences:

      1. Agricultural Revolution - 12,000 years ago

      2. Industrial Revolution - 1800s

      3. Great Acceleration - mid 1900s

Conclusions

 

  • Nearly all events were motivated by (MAP 122) group/self interest for Primary Communities and Productive Communities.  Primary Communities are powerful because they are the source of much Level 1 biosocial learning.  Productive Communities are powerful because they brought an immediate improvement to quality of life for those who supported, embraced and pursued increases in productivity.

    • We still live in this mind-set even though our needs have changed.

 

  • Most of the Agents were merchants, business owners, and entrepreneurs with a scope of allegiance (MAPs 133) limited to their self, friends/family, local community/tribe and business sector.  They also had  a scope of time (MAP 67) limited to their immediate past/present/future, and their family/tribal/community past/present/future.  Their sources of learning were their primary group, small community, tribal-ethnic, common interest or national cultures.  They focused their learning on specialized life activities, instrumental & intelligence systems, and conduct systems that increased the market penetration of their products and services. 

    • This statement was written in the past tense, but the behaviour of people today suggest this is still the case:

      • Most of the Agents are merchants, business owners, and entrepreneurs with a scope of allegiance limited to their self, friends/family, local community/tribe and business sector.  They also have  a scope of time limited to their immediate past/present/future, and their family's/community's immediate past/present/future.  Their sources of learning are their primary group, small community, ethnic, common interest or national cultures.  They focus their learning on specialized life activities, instrumental & intelligence systems, and conduct systems that increase the market penetration of their products and services. 

      • There are a few exceptions, but these are people who have developed the means and ability to overcome their fear of social rejection and meeting basic needs of survival.

 

  • Their sources of ignorance to the broader challenges of life included (MAP 34):

    • Self-Satisfaction

    • Lack of Adaptive Capacities

    • Socially Motivated Avoidance (Rationalization)

    • Pragmatic Limits

    • Decadence

    • Conventionalization & Habit

    • Fear of Distress, Dissonance

    • Self-Satisfaction (Conventional Success)

    • Narrow Authorization

    • Narrow Authorization (Narrow undisciplined convictions)

    • Narrow Tribalism

    • Infantilization

    • Self-Satisfaction

    • Isolation

    • Lack of Adaptive Capacities (Undeveloped Connection to the Human Venture)

    • Isolation (Over Specialization)

    • Socially Motivated Avoidance (Affirmational Chirping)

    • Narrow Authorization (Overly Bonded to a Particular Authority)

    • Isolation (Isolated or Insulated Community)

    • Pragmatic Limits (Complexity of the Universe)

    • Infantilization (Excessive care & Protection)

    • Infantilization (Excessive Regulation & Control)

    • Narrow Authorization (Overly bonded to a particular community)

    • Socially Motivated Avoidance (Social "Hygiene")

    • Fear of Distress, Dissonance (Inability to admit mistakes, denial)

 

  • The feedback mechanisms (MAP 19.05) to guide their learning were limited to:

    • Financial measures

    • Shipments of colonial materials and goods

    • Debt

    • Shifts in population locations

    • Available labour

    • Production of goods

    • Timber harvest

    • Affluence

    • Britain's Atlantic trade volumes

    • Lost profits to businesses

    • Teak tree harvest

    • Coal harvest

    • Soda production

    • Conventional economic measures

    • Oil production

    • Mining production

    • Strength of British Currency

    • Trade

    • Capital investment abroad

    • Navy construction

    • Production of goods

    • Private ownership

    • Inventory of theoretical resources

    • Agriculture production

    • Weaponry

    • Automobile sales

    • Military strength

    • Sale of goods

    • Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

    • Transportation networks

    • Trade and US currency strength

    • Fishing yields

    • GDP and number of one-family households

    • Geographic dispersion

    • Markets for SOx, CO2, fishing quotas and groundwater

    • Destruction of communist trade routes

    • Oil transport

 

  • All of these feedback mechanisms were maladaptive because they didn't consider waste, suffering , injustice, harm to vital systems, destructive dependence & breakdown vulnerability and decreased their adaptive positioning capacity.

 

  • System Traps:  Classic system traps, as identified by Donella Meadows' research, have been exhibited in leading up to entrance to the Anthropocene.

 

  • 'Tragedy of the Commons' was a system trap commonly recognized by policy makers because it had occurred in the past, particularly with sharing land amongst herders.  This trap occurs when commonly shared resources become overused and eroded.  This occurs when there is a very weak feedback from the condition of the resources to the decisions of the users until the resource becomes unusable to anyone.  EXAMPLE IN THE ANTRHOPOCENE TIMELINE. 

 

A common way out of this trap is to privatize the resources so each user feels the direct consequences of its abuse.  However, when the private owners are not sufficiently educated to understand the consequences of abusing the resources, other system traps evolve.  CITE AN EXAMPLE FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE TIMELINE

 

  • Merchants, business owners, and entrepreneurs strive to influence policy makers to enable 'Success to the Successful'.  This trap systematically rewards winners of a competition with the means to win again, a reinforcing feedback loop.  Winners eventually take all and losers are eliminated.  CITE AN EXAMPLE HERE.

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  • If the Agents cannot influence the policies, they may pursue the system traps of 'Rule Beating' and/or 'Policy Resistance.'  Rule Beating is perverse behaviors that give the appearance of obeying the rules or achieving goals but actually distort the system.  CITE EXAMPLE HERE.  Policy Resistance is where Agents try to pull a system state toward various goals.  Any new policy just pulls the system state farther from the goals of these Agents who respond with additional resistance.  Thus the policy produces an undesired result that Agents expend considerable effort in maintaining.  CITE EXAMPLE HERE

 

  • Kingdoms and National Governments contributed to the Anthropocene by trying to maintain domination of trading spaces and political/religious ideologies through system traps of 'Escalation' and 'Seeking the Wrong Goal'.  Escalation occurs when the state of one stock is determined by trying to surpass the state of another stock - and vice versa.  Escalation is exponential and the spiral will be stopped by collapse.  CITE EXAMPLE  Seeking the Wrong Goal occurs if the goals or the indicators of satisfaction of the rules are defined inaccurately or incompletely.  The system may obediently work to produce a result that is not really intended or wanted.  GDP is an excellent example of this system trap because Gross Domestic Product is a measure of the exchange of money but does not reflect improvement in quality of life.  A natural disaster often increases the GDP because of an increase in the exchange of money to deal with the immediate problem, but the funds spent on disaster relief do not provide an improvement over the pre-disaster condition.

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  • More recent attempts to address global challenges have resulted in the a system trap known as 'Shifting the Burden to the Intervenor.'  Burden, dependence and addiction arise when an attempted solution to a problem reduces or disguises the symptoms, but does nothing to solve the underlying problem.  Classic examples are the US intervention in conflicts to maintain US hegemony SUCH AS XXXX.  Although this approach gives the appearance that the US is helping other nations, it conceals underlying problems and causes the systems to atrophy or erode, setting in motion a destructive reinforcing feedback loop.

 

  • Overall, we are now observing a 'Drift to Low Performance' around the world as past efforts to address the needs of Human and Life Communities have not been sufficiently successful at slowing the Great Acceleration.  Expectations to slow the acceleration are diminishing as people lose hope or run out of passion to make improvements.  This trap sets up a reinforcing feedback loop of eroding goals.  As the magnitude and awareness of the effects of the Great Acceleration continue to accumulate, and as attempts to reverse its direction fail, this reinforcing feedback loop will lead to a great loss of hope and erosion of goals.  CITE EXAMPLE

 

 

Recommendations

  • To overcome the activities that contribute to the Anthropocene, we need leaders to listen to Human and Life Communities while recognizing the pervasive influence of Primary and Productive Communities.  These types of leaders will likely not be elected by the merchants, business owners and entrepreneurs in our current political systems unless these Agents can begin to think about broader communities.  Changing the way one thinks and acts is no simple feat, but will require much time and perseverance of multiple-generations of wise leaders.   

  • According to Donella Meadows, there are some steps we can take to prevent the system traps that contribute to the Anthropocene:

    • Tragedy of the Commons:  Educate private owners to understand the consequences of abusing resources and restore or strengthen the missing feedback link by regulating the access of all users.  AN EXAMPLE IS CARBON TAXING

    • Success to the Successful:  Impose strict limitations on the fraction of the pie any one winner may win and policies that level the economic playing field.  Policies that devise rewards for success should not bias the next round of competition.  FOR EXAMPLE Increasing the diversification of a system allows those who are losing to get out and start another game.  The current Alberta Renewable Energy incentives are aimed to increase diversity of the energy systems, but leaders must remain vigilant not to allow overt rewards to winners who become dominators in this energy sector and stifle innovation and competition in this sector.

    • Rule Beating:  Design or redesign rules to release creativity not in the direction of beating the rules but in the direction of achieving the purpose of the rules.  FOR EXAMPLE…

    • Policy Resistance:  Let go.  Bring Agents together and use the energy formerly expended on resistance to seek mutually satisfactory ways for all goals to be realized - or redefine larger and more important goals that everyone can pull toward together.  FOR EXAMPLE…

    • Escalation:  Avoid getting into escalation or refuse to compete through unilateral agreement.  FOR EXAMPLE…

    • Seeking the Wrong Goal:  Specify indicators and goals that reflect the real welfare of the system.  Leaders should not confuse effort with result or they end up with a system that is producing effort, not desired results.  GDP is a prime goal to target.

    • Shifting the Burden to the Intervenor:  Avoid invoking band-aid solutions to problems.  Beware of symptom-relieving or signal-denying policies or practices that don't really address the problem.  Focus on long-term restructuring by first seeking to understand the problem and the architecture that creates such problems.  FOR EXAMPLE

    • Drift to Low Performance:   Keep performance standards absolute let standards be enhanced by the best actual performances instead of being discouraged by the worst.  Leaders need to pay attention to and exemplify the positive efforts to slow the Great Acceleration.  Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring," is an example of an effort to be celebrated.

 

What was excluded in this research

  • More sources

  • Adaptive events

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