QUERY Limits to Growth Plan B

[Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.w]

Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.wehrenberg@verizon.net>

As many on the list know, I'm not really a modeler, but a dabbler.
However, I am an SD groupie, advocate, and cheerleader -- and I mention
this just in case my next question sounds dumb.

Has anyone modeled Lester Brown's solutions to the LTG problem? I
moderated a seminar session earlier this week with Lester as the
speaker, and his solution set as described in ""Plan B 3.0"" seems fairly
comprehensive, wrestling with population and consumption as root causes
and with the tax structure in the short term to reduce carbon
emissions. [See http://www.earth-policy.org/ ]

It seems to me that somewhere between Jack Harich's
""recognize a lie when you see it"" loop, Lester's proposals, and the
comprehensive nature of the Threshold 21 model that the Millennium
Institute continues to develop, there lies a set of solutions to the
problem.

Speaking of solutions, I was flying out of Louisville Kentucky today and
glanced at a local paper in the airport. On the front page, above the
fold, were two articles. One by three scientists who warn against the
continued use of grain for ethanol as we face a global food shortage,
and the other with long quotes from the US President arguing that we had
to use more grain for ethanol to reduce fuel prices.

Please ... someone work on the model!

Steve
Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.wehrenberg@verizon.net>
posting date Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:52:43 -0400
_______________________________________________

[j-d <jaideep@optimlator.com&g]

Posted by j-d <jaideep@optimlator.com>

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:33 AM, SDMAIL Stephen Wehrenberg
> Has anyone modeled Lester Brown's solutions to the LTG problem? I

My Ph. D. work almost 15 years ago (1993-1996 - three hard years)
started out with recognizing the problems Lester Brown and WorldWatch
Institute had been talking about for years. I won't go into details
here - one may search out system dynamics mailing list archives for
references to the Ph. D. work or email me directly and I can send the
reference to you.

First of all, the problems Lester Brown (LB) describes are quite
complex and one can only look at subsets of these problems. I did not
look at taxes, climate change, wars, and many other problems; but
looked at how North and South blocks of countries may evolve over time
assuming what Lester Brown et al say turns out to be true (for
example, more resource use by the South creating resource pressures on
the North, and the effects on the whole world). I modeled North and
South blocks using structures similar to LTG and also looked at
possible conflict situations between the North and the South (the
scenario that is playing out now and will be so in the future).
Conflict situations were modeled as dynamic games where players may
cooperate, dominate (Stackleberg) or be indifferent (Nash).

My conclusions in short were:

1. There is a serious data and understanding problem in these issues.
For example, most of the relationships (underlying state equations) in
LTG (hence my models) will not pass econometric tests of validity. So
exact relationships (how does a mathematical function look like) and
parameters (statistical confidence) are ill-understood. That doesn't
mean we cannot and should not model these problems - Barry Richmond
and Jay Forrester have given solid arguments as to why - our minds
handle only limited relations at one time - computers allow us to see
the logical conclusions of many of our working assumptions put
together, sort of looking at things with a big mind. Bad news is that
with larger models, problems multiply when data and structure is not
very good. So my initial idea was - more data, better data, better
econometric analyses on top of which system dynamics models may be
built. The standard SD community response was - data is not important,
insights from models are important, so much so that people would ask
for insights where there were none, or ask for relationships to be in
the model where econometrically there was no need for them. Having
built the models and worked closely with the equations in the book
Dynamics Of Growth in A Finite World, I realized the weaknesses in the
model and felt strongly that for policy purposes none of these
conclusions would be useful. To improve the limited insights from the
model, and to make them useful for policy applications, more research
was needed.

The above is also the standard argument used by policy makers against
dealing with global warming and other issues - we need more data and
research!

2. On the other hand - political and financial considerations mostly
drive the policies that are undertaken. In my view, the problem is not
necessarily lack of data and insights, but the will to do something.
Starting with LTG, and following up now to Lester Brown and company,
and Jim Hanson in Climate Change, etc. the problem is not lack of
insights but the desire to do something, even implementing cost-less
energy efficiency measures (kind of stuff Rocky Mountain Institute has
been talking about forever). In my view, the insights were there
(resources are limited, the party cannot go forever, greenhouse effect
is real etc.), but the political desire is not there, many times
because of because of corporate financial interests.

The above problem is like the problem of war - do we need more models
and more insights to tell us war is generally a bad idea. No, but
still wars happen because of political and financial interests. I
don't think we need more academic modeling and research for these
problems, but more buy-in (consultants of SD recognize this word well)
from the concerned people.

3. If the buy-in from top-level politicians and corporate CEOs is not
there, the other solution to problems of resources/global warming etc.
is for concerned people to make small changes in their own backyard.
This has limited application because of Prisoners Dilemma problem - am
I a sucker to pollute less when you are polluting anyway for both of
us? With his kind of mentality, one can see a positive feedback loop
(vicious cycle) driving things to the bottom. Unfortunately that is
what seems to be happening right now. I don't think modeling is a
solution to Lester Brown's problems.

Jaideep

Jaideep Mukherjee, Ph. D.
Posted by j-d <jaideep@optimlator.com>
posting date Thu, 1 May 2008 16:34:59 -0500
_______________________________________________

[Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.w]

Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.wehrenberg@verizon.net>

Jaideep certainly raises issues that further illustrate the complexity of the
problem. I am not suggesting (necessarily) a technical model that finds the
technical solution, e.g., reduction of driving miles and increasing auto
efficiency reduce fossil fuel use and thus greenhouse gas emissions.
Absolutely right. We know that. And those models exist already (previously
mentioned Threshold 21, for example).

But your last paragraph does raise the kinds of issues that we might better
understand through SD modeling.

>3. If the buy-in from top-level politicians and corporate CEOs is not
>there, the other solution to problems of resources/global warming etc.
>is for concerned people to make small changes in their own backyard.
>This has limited application because of Prisoners Dilemma problem - am
>I a sucker to pollute less when you are polluting anyway for both of
>us? With his kind of mentality, one can see a positive feedback loop
>(vicious cycle) driving things to the bottom. Unfortunately that is
>what seems to be happening right now. I don't think modeling is a
>solution to Lester Brown's problems.""

What structural conditions support the continued lack of buy-in? What policy
levers or feedback loops might be added to that structure that might result in
increasing that buy-in? What structure enables ""this kind of mentality"" as
describing the sucker? Are these areas where tax policies might be effective?
Education? A tipping point event like the sliding of the Greenland Ice Sheet?

If we know the solutions, as you imply and a proposition with which I agree,
why are these solutions not implemented? That's a problem worth solving, IMHO.
I'm saddened that your description seems to suggest that we are simply doomed
to suffer the effects or our unalterable greed as optimized by unregulated,
flawed, free market capitalism. (Flawed in that full costs are not evident,
and crucial information is not available to those involved in the transactions).

And though I sure you did not mean it quite this way, these are OUR problems,
not Lester's.

Stephen B. Wehrenberg
Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.wehrenberg@verizon.net>
posting date Sat, 03 May 2008 10:18:21 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Bill Braun <bbraun@hlthsys.co]

Posted by Bill Braun <bbraun@hlthsys.com>

Stephen Wehrenberg asks, ""What structural conditions support the
continued lack of buy-in? What policy levers or feedback loops might be
added to that structure that might result in increasing that buy-in?
What structure enables ""this kind of mentality"" as describing the
sucker? Are these areas where tax policies might be effective?
Education? A tipping point event like the sliding of the Greenland Ice
Sheet? ""

As an anecdotal observation, public policy makers (both politicians who
promulgate laws and agencies that write the actual regs) respond to
heat. The heat is generally from the electorate, sometimes with very
long doubling times. I suspect that insights might be gained through a
diffusion model of the variables that generate heat within the
electorate, more than trying to model ""buy-in"" at the politician level.

Case in point, the President's rhetoric on climate change has changed.
This is short of action, but it offers some evidence (as I interpret it)
that the heat is rising (taken as a pun if you wish).

Bill Braun
Posted by Bill Braun <bbraun@hlthsys.com>
posting date Sun, 04 May 2008 11:42:15 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jack Harich <register@thwink.]

Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>


> Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg
>
> Has anyone modeled Lester Brown's solutions to the LTG problem? I
> moderated a seminar session earlier this week with Lester as the
> speaker, and his solution set as described in ""Plan B 3.0"" seems
> fairly comprehensive, wrestling with population and consumption as
> root causes and with the tax structure in the short term to reduce
> carbon emissions. [See http://www.earth-policy.org/ ]
>

Steve,

I’ve not modeled Lester Brown’s solution to the LTG problem. Given the
vast nature of Plan B, I doubt anyone has, except on a highly simplified
or partial basis. But I don’t think a comprehensive model of a
comprehensive solution like Plan B is what’s going to make or break
solving the sustainability problem. It’s not the critical factor. More
important, I believe, are the key assumptions that efforts like Plan B
rest upon.

The key assumptions behind Plan B are never stated. One has to ferret
them out. This is especially difficult because the Plan B 2.0 and 3.0
books never give a short summary of the proposed solution. Instead, it
sprawls over the books. In contrast, for example, Al Gore’s ""Global
Marshall Plan"" in ""Earth in the Balance"" is summarized in 12 bullet
points on pages 346 and 347. There’s also Maurice Strong’s ""Where on
Earth Are We Going?"" which has a 12 point plan summarized on pages 373
to 390.

On page xii of ""Plan B 3.0"" we see the closest I can find to a summary
of the plan: ""There are four overriding goals in Plan B 3.0: stabilizing
climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the
earth’s ecosystems."" But this doesn’t summarize the plan. It summarizes
its goals. What’s the plan? All I can find is the chapter headings in
part two, titled ""The Response – Plan B."" The chapters are:

- Eradicating Poverty, Stabilizing Population

- Restoring the Earth

- Feeding Eight Billion People Well

- Designing Cities for People

- Raising Energy Efficiency

- Turning to Renewable Energy

This seems to be the high level plan. The implicit assumption here is
promoting policies to directly do this will solve the problem. Is this
true? I have great admiration for Lester Brown’s efforts over the years.
He’s done as much as anyone to bring the sustainability problem to the
world’s attention. But this assumption is false. Here’s why:

Plenty of ""plans"" like this have been proposed for decades. I’ve already
mentioned two: Maurice Strong’s list of key points (2000) and Al Gore’s
""Global Marshall Plan"" (1992). But we can go back much further. Look at
""Rio: Reshaping the International Order – A Report to the Club of Rome"",
1976. The cover states this is ""The long awaited, all inclusive working
plan that can let us win our global race for survival."" Pages 223 to 229
organize the plan into three packages, which are then summarized in
lists of components.

Plans like these focus on reducing the PAT factors in the IPAT equation:
Impact = Population x Affluence (consumption per person) x Technology
(impact per unit of consumption). At the strategic level the plans are
all about the same. They would work, IF they were adopted. But none have
been. This points to a deeper key assumption I will attempt to
verbalize: promotion of these plans, plus their intrinsic appeal, is
sufficient to cause them to be implemented. Because these plans have not
been implemented, this assumption is obviously false.

This is a radically different way to look at the problem. It’s one I
hope you will understand, and I hope my feeble attempts to explain this
viewpoint are adequate.

This viewpoint is embodied in the System Improvement Process, described
at: http://www.thwink/sustain/glossary/Syst ... rocess.htm.
This is a process designed from scratch to solve difficult social system
problems. Notice how it decomposes one big problem into three smaller
subproblems:

A. How to overcome change resistance

B. How to achieve proper coupling

C. How to avoid excessive model drift

Conventional approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only
subproblem B: proper coupling. Let’s define this term. Proper coupling
occurs when the behavior of one system affects the behavior of other
systems properly, using the appropriate feedback loops, so the systems
work together in harmony in accordance with design objectives. For
example, presently the human system is improperly coupled to the greater
system it lives within, the environment.

From the standpoint of a process like the System Improvement Process,
solutions like Plan B only address the proper coupling problem. The
reason proper coupling solutions like this have not been adopted is in
the global environmental sustainability problem, systemic change
resistance is very high. (Notice how this is my own key assumption.)
Certain dominant social agents are strongly and successfully resisting
change. They have far more influence on the political system than mere
books with proposed solutions. The result is exactly what we’ve seen:
the system continues in the unsustainable mode identified so well by the
World2 and World3 models, with overshoot and collapse just ahead, unless
a solution is adopted soon and aggressively implemented.

You mention that "" ‘Plan B 3.0’ seems fairly comprehensive, wrestling
with population and consumption as root causes and with the tax
structure in the short term to reduce carbon emissions.""

Therein lies another key assumption, that these are the root causes. But
what if we were following a formal problem solving process, one that
said to ask WHY population and consumption are too high? One can’t
simply say well, people are having too many children and consuming too
much. We got to change those habits. That does not answer the why question.

Let’s shift gears into another paradigm, which let’s us see that a
totally different why question has long gone unasked. After over 30
years of proposing plans that are consistently rejected by the system,
isn’t it time for environmentalists to ask WHY perfectly good plans are
failing to be adopted? Why is the system resisting them so strongly?

This line of attack would, I suspect, lead to the same conclusion my own
analysis has found: that systemic change resistance is high. Then of
course you can ask WHY is change resistance so high? That will lead to
the root causes of change resistance, which is the true cause of why
proper coupling solutions like Plan B have not been adopted. My
hypothesis for these root causes is expressed in the Dueling Loops
model, at: http://www.thwink/sustain/articles/005/ ... _Paper.htm

But please keep in mind this is only an example of how to apply the
process. It should not be interpreted as THE analysis or THE solution to
the change resistance subproblem. It’s only a sample first iteration (a
tentative diagnosis) that has not been verified by experimentation and
measurement. Nor has it been matured by iteration.

Lester Brown is a brilliant man, so much so that on page xii of ""Plan B
3.0"" he intuitively recognizes that change resistance is indeed the crux
of the problem. He says: ""We have the technologies to restructure the
world energy economy and stabilize climate. The challenge now is to
build the political will to do so. Saving civilization is not a
spectator sport. Each of us has a leading role to play."" Al Gore said
the same thing in ""An Inconvenient Truth,"" with ""America has the power
but lacks the political will"" to solve the climate change problem.

In this thread Dr. Mukherjee comes to the same conclusion: ""On the other
hand - political and financial considerations mostly drive the policies
that are undertaken. In my view, the problem is not necessarily lack of
data and insights, but the will to do something. Starting with LTG, and
following up now to Lester Brown and company, and Jim Hanson in Climate
Change, etc. the problem is not lack of insights but the desire to do
something, even implementing cost-less energy efficiency measures (the
kind of stuff Rocky Mountain Institute has been talking about forever).
In my view, the insights were there (resources are limited, the party
cannot go forever, greenhouse effect is real etc.), but the political
desire is not there, many times because of corporate financial interests.""

There seems to be a growing consensus here.

""Political will"" means a political system ""wants"" to adopt a certain
solution. As embodied in the System Improvement Process, my theory is
that a system ""wants"" to change to new policies when change resistance
is low. This is all pretty obvious, so there’s no rocket science here.
But what I’ve done (and others have done this in other fields) is to
incorporate this into a formal process.

Currently most people working on the sustainability problem are using an
intuitive process that can be called Classic Activism. (See the
Thwink.org glossary. This is another key assumption.) This works on
problems with low change resistance, like local pollution and
conservation parks. It sometimes works on problems with medium change
resistance, like the stratospheric ozone layer problem. But it nearly
always fails (or takes too long) on problems where change resistance is
high, like climate change and many other aspects of the global
environmental sustainability problem. From a system dynamics
perspective, when high change resistance is present the system is not in
a ""changeable mode"", and thus will not respond favorably to an attempted
change.

Better is an analytical approach, using a formal analytical process that
fits the problem well enough to solve it. This is so fundamental a key
assumption that a process that fits the problem is what separates
scientific knowledge from all other types of knowledge. This is the
Scientific Method. Until it appeared and was widely adopted, science was
not science. It was speculation and tradition based. These days, the
Scientific Method process is what drives all of science, including
research efforts to solve big, messy, difficult problems.

Again, this is so fundamental that in ""The Toyota Way: Fourteen
Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer"", 2004,
what do we see in the table of contents? Section two is titled ""The
right process will produce the right results."" That section covers 7 out
of the 14 principles. Concerning the importance of root causes, section
four is titled ""Continuously solving root problems drives organizational
learning."" This section covers 3 principles.

As an example of how the right process produces the right results, The
Nature Conservancy created the Conservation by Design process. Steve
McCormick, former president and CEO, wrote that ""Conservation by Design
has come to be our touchstone for action. It tells us where to work,
what biodiversity to conserve, what strategies we should use, and how
effective we have been."" The process is so superior that the Chinese
government and all 50 state wildlife management agencies in the US have
incorporated it into their own processes.

Hope you’re still with me. This is not easy to explain. Let me try to
wrap this up.

Until problem solvers like Lester Brown formally recognize that an
intuitive problem solving process like Classic Activism has not and will
not work on the sustainability problem, they will remain stumped. They
will continue to see only frustratingly slow acceptance of their
suggested solutions, no matter how well worded, detailed, published and
disseminated they may be. The only reason such solutions are receiving
more attention lately is that the early symptoms of environmental
collapse are starting to knock on the door. It’s not that the solutions
are getting any better.

Once they realize their present problem solving process is too weak to
solve the problem because it doesn’t fit the problem, the Lester Browns
of the world will look around for one that does. They will find one or
develop their own, or a combination.

Then, once they are following a process that fits the problem, the
process will probably lead them to realize that in the case of the
sustainability problem, change resistance is the crux.

And then perhaps, once they realize that, the problem will change from
insolvable to solvable.

> Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg
> If we know the solutions, as you imply and a proposition with which I
> agree, why are these solutions not implemented? That's a problem
> worth solving, IMHO.
I agree. Now we are starting to ask The Right Question. See:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/ ... estion.htm

The page defines The Right Question as ""The question with the highest
probability of making the biggest difference at that particular point in
solving a problem.""

The page ends by asserting: ""Problem solving is the art of asking the
right questions and finding their answers. Therefore, the most important
tool a problem solver can have is a tool that maximizes the probability
of asking the right questions and finding their answers. That tool is
process. If you don't have one, get one. If you can't find one, invent
one. And if you already have one, continuously improve it, and it will
soon be performing wonders that are beyond anyone's fondest dreams.""

It turns out that ""Why are these solutions not [being] implemented?"" is
a potent, reusable question, so much so that it's what step 2A of the
System Improvement Process is all about. There the question is rephrased
as ""Why is change resistance so high?"" This is based on the principle
that in complex social systems, failure to adopt workable solutions is
due to high systemic change resistance.

I couldn't agree more that ""That's a problem worth solving.""

Hope this helps,

Jack
Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>
posting date Sun, 04 May 2008 09:52:32 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jack Harich <jack@thwink.org&]

Posted by Jack Harich <jack@thwink.org>

Whoops, I made errors in the first two out of three links in the previous
version of this posting. Here are the correct links:

http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/ ... rocess.htm
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/ ... _Paper.htm
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/ ... estion.htm

Posted by Jack Harich <jack@thwink.org>
posting date Mon, 05 May 2008 09:52:55 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jay Forrester <jforestr@MIT.E]

Posted by Jay Forrester <jforestr@MIT.EDU>


See my comments below the following quote from Harich:

On May 5, 2008, at 7:23 AM, SDMAIL Jack Harich wrote:
> As an example of how the right process produces the right results, The
> Nature Conservancy created the Conservation by Design process. Steve
> McCormick, former president and CEO, wrote that ""Conservation by Design
> has come to be our touchstone for action. It tells us where to work,
> what biodiversity to conserve, what strategies we should use, and how
> effective we have been."" The process is so superior that the Chinese
> government and all 50 state wildlife management agencies in the US have
> incorporated it into their own processes.

This program by the Nature Conservancy is a losing strategy because it
tries to fight in niches against the overpowering forces of population
growth and industrial expansion without addressing those dominating
causes. ""Conservation by Design"" is a nice phrase that is effective in
gaining financial support for the organization and keeping the Nature
Conservancy operating, but in the long run the strategy will fail.

In the third paragraph of their website:

http://www.nature.org/aboutus/howwework/cbd/

they say:
""But despite all our progress, climate change, a rapidly expanding human
population, damaging industrial and agricultural practices and other
dynamics continue to threaten our natural world and quality of life.""

Having identified the fundamental driving forces for environmental
deterioration, they then turn to fighting losing battles around the
edges rather than facing the underlying causes that could win the war.
It is rather clear that organizations like this do not want to
antagonize their supporters by campaigning for zero population growth
and an end to the ever-increasing industrial growth. However, their
obvious and self-evident courses of attacking symptoms rather than
causes will be futile.

I suggest that you look at Chapter 5, ""Obvious Responses Will Not
Suffice,"" of ""World Dynamics"" for how treating one symptom can unleash a
different overwhelming reaction.

Forrester, J. W. (1971). _World Dynamics_. Waltham, MA, Pegasus
Communications.

You may want to look at Figures 6-7 and 6-8 in Chapter 6, ""Toward a
Global Equilibrium,"" of ""World Dynamics"" for a proposal to sustain a
good standard of living in a finite world.

Jay W. Forrester
Professor of Management
Sloan School, MIT
Posted by Jay Forrester <jforestr@MIT.EDU>
posting date Tue, 6 May 2008 16:13:30 -0400
_______________________________________________

[""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher]

Posted by ""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher@gmail.com>

The problem is not failed actions, or even failed planning - it's
failed thinking. The real truth that needs to be accepted before
progress can be made is that the fundamental assumptions underlying
modern industrial society are flawed. Until humans accept this fact
and redirect their thinking to designing a future that might actually
work no progress can be made. Most of the current ""solutions"" are
still largely based on flawed core assumptions. For example, if we
take World3 and introduce resource ""regrowth"" does that solve the
problem? No, actually in almost all cases, it simply makes the
eventual overshoot worse! Why? Because the underlying assumptions and
the decision rules derived from those assumptions about the
unrestricted growth of capital and population are still operating.
Until those decision rules based on the fundamental assumptions
change, the trajectory of human society is unlikely to be anything
approaching a soft-landing outcome. In my estimation, unfortunately,
many of the quasi-solutions now being discussed and even implemented
in places, actually create the possibility of such a ""False Spring""
type outcome.

The issue of changing peoples fundamental assumptions about how human
society should operate is the real challenge. Many still assume, as
Donnella Meadows trenchantly commented, ""the future will be like
today, only bigger."" Even many who have moved beyond that way of
thinking, are, as Dr. Forrester mentioned, attacking symptoms and not
core problems.

Most of the current ""solutions"" are the equivalent of doubling the
size of the Lilly-Pond with a backhoe - which if we remember our folk
fable will only add one more day before the end. (e.g. gas and oil
exploration in the Arctic, which is now conveniently ice-free due to
human blundering is such a solution set.) Or there are downright
red-herring solutions which actually make the problem worse, such as
biofuels, which stress world food production and, as proposed in
recent studies, actually create more greenhouse gases than extracted
fuels. Those kind of ""solutions"" aren't going to solve anything, and
could even lead to worse outcomes. People who feed their 2-ton luxury
SUV with biofuels are - to put it nicely, kind of missing the point.
How much of the worlds surface would have to be covered by wind
generators and solar panels to support 10 billion people in a oil-free
world consuming energy and producing goods and services at the levels
of the U.S. (or even China) today?

It is possible that humans can reshape their society into a high-tech,
low-energy consuming, no-growth paradigm where human competition is
channeled away from consuming resources and energy to produce more and
more into more fruitful pursuits. Would humans even be able to accept
such a world? What would such a world look like? I'm not sure. It
appears others aren't sure either. Can Modeling help? Certainly
models can be part of the discussion - to test ideas, challenge
assumptions and flawed solutions. But first we have to acknowledge -
at a core level of understanding that will allow for meaningful
redesign - that the current ""design"" is flawed, and almost as
importantly that solutions based on the assumptions of the old
paradigm will not work and can not work.

Otherwise, some new social structure, probably quite different from
that we see today, will of course emerge, but we probably won't be
pleased with the results, and the transition will not be pretty.

Michael Fletcher
Posted by ""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher@gmail.com>
posting date Wed, 7 May 2008 17:27:45 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu&g]

Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu>

As always, Jay's observations are most insightful. From the stand point
of intervention, what can be done to reduce fertility and
industrialization rates? Individuals may not voluntarily change their
behavior for fear of losing their share of the commons. An intervention
by state might mean giving power to the state which often leads to
preserving that power taking precedent over solving societal problems.
Any ideas?

Khalid
Khalid Saeed, PhD
Professor of Economics and System Dynamics
Social Science and Policy Studies Department
WPI, Worcester, MA 01609
Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu>
posting date Wed, 7 May 2008 11:13:06 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jack Harich <register@thwink.]

Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>


> Posted by Jay Forrester
> This program by the Nature Conservancy is a losing strategy because it
> tries to fight in niches against the overpowering forces of population
> growth and industrial expansion without addressing those dominating
> causes. ""Conservation by Design"" is a nice phrase that is effective
> in gaining financial support for the organization and keeping the
> Nature Conservancy operating, but in the long run the strategy will
> fail.

Conservation by Design was mentioned as an example of a good process.
But the goal of a process determines the outcome of process execution.
The goal of Conservation by Design is, of course, conservation. The
strategy behind that goal is the premise that more conservation is an
effective way to go about solving the environmental sustainability problem.

I agree with you 100%. This is a naive strategy, as I explained on:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/ ... alysis.htm
where it says: ""Stage 1. Conservation - The first class of solutions to
solving the environmental sustainability problem was conservation. This
treated the symptom of disappearing unspoiled lands and waters by
setting large tracts of land aside. The idea was that if we set enough
aside, it would somehow solve the problem. It did not, of course. It was
a naive first solution.""

Conservation by Design is, however, a dynamite example of a good
process, especially when compared to the formal processes of most NGOs,
which is none. Imagine what might happen if the Conservancy (and other
NGOs) employed a process with the right strategy and the related right
process goal.

>
> In the third paragraph of their website:
>
> http://www.nature.org/aboutus/howwework/cbd/
>
> they say:
> ""But despite all our progress, climate change, a rapidly expanding
> human population, damaging industrial and agricultural practices and
> other dynamics continue to threaten our natural world and quality of
> life.""
>
> Having identified the fundamental driving forces for environmental
> deterioration, they then turn to fighting losing battles around the
> edges rather than facing the underlying causes that could win the war.
> It is rather clear that organizations like this do not want to
> antagonize their supporters by campaigning for zero population growth
> and an end to the ever-increasing industrial growth. However, their
> obvious and self-evident courses of attacking symptoms rather than
> causes will be futile.

Again, I agree. This is why I wrote in my chapter (see link below) on An
Assessment of Process Maturity:

""The mission of The Nature Conservancy is not to solve the environmental
sustainability problem. Instead, it is a conservation organization:

“ 'The mission of The Nature Conservancy is *to preserve* the plants,
animals and natural communities that represent *the diversity of life on
earth* by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.'

""The bolding is theirs and is a nice capsule summary of their mission.
It points to the goal of preserving enough of the biosphere to save the
diversity of life on earth, while ignoring the rest. This is a
save-the-representative-ecosystems strategy, and is nearly identical to
the first form of environmentalism: the conservation movement of the
19th and early 20th centuries. The idea was that if we set aside enough
areas of the world as protected parks or managed renewable natural
resources, such as forests, then that would keep enough of the earth in
pristine condition for the average condition of the earth to be
acceptable. This did not work, however, because it had no effect on
pollution and environmental degradation elsewhere. It was a naive solution.

""Still, The Nature Conservancy is doing a superb job of conservation. As
of 2005 they have protected an impressive 17 million acres in the US and
117 million acres in other countries. They have achieved high mission
success.

""Or so it seems. But there is a dark cloud hanging over every protected
acre. It is the brutal fact that if the rest of the biosphere is not
protected, it will soon degrade to the point where the human system
collapses. That in turn will cause the islands of conservation that The
Nature Conservancy has so lovingly set aside to be impossible to
maintain, and they too will fall to the irresistible forces of collapse.""


>
> I suggest that you look at Chapter 5, ""Obvious Responses Will Not
> Suffice,"" of ""World Dynamics"" for how treating one symptom can unleash
> a different overwhelming reaction.
> Forrester, J. W. (1971). _World Dynamics_. Waltham, MA, Pegasus
> Communications.
>
> You may want to look at Figures 6-7 and 6-8 in Chapter 6, ""Toward a
> Global Equilibrium,"" of ""World Dynamics"" for a proposal to sustain a
> good standard of living in a finite world.
Thanks. I studied this book in September 2004 (and Urban Dynamics the
next month). It affected my strategies immensely. I've since quoted from
it extensively.


This discussion brings up a point you may be able to shed some light
upon. You and many others have argued that ""courses of attacking
symptoms rather than causes will be futile.""

Well, what ARE the causes? When you say ""It is rather clear that
organizations like this do not want to antagonize their supporters by
campaigning for zero population growth and an end to the ever-increasing
industrial growth."" This suggests the causes are population growth and
industrial growth.

But are these the root causes? Conventional wisdom says they are. My
analysis argues they are merely intermediate causes. The intrepid
analyst can ask ""Why is population growing so high, despite signals it
should not?"" and the same for industrial growth. This line of
questioning will lead to the deeper causes that I've discussed earlier
on this list.

As far as I can tell the unifying deeper cause is systemic change
resistance. Since the world has many solutions that will work but has
not adopted them, there is smoking gun proof aplenty that change
resistance is the reason and is high. As others like Lester Brown and Al
Gore have put it, the ""political will"" to adopt these solutions is low.

Thus actions like ""campaigning for zero population growth and an end to
the ever-increasing industrial growth"" push on low leverage points,
because they seek to resolve intermediate instead of root causes. As I
have so often quoted in my work:

""Why do people use low leverage points again and again? The founder of
the field of system dynamics, Jay Forrester, has this to say: (Bolding
added)

"" 'Social systems are inherently insensitive to most policy changes that
people select in an effort to alter behavior. In fact, *a social system
draws attention to the very points* at which an attempt to intervene
will fail. Human experience, which has been developed from contact with
simple systems, leads us to look close to the symptoms of trouble for a
cause. But when we look, we are misled because the social system
presents us with an apparent cause that is plausible according to the
lessons we have learned from simple systems, although *this apparent
cause is usually a coincident occurrence* that, like the trouble symptom
itself, is being produced by the feedback loop dynamics of a larger
system.' "" (from World Dynamics, by Jay Forrester, 1971, page 95)

Many people have read these words, both in your work and mine. The above
paragraph has changed a few minds. But this has not been enough. So I
wonder how we CAN reach them?

One thing I tried was the chapter on An Assessment of Process Maturity
in the Analytical Activism book, at:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/manuscrip ... turity.htm

Without even reading the chapter, you can examine the summarized results
on the above web page. It contains the Process Maturity Grid image,
which says so much. Click on the grid for a bigger and more readable
image. Notice how none of the organizations scored well in the last
three key process elements. These are:

9. The analysis centers on a social system structural analysis
10. Low and high leverage points have been identified and tested
11. Why change resistance is so successful has been determined

As you can see, I have been trying to spread your message.

This chapter methodically rates ten representative environmental
organizations on 11 key process elements. The Nature Conservancy, the
UNEP, the European Union Environmental DG, and smaller orgs like the
Sierra Club and Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection are included.
The idea was to prepare the assessment and then at some point show the
rated organizations (and others) the results. This I have not yet done.
The intended effect is they will suddenly see that the strategic cause
of their inability to solve the sustainability problem is low process
maturity. Because it's low, they focus on resolving ""coincident
occurrences"" instead of striking at the root.

Do you think showing the rated organizations the results would be an
effective action to take?

Thanks,

Jack
Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>
posting date Wed, 07 May 2008 18:39:25 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jack Harich <register@thwink.]

Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>


Stephen Wehrenberg wrote:
> Jack, Jay,
>
> I submit that there are subtle differences in the way you are
> referring to causes.
Yes, and I'm glad you picked up on this.
>
> Jay implies in his statement that population and industrial growth are
> the causes of the environmental pickle we find ourselves in. I'd just
> say consumption, since demand from consumption fuels industrial
> growth, but no reason to quibble about that. Infinite growth in a
> finite world seems problematic. I am inclined to agree with this
> proposition, as mentioned earlier. I throw my lot in with Jared
> Diamond in that population and consumption are both important causes,
> /sine qua non/, and it's too late to merely solve one or the other.
> Current populations, consuming at the rate that we in America do,
> would bankrupt the world in a decade.
> Jack, you ask what causes population and industrial growth? And you
> posit resistance to change as the culprit. I would say that R-C isn't
> the cause of population or consumption, but that it may indeed be the
> cause (reason) we have not solved the problem, the root cause of which
> is too many people using too much stuff.
I agree with you, that change resistance may be the cause we have not
solved the problem. I'm wrong. I should have used better wording, and
said that the root cause of population and industrial growth being too
high is systemic change resistance. If it was low, the world could have
changed course easily long ago, soon after World2 and World3 brought the
problem to the world's attention.

In fact, without using the term, there is the widespread key assumption
change resistance is low. For example, here's a quote from the third
edition of Limits to Growth, page xiii:

""[The second edition of /Limits to Growth/] //was published in 1992, the
year of the global summit on environment and development in Rio de
Janeiro. The advent of the summit seemed to prove that global society
had decided to deal seriously with the important environmental problems.
But we now know that humanity failed to achieve the goals of Rio. The
Rio plus 10 conference in Johannesburg in 2002 produced even less; it
was almost paralyzed by a variety of ideological and economic disputes,
[and] by the efforts of those pursuing their narrow national, corporate,
or individual self-interests.”

The folks at Rio implicitly assumed change resistance was low, and that
merely by pointing out the problem, its serious nature, and the need to
act soon and decisively, that the problem would soon be solved. But as
the quote relates, those hopes were dashed. Why? Well, I don't want to
repeat myself....

When I see words like ""almost paralyzed by a variety of ideological and
economic disputes, [and] by the efforts of those pursuing their narrow
national, corporate, or individual self-interests” I see the telltale
signs of high change resistance. But most live in another paradigm. All
they see is somehow we have failed to move forward, so we have to try
harder or better or something....

There is a missing abstraction here. If problem solvers instead thought
in terms of change resistance as a phenomenon in itself, then they would
have something tangible to wrap their arms around and solve. They would
no longer be punching at shadows, at invisible forces that are blocking
adoption of workable solutions.

To me, change resistance is as real as gravity. In fact, in this problem
it's just as pervasive and strong.

Gravity is what makes apples drop. Change resistance is what cause
workable solutions to not drop, ie, to not drop where solution creators
expect they should.

The stronger the force of gravity, the faster the apple drops. The
stronger the force of change resistance, the less likely solutions are
to drop where they should, and when they should.

I should say that I'm in the middle of a second iteration of an analysis
of the proper coupling subproblem of the sustainability problem. That
subproblem appears to have four closely related root causes, which are
too complex to describe briefly here. But actually we don't have to. The
real issue is that if we split the sustainability problem into these
three subproblems:

A. How to overcome change resistance (to adopting a proper coupling
solution)
B. How to achieve proper coupling (of the human system to the environment)
C. How to avoid excessive model drift (so the problem doesn't recur, due
to solution obsolescence)

then the problem is an order of magnitude easier to solve. The
subproblems must be solved in this order, although it may be possible to
speed up C in some cases. But A must always come before B, whether
change resistance is low or high.

Most people see only subproblem B. To them, this IS the sustainability
problem. This in turn leads to the conventional notion that the root
cause of unsustainability is overly high population, consumption per
person, and impact per unit of consumption. Let's call these the PAT
factors of the IPAT equation. Since:

root cause ---> symptoms

and

high PAT factors ---> unsustainability

Therefore the high PAT factors must be the root cause, or more commonly,
the cause.

But when we think at a higher level of abstraction, one that considers
subproblems A and B, we can look much deeper into the structure of the
system. We see:

high change resistance ---> no proper coupling solution ---> high PAT
factors ---> unsustainability

This simple four node diagram shows how high PAT factors, ones over the
limits, are merely an intermediate cause.

This is what I was trying to say when I ventured the hypothesis that
high systemic change resistance is the root cause of (excessively) high
population and industrial growth.
>
> Thus we get to some subtle differences. In one case cause is taken as
> that which comes before and results in A, and without which A would
> not occur. One event is the stimulus for the next. Newtonian physics.
> In the other case it is more like the cause as the reason that a
> condition exists. A condition can exist as the result of a cause and
> be sustained for a reason. Perhaps that framework would help us
> recast the statement in a way that would address both Jay's and Jack's
> positions.
> ""Population and consumption (growth) are the causes of our
> environmental calamity, and resistance to change has prevented us from
> solving either.""
Beautiful, and correct, since you have not used the phrase ""root causes.""

Perhaps the above four node diagram expresses your statement in another
way.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Steve
>
> P.S. This entire thread is so good that I am going to want to share
> it with my energy/environment colleagues. I will, soon, be begging
> the indulgence of the contributors and Bob to either copy the thread
> or send them a link to it!
Probably the best link would be to:
http://ventanasystems.co.uk/forum/viewt ... p?tid=3521

However, the above copy of the list is a few days behind now. But it's
more professional looking than the one at:
http://www.systemdynamics.org/pipermail ... /date.html

You are more than welcome to share whatever I say with anyone, and I
hope others feel the same. I think some of the ideas (especially the
core ideas) on this list are some of the most advanced (and potentially
productive) in all of progressivism, for lack of a better word. Thus
they SHOULD see the light of day.

BTW, my definition of a progressive is someone who seeks to improve (or
better yet, optimize) the common good.


Thanks Steve, for taking the time to see a little deeper and to help us
see what you've seen,



Whoops, I left out a node. The four node diagram should be:

dominant race to the bottom ---> high change resistance ---> no proper
coupling solution ---> high PAT factors ---> unsustainability

which is five nodes. High change resistance is not the root cause after
all. It's a dominant race to the bottom, as described in The Dueling
Loops of the Political Powerplace paper. I don't know why I was
consistently forgetting this. Writer's block? Or more likely
writer's exhaustion....

All this is summarized in the process grid in color at:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/ ... rocess.htm

Please note that the findings in column B are the first iteration
analysis. A second is underway.


Mike Fletcher,

You say ""Those kind of 'solutions' aren't going to solve anything, and
could even lead to worse outcomes.""

So, how would you go about solving the problem?

Assume you had 105 million dollars per year, which is the United Nations
Environmental Programme's annual budget.

Recall that the ""UNEP is the designated authority of the United Nations
system in environmental issues at the global and regional level. Its
mandate is to coordinate the development of environmental policy
consensus by keeping the global environment under review and bringing
emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international
community for action.""

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nat ... _Programme

Jack Harich
Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>
posting date Thu, 08 May 2008 09:20:01 -0400
_______________________________________________

[j-d <jaideep@optimlator.com&g]

Posted by j-d <jaideep@optimlator.com>

Thanks to everyone who replied to my post with their kind words. Some
people asked for my Ph. D. reference:

""Environment and Development - A Study of North-South Conflict"".
If interested, you may contact the publishers at UMI Dissertation Services,
300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106, USA (Phone 1-800-521-0600
inside USA or 313 761 4700 from outside USA).
Posted by j-d <jaideep@optimlator.com>
posting date Thu, 8 May 2008 15:33:58 -0500
_______________________________________________

[""Gary Hirsch"" <GBHirsch@com]

Posted by ""Gary Hirsch"" <GBHirsch@comcast.net>

Khalid,

Having the state regulate fertility may seem abhorrent, but there are,
as you know, more positive ways to lower fertility rates. More and
better education for girls is one way since research shows that better
educated women tend to make greater use of birth control and have fewer
children. Continuing to work on reducing infant and childhood mortality
is another way to help reduce birth rates. High mortality rates may
cause people to have more children as an ""insurance policy"" to make
certain they have a large enough family support them in their old age.
Similarly, programs specifically to support people in their old age can
also reduce pressures to have a lot of children. Overcoming the
resistance of some countries (e.g., the US) to distribution of birth
control and family planning education will also help.

Industrialization can be shaped to provide a better standard of living
with more limited use of resources. Microfinance and appropriately
scaled technologies can, for example, help to make communities more
self-sufficient and reduce the need for long-distance transportation of
life's necessities. Food policies that support rather than impede local
agriculture can help as well.

Gary Hirsch
Posted by ""Gary Hirsch"" <GBHirsch@comcast.net>
posting date Thu, 8 May 2008 13:12:59 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu&g]

Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@WPI.EDU>

Gary,

Those are great observations, but there exists considerable variability
in the performance of social services related policies. I am also not
sure about the efficacy of micro-finance. I think it is a great
innovation that substitutes financial collateral with social collateral
for a banking system allowing it to reap high interests (often >20%)
from short term loans to the poor. The micro-finance institutions are a
growing industry but the new transfer stream they are creating from the
poor to the rich may neither help to alleviate poverty nor curtail
industrial growth in the long run (my apologies to nobel laureate
Mohammed Yunus).

I am thinking about the carrying capacities that might sustain high
fertility rates and industrial growth. Those sustaining fertility might
reside in the social/economic norms that value children - like prestige,
tax deductions, extended family arrangements, religion, etc. Those
sustaining industry might reside in the financial system that forms a
positive feedback with industry. If we can precisely identify such
societal/technological/economic carrying capacities, we might be able to
find ways to change them.

Khalid
Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@WPI.EDU>
posting date Thu, 8 May 2008 15:34:27 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.w]

Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.wehrenberg@verizon.net>

Jack, Jay,

I submit that there are subtle differences in the way you are referring to
causes.

Jay implies in his statement that population and industrial growth are the
causes of the environmental pickle we find ourselves in. I'd just say
consumption, since demand from consumption fuels industrial growth, but no
reason to quibble about that. Infinite growth in a finite world seems
problematic. I am inclined to agree with this proposition, as mentioned
earlier. I throw my lot in with Jared Diamond in that population and
consumption are both important causes, sine qua non, and it's too late to
merely solve one or the other. Current populations, consuming at the rate
that we in America do, would bankrupt the world in a decade.

Jack, you ask what causes population and industrial growth? And you posit
resistance to change as the culprit. I would say that R-C isn't the cause
of population or consumption, but that it may indeed be the cause (reason) we
have not solved the problem, the root cause of which is too many people using
too much stuff.

Thus we get to some subtle differences. In one case cause is taken as that
which comes before and results in A, and without which A would not occur.
One event is the stimulus for the next. Newtonian physics.

In the other case it is more like the cause as the reason that a condition
exists. A condition can exist as the result of a cause and be sustained for
a reason. Perhaps that framework would help us recast the statement in a way
that would address both Jay's and Jack's positions.

""Population and consumption (growth) are the causes of our environmental
calamity, and resistance to change has prevented us from solving either.""

Respectfully,

Steve
Posted by Stephen Wehrenberg <stephen.wehrenberg@verizon.net>
posting date Thu, 08 May 2008 19:19:34 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jack Harich <jack@thwink.org&]

Posted by Jack Harich <jack@thwink.org>

Tom Fiddaman wrote:
> Jack and others have noted that managing the globe involves two
> subproblems:
> 1. figuring out the problem (e.g., are there limits, what are they,
> when do they become binding)
This is what the System Improvement Process (SIP) calls the problem
definition step.

> 2. convincing others to act (hard when others may be uninformed or
> predatory)
And this is what SIP calls the change resistance problem.

>
> I'd argue that there's a third problem, which we've tended to gloss
> over: 3. figuring out how to act. For the climate problem, for
> example, this is nontrivial. Is it better to allocate property rights
> in the atmosphere and start trading, or to implement a carbon tax, or
> start a social movement, or ... ? More practically, as I see it,
> places like California that are committed (at least on paper) to
> significant GHG emissions reductions are trying to solve a big messy
> global problem with regulatory approaches that were designed to handle
> fairly localized problems (like criteria air pollutants). Policies
> under development leave much of the problem unaddressed, and could
> prove counterproductive. It's a shame to waste strong support on
> measures that are doomed to fail (as zero-emissions vehicle mandates
> and electric power deregulation did). Then again, perhaps the reason
> current measures don't go far enough is that #2 has not really been
> accomplished, so strong support is an illusion. If so, then it would
> be useful to recognize that the emperor has no clothes, i.e. that
> current policies are a start, not an answer.
""Figuring out how to act"" is what SIP calls the proper coupling problem.

Notice how I've just introduced three terms: problem definition, change
resistance, and proper coupling. When problems become this big and
messy, problem solvers need a standard, clear set of terms. This is one
thing a formal process like SIP provides. I've gone through great pains
to make each of these terms as unique, self-explanatory, and productive
as possible.

So let's talk in terms of solving the proper coupling problem, which is
what your post deals with. Presently, the human system is improperly
coupled to the larger system it lives within: the environment. If it was
properly coupled, then feedback loops would exist that would keep
environmental impact below acceptable limits. This includes all three
main types of limits: the depletion of non-renewable resources rate, the
use of renewable resources rate, and the rate of pollution.

>
> I've been working with refiners and agencies on alternative fuel
> issues. California has policies underway to control things like
> vehicle fuel efficiency and fuel carbon intensity (none of which
> tackles the underlying growth drivers, as Jay pointed out). The
> fuels/energy/air quality crowd perceives that technical options have
> somewhat limited potential, and that to achieve aggressive goals in
> the long run will require changes in driving habits and land use. I've
> been wondering whether the transport/transit crowd in the state shared
> the same vision, because transport agencies have been conspicuously
> absent from the energy/emissions conversation so far. On Tuesday, I
> got the answer at a presentation from a regional transport agency: the
> region is planning to accommodate a massive increase in driving, and
> counting on technology to somehow accomplish emissions reductions.
> Clearly the left and right hands have some coordination to do. Even
> worse, at least one member of the audience expressed horror at the
> very idea that goods previously regarded as free (freeways) might
> become costly.
I think we can see from the above two paragraphs of yours, the posts of
others on this list, efforts like Plan B 3.0, and the latest efforts
like the G8 summit (see link below), that there is a gigantic hodgepodge
of solution suggestions underway. Their complexity and differences in
detail boggles the mind. Their tendency to usually not work, or not work
well, or to work so awkwardly as to beg the question of how can we do
better, is ubiquitous. If one pushes back from the table and takes a
bird's eye look at all these efforts, they look like the work of 10,000
sailors lost at sea. So, how can we help all those sailors find their
way? How can we slice through this logjam?

(See http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/environmen ... cy0803.pdf as
a solution example. This was prepared by the ministry of foreign
affairs, Japan, for the summit. Thanks to Bill Rathborne for this link.)

This is where the System Improvement Process (SIP) comes in handy. While
it has a long way to go to maturity, it's already refined enough to help
us quite a bit. We simply execute the process on the proper coupling
subproblem. The steps involved are:

In the System Understanding / Analysis step:
A. Find the feedback loops that are currently dominant.
B. Find the root cause of why they are dominant.
C. Find the low leverage points (LLPs) and symptomatic solutions.
D. Find the feedback loops that should be dominant.
E. Find the high leverage points (HLPs) to make them go dominant.

And then in the Solution Convergence step:
- Use the above knowledge and experimentation to converge on a way to
push on the HLPs.

From the perspective of SIP, efforts like Plan B, Al Gore's Global
Marshall Plan, Japan's document on what the G8 should consider doing,
what you are seeing California attempting to do, etc, are all focused on
the Solution Convergence step. Because they have mostly skipped the
analysis step, they are forced to converge on solutions by the most
unreliable method known: intuition. The result is the mess you described
in your two paragraphs above.

The exact cause of this mess (or muddle, as those across the pond would
say) is the problem solvers involved don't know what the root causes of
improper coupling are, what the LLPs are, and most importantly, what the
HLPs are. This is an important claim. Pause to consider its validity.
It's what my entire case rests upon.

First consider that if a doctor hasn't correctly diagnosed a patient's
problem, how can she determine the right treatment?

Then consider that if one doesn't know the root cause of a problem, how
can you resolve it? If the LLPs are unknown, how can you persuade people
to stop pushing on them? If the HLPs are unknown, then how do you know
where in the system to direct your solution intervention strategies?

This is where the world stands today. The answers to all three of the
above questions are unknown. But yet individuals, NGOs, governments, and
international agencies are acting as if they were known and correct!
(Here's hoping this list can do something about that.
The Dueling Loops paper is a sample analysis of the change resistance
subproblem. I've also done a sample analysis of the proper coupling
subproblem. Unfortunately, there's a timing problem here. I have several
months to go on my second iteration. After that I could refer you to a
100 page writeup and related model. So let me briefly describe the
current analysis and solution conclusions.

Remember now, this is just an example of how to apply the process. But
it may contain a few useful ideas that make it into a more mature
analysis and a fully workable solution. By that I mean one that resolves
the true root causes. (Root cause is another useful, standard term. It's
crucial to a good analysis. That's why I introduced the term to this
list a month ago. Further useful terms are LLPs and HLPs.) Here goes:


Step A. Find the feedback loops that are currently dominant. - These are
the PAT growth loops identified so well in the World2 and World3 models.
I like to think of this as one main loop: Consumption Growth. It could
be modeled that way, but the more detailed World3 model has infinitely
more credibility, because it is roughly calibrated. It's a very
persuasive model.


Step B. Find the root cause of why they are dominant. - Here we take an
analytical leap. Consider first that in the World3 model, there are
about 20 places where policies need to be changed to create scenario 9,
which is somewhat sustainable. The model is a simplification. Thus in
the real world, there would be millions of places needing policy
changes. Therefore it's logical to extend the World3-03 model, which
I've done, to include a node we can call ""sustainability preference."" In
percent, this is a measure of the world's systemic tendency to behave
sustainably. As this percent goes from zero to 100%, the model moves
from scenario 2 (today's unsustainable mode with optimistic assumptions)
to scenario 9 (sustainable).

The ""sustainability preference"" node is a wonderfully simplifying
abstraction, because it let's us ask a WHY question in a manner that is
realistically answered and modeled: Why is the world's sustainability
preference so low?

The answer is the world's Impact Reduction Capital (IRC) stocks are low.
The World3-93 model has three of these: Land Yield Technology, Resource
Conservation Technology, and Persistent Pollution Technology. But the
other dozen or so policy places in the model have no such explicit IRC
stocks. We could extend the model and add them. But there's a simpler
way, one which is just as convincing: we add an Impact Reduction Capital
subsystem to the model. This has several abstract stocks that represent
all the IRC stocks. These can be modeled many ways.

A simple and educational way is two groups of stocks, for physical and
social capital. Each group has three stocks, one each for R&D,
Technology, and Capital itself. An influence flow occurs, starting in
the R&D stock, whose discoveries allow accumulation of Technology, which
when applied causes the Capital stock to build up. When the physical and
social Capital stocks are sufficiently high, so is the world's
sustainability preference. (BTW, it is the social IRC stocks that are
the most important.)

This leads to the next WHY question: Why are the Impact Reduction
Capital stocks so low?

Here's where we take the next leap. The answer is that the systemic
tendency of social agents to accumulate the IRC stocks is too low. This
is fairly obvious. The key agents are the dominant ones. As the Dueling
Loops paper (the long version) explained, far and away the most dominant
is the New Dominant Life Form. This is the modern corporation and its
allies, notably the rich. (The Dueling Loops and New Dominant Life Form
are additional standard terms.)

Looking at the real world, we can see that corporations have a low
tendency to accumulate IRC stocks. So the model is on track. Now then,
WHY is this tendency so low? That leads to the four root causes:

1. Corporations and humans have mutually exclusive goals. One wants to
maximize the net present value of profits. The other wants to optimize
the common good for all and their descendants.

2. Behaving sustainably is not nearly as profitable as behaving
unsustainably.

3. The social system role definition for accumulating IRC is low in
maturity. There is no standard way to go about doing it. This forces
NGOs, governments, and even those corporations who do want to live
sustainably to invent a myriad of different approaches, which is
inefficient.

4. IRC laws are not general enough. New ones have to be passed for each
new problem. This causes such an intolerably high transaction cost for
new IRC laws that the result is few get passed, and those that do are
immature to save on transaction costs.

Sorry this is so brief. Hope you get the main idea. Notice how different
these root causes are from conventional wisdom, although there are many
who are intuitively realizing some of them, such as I can see in your post.


Step C. Find the low leverage points (LLPs) and symptomatic solutions. -
I'm still working on this. The chief LLP appears to be market
instruments, like cap and trade. This is rapidly becoming the world's
favorite. More obvious LLPs are regulations, quotas, and appeals to
corporate responsibility. Pushing on these LLPs results in symptomatic
solutions, which tend to have little effect, and if they do, are
terribly complex and inefficient. For example, have you ever read how
the EU implements its GHG targets?

At the meta level, the LLPs are all a form of command and control (C&C).
Even cap and trade is C&C, because you have to set quotas. Experiments
are beginning to find a way around this, with continuous auctions. But
these are not exactly catching on. There's too much push back. Recall
from history how well C&C economies have worked.


Step D. Find the feedback loops that should be dominant. - Step B found
that the Super Servant Oppression loop was dominant. It increased the
stock of Rules Favoring Super Servant to obscenely high levels. The
super servant is, of course, the artificial life form Homo sapiens
created: the modern corporation. It's important to think of them as
servants, whose goal should be serving their masters, but whose actual
goal has become something else.

In step D we find the loop that should be dominant. It's the Super
Servant Benevolence loop. The stronger this is, the more super servants
want to do a good job of serving their masters. Since the main threat to
their master is currently the sustainability problem, a dominant Super
Servant Benevolence loop will cause corporations to behave as
sustainably as needed.


Step E. Find the high leverage points (HLPs) to make them go dominant. -
There appear to be two HLPs. The first is quality of servant design.
This is low. If it goes high, then the root cause of mutually exclusive
goals is resolved.

The second HLP is property rights maturity. I see you have mentioned
""property rights,"" so you and others are intuitively leaning toward
this. The idea is profound. The Consumption Growth loop builds capital.
This depends on the existence of private property rights. But where are
the universal rights that would apply to environmental things, like
pollution, depletion of non-renewable resources, and over use of
renewable resources? They are nowhere to be found. Let's call these
common property rights. If they existed, then they would probably be
managed just as efficiently and effectively as private property. Because
common property rights don't exist, the property rights maturity HLP is
low.

You can easily guess what happens to the system if property rights
maturity goes high. Common property rights (and others?) spring into
existence. If they are defined correctly (along with possible changes to
private property rights) then guess what? It's now more profitable for
corporations to behave sustainably. This resolves the root cause of low
sustainability profitability. The generality of common property rights
resolves the root cause of low IRC law generality. And as the stock of
these rights grows and becomes complete and mature, the root cause of a
low maturity of super servant role definition for accumulating IRC is
resolved.

Sorry I'm doing this without a model to show you. But actually, Tom, you
have a sneak preview in that Vensim model I sent you and Bob, related to
something else. But wait. My mental model says if I leave it at
this, I'll get 20 emails in my inbox tomorrow asking for a sneak peak.
So see this link:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/work/reference/index.htm

Notice how simple all this is. One reason is it's just a concept model.
The other reason is that in all reality, the root causes really are this
simple, once you find them. These are probably not yet the correct root
causes, which will take much further analysis and experimentation. But
they may be close, and they probably are this simple.


The Solution Convergence Step: Use the above knowledge and
experimentation to converge on a way to push on the HLPs. - The above
root causes, LLPs, and HLPs are a completely different analysis of the
proper coupling problem. So it should be no surprise the solutions they
suggest are just as different. Remember now, we would not attempt to
implement this solution until change resistance was overcome and the
Race to the Top Among Politicians was dominant. Then, as radical as this
solution may appear to be, it would be welcomed, if it was supported by
a high quality analysis and experimental proof.

The sample solution consists of two packages, one for each HLP. The
Comprehensive Property Rights package pushes on the property rights
maturity HLP. The Corporation 2.0 package pushes on the quality of
servant design HLP.

The Comprehensive Property Rights package contains four solution
elements: Common Property Rights, Environmental Property Rights,
Reflective Pricing, and Worldism. You can see the first iteration of
this in:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/manuscrip ... ackage.htm

The Corporation 2.0 package starts with the idea that corporation 1.0 is
what we have now. This life form was never engineered. It just happened.
Worse yet, this life form became so powerful and clever that it caused
new laws to be passed that gave it even more power, and even less
incentive to serve its master well.

The Corporation 2.0 package changes all that, with these solution
elements: Compatible Goal, Limited Lifespan, Unlimited Liability, No
Competitive Secrets, No Corporate Slaves, and Self-Improving. These are
somewhat self-explanatory. 2.0 corporations can still be profit driven,
but now that profit is highly dependent on how well they serve their
masters.

Here's how the two packages are related: Only 2.0 corporations would be
eligible to file claims for zillions of environmental properties, which
they could then manage for a profit. Examples of such properties are the
concentration of CO2 in the air, the pollution in a river, and overuse
of a type of fish off the coast of a certain country. This is similar to
the way utilities manage common properties today.

Also, once change resistance is overcome, it will not be hard for
virtuous politicians to persuade the public to only buy from 2.0
corporations, because that is in the best interest of the common good.

This is a deep solution, one that strikes at the structural roots of the
problem.

Will anything not this deep really work?

A huge benefit of this approach is high efficiency. The system is now
socially tuned to run as efficiently as possible, in the direction of
the right goals. If we cannot achieve extremely high proper coupling
efficiency rapidly, the world will remain unable to avoid major
collapse. How close this may be is becoming frighteningly obvious lately.

(Sorry about the length of this. Hope you are able to follow.)

Now let's address what your next paragraph mentions, using the above
sample analysis and solution:

>
> It seems to me that two paradigm shifts are needed: one recognizing
> limits and driving forces, and one that changes the approach to
> solving the problem. Most current policies strike me as instances of
> proportional control: identify a problem, and push locally against it
> to the extent that it annoys victims. The problem may subside, but
> never disappears (for then the will to control also vanishes). For
> problems involving long-term stocks (e.g. atmospheric carbon, oil
> depletion), integral control is needed: ratchet up the stringency of
> policy until a goal is achieved. Californians might find such a
> control paradigm shift rather liberating: if, for example, the tax
> structure were shifted to adaptive control of bads (not goods), they
> wouldn't need so many micromanaging rules telling industries and
> individuals what to do (and inadvertently inhibiting them from change
> in general).

I really like the way you are going at this. Both paradigm shifts are
needed. One that ""changes the approach to solving the problem"" is vital.
There are two part of such an approach: the process used to solve the
problem, and the results. Your ""proportion control"", ""adaptive control""
and ""micromanaging rules"" are various results.

""Most current policies strike me as instances of proportional control:
identify a problem, and push locally against it to the extent that it
annoys victims."" - This is an example of pushing on a variety of LLPs.

""they wouldn't need so many micromanaging rules telling industries and
individuals what to do"" - This is pushing on the LLP of command and
control.

""if, for example, the tax structure were shifted to adaptive control of
bads"" - Nice. Adaptive policies are the way to go. They are mode
oriented rather than exact prediction or behavior oriented. One of the
great lessons of SD is that system modes are much easier to analyze,
predict and manage than exact numerical values, which remains impossible
except for the very short term. The ultimate mode, the one the above
analysis led us to, is one that could be called the 2.0 Super Servant
and Common Property Rights Driven Sustainable Mode. I hope that is just
as self-explanatory as the mode the system is in now: the 1.0 version of
that mode.

""The problem may subside, but never disappears (for then the will to
control also vanishes)."" - Loss of ""will to control"" is handled by
solving the Model Drift subproblem. (Model Drift is another key standard
term.)


>
> Evolutionary pressure may work against such a paradigm shift. Any
> region, firm, or individual with a sensible resource management
> policy, for example, appears less profitable or successful in the
> short run. Any time there are difficulties attributing long run
> success to such policies (i.e., all the time), selection pressure will
> disfavor the sensible behavior. This is, perhaps, the fundamental
> reason that #2 is the hardest part of achieving sustainability.
Exactly. And see how our analysis considered this automatically? Perhaps
this had something to do with the process that was driving the analysis.


Well, my apologies about this overly long message. But I didn't see any
other way to fully respond in a high quality manner.

I hope this explanation allows you and others to see there is a way to
""figure out how to act.""

In fact, there is even a first iteration, and soon to be a second. If
organizations out there rigorously applied the System Improvement
Process, or one like it, they could perform their own iterations. Soon
these would be well past what has been sketched here.

Thanks for such a penetrating post, Tom. It really got me going.

Jack
Posted by Jack Harich <jack@thwink.org>
posting date Fri, 09 May 2008 22:53:39 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Tom Fiddaman <tom@ventanasyst]

Posted by Tom Fiddaman <tom@ventanasystems.com>

Jack and others have noted that managing the globe involves two subproblems:
1. figuring out the problem (e.g., are there limits, what are they, when
do they become binding)
2. convincing others to act (hard when others may be uninformed or
predatory)

I'd argue that there's a third problem, which we've tended to gloss
over: 3. figuring out how to act. For the climate problem, for example,
this is nontrivial. Is it better to allocate property rights in the
atmosphere and start trading, or to implement a carbon tax, or start a
social movement, or ... ? More practically, as I see it, places like
California that are committed (at least on paper) to significant GHG
emissions reductions are trying to solve a big messy global problem with
regulatory approaches that were designed to handle fairly localized
problems (like criteria air pollutants). Policies under development
leave much of the problem unaddressed, and could prove
counterproductive. It's a shame to waste strong support on measures that
are doomed to fail (as zero-emissions vehicle mandates and electric
power deregulation did). Then again, perhaps the reason current measures
don't go far enough is that #2 has not really been accomplished, so
strong support is an illusion. If so, then it would be useful to
recognize that the emperor has no clothes, i.e. that current policies
are a start, not an answer.

I've been working with refiners and agencies on alternative fuel issues.
California has policies underway to control things like vehicle fuel
efficiency and fuel carbon intensity (none of which tackles the
underlying growth drivers, as Jay pointed out). The fuels/energy/air
quality crowd perceives that technical options have somewhat limited
potential, and that to achieve aggressive goals in the long run will
require changes in driving habits and land use. I've been wondering
whether the transport/transit crowd in the state shared the same vision,
because transport agencies have been conspicuously absent from the
energy/emissions conversation so far. On Tuesday, I got the answer at a
presentation from a regional transport agency: the region is planning to
accommodate a massive increase in driving, and counting on technology to
somehow accomplish emissions reductions. Clearly the left and right
hands have some coordination to do. Even worse, at least one member of
the audience expressed horror at the very idea that goods previously
regarded as free (freeways) might become costly.

It seems to me that two paradigm shifts are needed: one recognizing
limits and driving forces, and one that changes the approach to solving
the problem. Most current policies strike me as instances of
proportional control: identify a problem, and push locally against it to
the extent that it annoys victims. The problem may subside, but never
disappears (for then the will to control also vanishes). For problems
involving long-term stocks (e.g. atmospheric carbon, oil depletion),
integral control is needed: ratchet up the stringency of policy until a
goal is achieved. Californians might find such a control paradigm shift
rather liberating: if, for example, the tax structure were shifted to
adaptive control of bads (not goods), they wouldn't need so many
micromanaging rules telling industries and individuals what to do (and
inadvertently inhibiting them from change in general).

Evolutionary pressure may work against such a paradigm shift. Any
region, firm, or individual with a sensible resource management policy,
for example, appears less profitable or successful in the short run. Any
time there are difficulties attributing long run success to such
policies (i.e., all the time), selection pressure will disfavor the
sensible behavior. This is, perhaps, the fundamental reason that #2 is
the hardest part of achieving sustainability.

Tom


****************************************************
Tom Fiddaman
Ventana Systems, Inc.
Posted by Tom Fiddaman <tom@ventanasystems.com>
posting date Fri, 09 May 2008 09:36:23 -0600
_______________________________________________

[""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher]

Posted by ""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher@gmail.com>

Jack:

That is a legitimate question, although a pretty hefty one to address
fully in one forum post. I don't claim to have all the answers. I
freely admit my ""model"" is far from complete! Perhaps I can
contribute a bit by asking a few key questions.

Firstly, 100 million dollars seems to be a rather severe case of
underfunding if your goal is to change fundamental ways of thinking on
a global scale. Without being in the least facetious, a viral
marketing campaign is about the only hope with funding like that.

If we are looking for the most fruitful way to spend our time and
money we need to start somewhat cautiously. As I warned in my
original post, before we jump into the solution phase we have to do a
better job of problem definition - and frankly I think that ""the
problem"" has largely been framed in a solution-driven way, and most of
the solutions have been focused on the symptoms and not the illness.
But we don't have the luxury of admiring the problem for another 30
years either.

So, what are the solutions to the limits to growth problem? Hopefully
there aren't too many people left who would dispute that oil
depletion, global warming, water crises, population, pollution etc.
are all linked issues and really not separate problems. Hopefully the
size of the group that still thinks these issues can be solved
independently is also shrinking.

I don't think that anyone would dispute that these linked issues
definitely fits into the category of problems described as ""wicked
problems."" Before we start proposing solutions we should probably ask
one of Polya's questions, ""Under what conditions can I solve the
problem?"" What little we know about such problems in general is that
""solving forwards"" (classic waterfall approaches) show poor results.
Essentially, ""solar power solutions,"" ""hydrogen solutions"" etc. are
clear example of ""solving forwards"" approaches. It is not clear (to
me at least) that they even address the real problem, let alone are
effective solutions. While models could be used to test such
approaches to some extent, there is a real risk that such models would
fall prey to what amounts to the logical fallacy of affirming the
consequent. The stakes are too high; we should avoid such plans to
solve the problem as a matter of course, simply because the they are
unlikely to lead to optimal results. Grabbing the first available
apparent technology solution (or hodgepodge of available technology
solutions) and running with them is an easy but perilous course, and
certainly not a strategy I would like to stake the future of the
planet on. Clearly there are many people who have moved beyond that
kind of thinking, but many remain who think we can simply ""technology""
our way out of the problem. The technology as deus ex machina
assumption is a huge issue in how the world is currently addressing
the problem. This is covered in Chapter 6 of Limits to Growth, so I
won't dwell on that aspect of the problem overly long, except to say
that solutions driven by that set of assumptions about the utility of
technology alone to solve the problem could lead to ""false spring""
outcomes or worse.

Due to the perils of the above I think that ""solving backwards"" is
really the only realistic plan, and in that modeling could help quite
a bit. Let us propose a model of the future that could work and work
backwards. Lets ask a series of questions, some of which that can be
addressed by M&S. Clearly M&S is really the only way such complex
proposals can be evaluated. We really need to ""clear the decks"" in
regards to initial assumptions. Nothing would be off the table,
initially at least. As someone once said, most ideas progress from
""that's crazy!"" to ""everyone knows that!"" in mysterious ways. It's
not much of a stretch to say that because of the tremendous depth of
assumptions surrounding this issue, that the most ""obvious"" solutions
to the problem are probably the least likely to survive objective
scrutiny.

For example, my current working hypothesis about what definitely won't
work and what might work looks something like this: What can't work:
There is NO sustainable high-energy consumption future. Such societies
are inherently unstable. Simply stated, we move to fast for the planet
to adapt to us; too much commotion, we need to slow down. What might
work: A low-energy, high-tech society that survives in relatively
small largely self-contained economies where people and goods move
minimally (too much energy cost otherwise) but information moves
freely. Globalization? Gone - The only thing global is information.
Globalization as we know it would no longer exist. It was a temporary
behavior mode which rested almost completely on the assumption of
virtually free energy for transporting goods. Air-Travel? Gone - No
known mode that does not have a monstrous carbon foot-print. My
""glittering future"" is where People wear sweaters, live where they
work, grow food locally, plan in 1000 year cycles where completing
plans are modeled, examined, discussed and then voted on. People ride
bikes to work, walk or work virtually. People measure success by the
roads in and between cities that are removed and not the ones that are
built. All of that is probably achievable with current technology and
absolutely no assumptions about technology solutions that might
happen.

Crazy you say? Well probably it is. Its my untested mental model about
solutions to a complex problem after all. Modeling might show it to be
impossible. Given enough crazy ideas and enough testing we might even
chance on a solution that can work. Additionally, if enough people
are involved in the discussions of there might be some slim hope that
society can build a sufficient consensus to actually see through
implementation.


The questions - in approximate order of the asking are:
Is there any structure and associated decision rules which can lead to
eventual acceptable equilibrium under any conceivable conditions?
Sub-question, can we even obtain a measure of equilibrium?
Is there any structure and associated decision rules which can lead to
eventual acceptable equilibrium given reasonable assumptions?
Is are multiple structures (perhaps quite different) which lead to
such equilibrium?
What do these different structures have in common? How do they differ?
How robust are they under a variety of assumptions?

We need to spend quite a bit of time evaluating alternatives
objectively. Despite the time spent, we cannot risk focusing too
quickly on the implementing the ""obvious"" solutions. To a large degree
I think that has been the general focus of most problems solving
attempts in this arena, but that is generally a rather poor approach
to getting optimal solutions to complex problems.

We must also consider what decision-rules and underlying
ways-of-thinking that must be adopted in order for these ""models"" to
work. (That is, not fail due to policy resistance or inability to
implement) Under what conditions could the needed changes in thinking
happen? Are they realistic?
What changes in physical structure are required? Which would require
the most restructuring and which would require the least?

Plan B and other proposals very generally fit into these type
categories of possible plans. They are however for the most part
untested hypotheses; that is, could the structure they propose even
lead to the results suggested? M&S could attempt to answer those type
questions. Problems like this simply have to be tested through
simulations. Testing of such models would at least allow for
discussions about solutions to take place in a way where solutions can
be challenged and tested and thus improved.

Generally speaking any solution will flow from and be created by
changing the fundamental goals of society, and as I stated. the
biggest leverage point by far is changing ways of thinking. Perhaps
the biggest single win in this regard is to change the time-horizons
of our thinking dramatically. This is happening but perhaps too
slowly. Societies are starting to think along the lines that their
time horizons need to add a zero - that is go from 3-5 years to 30-50
years. If we think about the relevant time constants involved even
that appears too conservative. Time Horizons for planning how humans
interact with the earth probably need to add at least two zeros and
perhaps three. The time-constants of the earth and the time-constants
how human plan their interaction with the earth are off by at least
two orders of magnitude. This because the ""hidden hand,"" while it
works well for short-term optimization, it is essentially blind to
long time-horizons. The ""hidden hand"" is also largely blind to any
concept of a shared responsibility for the commons. There is a
possibly apocryphal story of a Minnesota Native American Tribe who
identified their land-use time horizon as the life-span of the major
pine tree on their land - 300 years, if I recall correctly. A great
story - which might even be true! In my mind, people who adopt that
way of thinking are closer to success than those who spend their days
deciding whether to fund a billion to Fusion Research or a billion to
Hydrogen Fuel Cell research. Again, as I stated, it is extremely
tempting, but very perilous course to attempt to ""technology"" our way
out of the problem. Recall that the problem was largely caused by the
unconsidered use of technology! The rough outline of a framework
which has better potential answers is pretty obvious - consider more
and technology less.

At any rate, there is partial attempt to answer your question. I'll
end here because I think I've tested the reading patience of the lists
members sufficiently for one day!

Regards,


------------------------------------------------------
Michael E. Fletcher
Posted by ""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher@gmail.com>
posting date Fri, 9 May 2008 19:38:09 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jack Harich <register@thwink.]

Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>

Jack Harich innocently asked:

So, how would you go about solving the [environmental sustainability]
problem?

Assume you had 105 million dollars per year, which is the United Nations
Environmental Programme's annual budget.

Mike Fletcher courageously replied:
> Jack:
>
> That is a legitimate question, although a pretty hefty one to address
> fully in one forum post. I don't claim to have all the answers. I
> freely admit my ""model"" is far from complete! Perhaps I can
> contribute a bit by asking a few key questions.
>

Mike - There are lots of good ideas in your post. I don't have all the
answers either. Let's treat all this as an exploratory educational
exercise. Here goes:

> Firstly, 100 million dollars seems to be a rather severe case of
> underfunding if your goal is to change fundamental ways of thinking on
> a global scale.

How would you define the goal? Would it be changing the way people
think, or how the system behaves?

> Without being in the least facetious, a viral marketing campaign is
> about the only hope with funding like that.
>

Where is the analysis that supports this fundamental conclusion?

> If we are looking for the most fruitful way to spend our time and
> money we need to start somewhat cautiously. As I warned in my
> original post, before we jump into the solution phase we have to do a
> better job of problem definition - and frankly I think that ""the
> problem"" has largely been framed in a solution-driven way, and most of
> the solutions have been focused on the symptoms and not the illness.
> But we don't have the luxury of admiring the problem for another 30
> years either.
>

Yes, a good problem definition is crucial. I have a sample one in my
execution of the System Improvement Process. That process says that
difficult complex social system problems are best defined starting with
this standard format: Move system A under constraints B from present
state C to goal state D by deadline E with confidence level F. Without
going through the details, the result can be summarized as:

The global environmental sustainability problem will be solved when all
critical environmental properties are being held in their safe zones
indefinitely or are moving there within a predictably safe time span,
with a confidence level of 99.9999%./

/The high confidence level arises from wanting the solution to hold for
a minimum of 10,000 years. I think we can assume the solution will be
replaced by another one by then. You may recognize the six nines from
Six Sigma.

I like your observation that ""most of the solutions have been focused on
the symptoms and not the illness."" That's exactly what the standard
problem definition format was designed to avoid. Proper focus is so
important.


> So, what are the solutions to the limits to growth problem? Hopefully
> there aren't too many people left who would dispute that oil
> depletion, global warming, water crises, population, pollution etc.
> are all linked issues and really not separate problems.

Yes!


> Hopefully the size of the group that still thinks these issues can be
> solved independently is also shrinking.
>

But yet the world IS trying to solve them independently, apparently
starting with climate change as the number one priority, and various
types of pollution (generally local) as number two. Hmmm....

Nice thoughts.

> I don't think that anyone would dispute that these linked issues
> definitely fits into the category of problems described as ""wicked
> problems."" Before we start proposing solutions we should probably ask
> one of Polya's questions, ""Under what conditions can I solve the
> problem?"" What little we know about such problems in general is that
> ""solving forwards"" (classic waterfall approaches) show poor results.
>

The consensus, at least in the quality and software engineering
industries, is that failure of waterfall approaches is mainly due to
insufficient iteration and attempting to do too much too early. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model
From the above link:

""David Parnas, in 'A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It',
writes:

“Many of the [system's] details only become known to us as we progress
in the [system's] implementation. Some of the things that we learn
invalidate our design and we must backtrack.”


> Essentially, ""solar power solutions,"" ""hydrogen solutions"" etc. are
> clear example of ""solving forwards"" approaches. It is not clear (to
> me at least) that they even address the real problem, let alone are
> effective solutions.

I'd go so far as to say they are not even waterfall process results, but
something else. They are intuitive quick fixes (based on no process at
all or Classic Activism) to tiny parts of the problem. They have a very
low success rate so far. Some even make the problem worse, like the
recent infatuation with biofuels in the US and elsewhere.


> While models could be used to test such approaches to some extent,
> there is a real risk that such models would fall prey to what amounts
> to the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. The stakes are
> too high; we should avoid such plans to solve the problem as a matter
> of course, simply because the they are unlikely to lead to optimal
> results. Grabbing the first available apparent technology solution
> (or hodgepodge of available technology solutions) and running with
> them is an easy but perilous course, and certainly not a strategy I
> would like to stake the future of the planet on.

Yes. I see what you're saying: In general, popular solutions have
centered on quick, intuitively derived conclusions about what will work.
Proof that this will not work lies in the history of how well they have
worked since the problem was first identified in 1972 by the LTG project.


> Clearly there are many people who have moved beyond that kind of
> thinking, but many remain who think we can simply ""technology"" our way
> out of the problem. The technology as deus ex machina assumption is a
> huge issue in how the world is currently addressing the problem. This
> is covered in Chapter 6 of Limits to Growth, so I won't dwell on that
> aspect of the problem overly long, except to say that solutions driven
> by that set of assumptions about the utility of technology alone to
> solve the problem could lead to ""false spring"" outcomes or worse.
>
> Due to the perils of the above I think that ""solving backwards"" is
> really the only realistic plan, and in that modeling could help quite
> a bit. Let us propose a model of the future that could work and work
> backwards. Lets ask a series of questions, some of which that can be
> addressed by Modeling and Simulation (M&S). Clearly M&S is really the
> only way such complex proposals can be evaluated. We really need to
> ""clear the decks"" in regards to initial assumptions. Nothing would
> be off the table, initially at least. As someone once said, most
> ideas progress from ""that's crazy!"" to ""everyone knows that!"" in
> mysterious ways. It's not much of a stretch to say that because of
> the tremendous depth of assumptions surrounding this issue, that the
> most ""obvious"" solutions to the problem are probably the least likely
> to survive objective scrutiny.
>

Yes to a gaggle of assertions. You're covering a lot of ground!

> For example, my current working hypothesis about what definitely won't
> work and what might work looks something like this: What can't work:
> There is NO sustainable high-energy consumption future. Such societies
> are inherently unstable. Simply stated, we move too fast for the
> planet to adapt to us; too much commotion, we need to slow down. What
> might work: A low-energy, high-tech society that survives in
> relatively small largely self-contained economies where people and
> goods move minimally (too much energy cost otherwise) but information
> moves freely.

Working backward from future scenarios is one way to drive an analysis.
But how do you productively generate all the scenarios that need to be
examined? This is a solution space search based approach. It starts with
listing all (?) possible solutions, and then examining the ones ""worth""
examining. This is the classic brainstorming approach.

The weakness of this approach is one can easily generate tens of
thousands of possible scenarios. This is identical to the way a doctor,
when confronted with a patient who has a fever, could easily list
thousands of different treatments.

Now then, what criteria would the doctor use to whittle that long list
down to a manageable one? Why of course - the doctor would diagnose the
cause of the illness first. Even if it was not a definitive diagnosis,
the list would shrink to less than a hundred options, probably to less
than ten. Now the doctor has a solvable problem. Further diagnostic work
and comparison of the remaining treatment options would shrink them to 1
or several main ones, with an order in which to try them.


> The questions - in approximate order of the asking are: Is there any
> structure and associated decision rules which can lead to eventual
> acceptable equilibrium under any conceivable conditions?
>

Again, ""is there any"" generates a huge list of solutions in the solution
space, if I understand you correctly.

> Sub-question, can we even obtain a measure of equilibrium?
>

The problem definition did this. Notice how I'm using reusable standard
terms, like Problem Definition. This greatly reduces meandering around,
into less productive efforts.

> Is there any structure and associated decision rules which can lead to
> eventual acceptable equilibrium given reasonable assumptions?
>

This is another ""is there any"" question.

> Is are multiple structures (perhaps quite different) which lead to
> such equilibrium? What do these different structures have in common?
> How do they differ? How robust are they under a variety of assumptions?
>

This ""is there any, how to they behave"" approach has the limitations
discussed above.
> We need to spend quite a bit of time evaluating alternatives
> objectively. Despite the time spent, we cannot risk focusing too
> quickly on the implementing the ""obvious"" solutions. To a large degree
> I think that has been the general focus of most problems solving
> attempts in this arena, but that is generally a rather poor approach
> to getting optimal solutions to complex problems.
>

Yes

> We must also consider what decision-rules and underlying
> ways-of-thinking that must be adopted in order for these ""models"" to
> work. (That is, not fail due to policy resistance or inability to
> implement) Under what conditions could the needed changes in thinking
> happen? Are they realistic? What changes in physical structure are
> required? Which would require the most restructuring and which would
> require the least?
>

This appears to be an elaboration of the ""is there any"" approach.
> Plan B and other proposals very generally fit into these type
> categories of possible plans. They are however for the most part
> untested hypotheses; that is, could the structure they propose even
> lead to the results suggested? M&S could attempt to answer those type
> questions. Problems like this simply have to be tested through
> simulations. Testing of such models would at least allow for
> discussions about solutions to take place in a way where solutions can
> be challenged and tested and thus improved.
>
> Generally speaking any solution will flow from and be created by
> changing the fundamental goals of society, and as I stated the biggest
> leverage point by far is changing ways of thinking.

See my earlier objection to this key assumption. But don't worry. This
is an educational exploration.

> Perhaps the biggest single win in this regard is to change the
> time-horizons of our thinking dramatically. This is happening but
> perhaps too slowly. Societies are starting to think along the lines
> that their time horizons need to add a zero - that is go from 3-5
> years to 30-50 years. If we think about the relevant time constants
> involved even that appears too conservative. Time Horizons for
> planning how humans interact with the earth probably need to add at
> least two zeros and perhaps three. The time-constants of the earth
> and the time-constants how human plan their interaction with the earth
> are off by at least two orders of magnitude. This because the ""hidden
> hand,"" while it works well for short-term optimization, it is
> essentially blind to long time-horizons.

> The ""hidden hand"" is also largely blind to any concept of a shared
> responsibility for the commons. There is a possibly apocryphal story
> of a Minnesota Native American Tribe who identified their land-use
> time horizon as the life-span of the major pine tree on their land -
> 300 years, if I recall correctly. A great story - which might even be
> true! In my mind, people who adopt that way of thinking are closer
> to success than those who spend their days deciding whether to fund a
> billion to Fusion Research or a billion to Hydrogen Fuel Cell
> research. Again, as I stated, it is extremely tempting, but very
> perilous course to attempt to ""technology"" our way out of the
> problem. Recall that the problem was largely caused by the
> unconsidered use of technology! The rough outline of a framework
> which has better potential answers is pretty obvious - consider more
> and technology less.
>

Yes. Shared responsibility, long term thinking and avoidance of
technological optimism are mandatory. These are good concepts to keep in
mind as we go about solving the problem.
> At any rate, there is partial attempt to answer your question. I'll
> end here because I think I've tested the reading patience of the
> list's members sufficiently for one day!

A very thoughtful reply, one which gets into the spirit of the question!
Bravo! I really appreciate the work you put into this.

The question was ""So, how would you go about solving the [environmental
sustainability] problem?"" if you had 105 million dollars per year, which
is the UNEP's annual budget.

Let's consider your above reply as a first iteration. What I had in mind
was what strategic approach would one take, at the managerial level. In
a few clear sentences, what would be your strategy?

Now it's probably unfair for me to ask that question without first
attempting to answer it myself. This would be the second iteration of
answering the question. Here's a possible answer:


A workable strategy to solve the environmental sustainability problem
would be:

1. Determine in depth what type of problem it is.

2. Develop a process that fits that type of problem.

3. Execute the process, while continuously improving it.


Naturally I have the System Improvement Process (SIP) in mind as a
starting point for such a process. One thing you will notice about SIP
is it does not fall into the ""is there any"" trap. It doesn't first try
to generate a lot of solutions and then evaluate them. That usually
fails on difficult problems. Instead, SIP first diagnoses the underlying
cause of the problem. The is where the Root Cause concept, with its
careful definition, is used. Once we know the root causes, then we
identify the High Leverage Points (HLPs), that, when pushed, would
resolve the root causes. Then, and only then, do we start to converge on
a solution.

Because we now have deep knowledge of the problem's structure and we
know exactly where to push, Solution Convergence is several orders of
magnitude easier than the popular ""are there any solutions that might
work"" approach. The reason is the original very large solution space is
now relatively small. This is because once we know the HLPs, it's easy
to think of many ways to push on them, several of which would probably
work, because we don't have to push on HLPs very hard to make them work.
By contrast, one has to push on Low Leverage Points (LLPs) so hard the
effort is usually insufficient or unsustainable. This agrees with Jay
Forrester's observation in Urban Dynamics on page 111, that a viable
long term solution must overcome:

""The tendency of a [social] system to resist and counteract an applied
force... Compensating counteraction can be disastrous if the applied
programs are expensive. Only applied programs of intrinsic low cost are
feasible.""

You might wonder why I didn't suggest ""Develop a process that fits the
problem."" If we can keep the process generic it's much more powerful.
For example, notice how SIP can be used on hundreds of different
sustainability related problems, as we drill down into the main problem.
This eliminates the need to find or create a new process for each
smaller problem. One standard process, with its many standard steps and
terms, keeps a Tower of Babble from emerging from such a large, long
work effort.

You might also wonder how this would lead to solution at only 105
million dollars a year. Well, that constraint is part of the problem to
solve. Based on my analysis so far, I personally think it's easy to find
workable HLPs and solutions that would come in well under that budget.
Remember, the budget does not have to include things like direct
population or consumption reduction R&D or capital investment, as well
as all sorts of other implementation costs, because a good solution will
cause social agents to take that work and those expenses upon themselves.

Well, that's the second iteration. Your turn, Mike and others.

Jack
Posted by Jack Harich <register@thwink.org>
posting date Sun, 11 May 2008 17:47:15 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Jay Forrester <jforestr@MIT.E]

Posted by Jay Forrester <jforestr@MIT.EDU>


On May 11, 2008, at 10:26 PM, Owen Ambur wrote:
> Jay, your message prompted me to look for TNC's strategic plan. I see their
> vision, mission, and values statements but I don't see a clear statement of
> their goals and objectives. .........
>
> However, the purpose of this message is to inquire whether you believe it is
> a waste of time for organizations to do what they believe is within their
> power to do in support of their missions and pursuit of their visions, even
> if their actions may fall far short of addressing the larger, systemic
> issues (which they perceive to be beyond their span of influence).
>

The danger here is that the environmental preservation organizations, in
stressing efforts to withstand the destruction caused by rising
population and increasing economic growth, will lull people into
thinking these battles against symptoms are sufficient and will take
attention away from the ultimate solutions.

At the very least, if these organizations are to be honest and helpful
in the long run, they should divide their efforts into two equal
parts--one half devoted to their present efforts to fight symptoms and
the other half to educate people that growing population and
industrialization will overwhelm the short-term efforts if we do not
restrain these forces that are exceening the carrying capacity of the earth.

I recomment the paper by Warren Hern:
http://www.drhern.com/fulltext/why/paper.html
who draws the parallels between the human population on the earth and
cancer in the human body.


Jay W. Forrester
Professor of Management
Sloan School, MIT
Posted by Jay Forrester <jforestr@MIT.EDU>
posting date Mon, 12 May 2008 21:16:47 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu&g]

Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@WPI.EDU>

Jay’s assertion that population growth and industrial growth are the
root causes for the environmental malaise should challenge us to look
for a positive feedback between the two. If such a feedback exists, the
entry point might be to curtail industrial growth through public
policy/economic management rather than undertaking the more difficult
task of curtailing population. I should add that the possibility of a
relationship between industrial growth and population growth was
considered by Adam Smith when he surmised that ""production of men"" could
possibly be determined by the demand for them like any other commodity.

In more concrete terms, and I am considering only positive feedbacks,
production capacity would create demand for labor, which would create
institutional support for high fertility rates that fuel population.
Population, in turn, creates workforce that increases production
capacity. Another player in the process might be marketing. Excess
production capacity fuels marketing that would add to the institutional
support for expanding an important source of demand - population.
Reducing economic growth rates to zero and curtailing marketing of goods
and services slanted towards population growth might limit institutional
support for the high fertility rates. Would it?

Khalid

Khalid Saeed, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics and System Dynamics
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester, MA 01609
Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@WPI.EDU>
posting date Fri, 23 May 2008 11:30:43 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Roy Greenhalgh <rgreenh@attgl]

Posted by Roy Greenhalgh <rgreenh@attglobal.net>

Khalid wrote ""Population, in turn, creates workforce that increases
production capacity.""

Two comments here.

Modern production methods are more and more designed to remove the
expensive human from the process. The number of men needed to produce
the new model of the Toyota Hilux 4-wheel drive is less than the old
model. Automation has filled the space.

Secondly, what is popularly called ""the 3^rd world"" has increasing
rates of human fertilisation. Zambia’s population growth, for example -
ranked 134 in the UN’s rating of poor countries, is 3%, taking its 1964
population of 3.3 million to over 11.6 million in 2007. This rate of
increase far exceeds Zambia’s ability to create jobs. I suspect this is
true of most of the South.

Increased population is no longer producing a workforce that increases
production capacity: production doesn’t need that population anymore.
It is instead increasing poverty, an oddly named ""positive"" feedback.


Roy Greenhalgh
Posted by Roy Greenhalgh <rgreenh@attglobal.net>
posting date Sat, 24 May 2008 13:22:27 +0100
_______________________________________________

[Bob Eberlein <bob@vensim.com&]

Posted by Bob Eberlein <bob@vensim.com>

The obvious answer to Khalid's post is that the positive connections
from economic prosperity to population growth work through mortality and
not fertility. Better economic conditions lead to longer lives, hence
more people. This, unfortunately, does not lend itself to any obvious
meaningful policy changes. There is some evidence, and certainly an old
standing belief, that economic prosperity does lead to decreases in
fertility and there may be ways to strengthen that connection.

Ray's post, however, triggered an interesting thought for me. The old
demographic view of the world I allude to above is that people have
large families to accommodate high infant mortality, and to provide
support in the parent's old age. However, in many places - for example
Kuwait - that view does not apply. In this case there is, relatively
speaking, prosperity that is being diluted by high population growth.

The oil rich countries may be extreme examples, but the old idea that a
country transitions from high fertility, high mortality to low
fertility, low mortality has been extremely confused by the importance
of external influence. Most specifically, the ability to effectively
target certain sources of mortality means that countries end up with
people living longer than they might otherwise expect given overall
social and economic conditions.

It is very interesting to look at a graph of population for Zambia
which, as Ray has pointed out, probably has growth beyond its own
ability to employ people. Zambia is a country ravaged by AIDS and it
appears that fertility has made a response to that threat. Though there
was an actual decrease in population a decade ago the current growth
rate appears to have increased. Populations can, it seems, respond
fairly quickly to bad news about mortality, but it is not clear that the
opposite is true.

Bob Eberlein
Posted by Bob Eberlein <bob@vensim.com>
posting date Mon, 26 May 2008 06:00:43 -0400
_______________________________________________

[Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu&g]

Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu>

Let me first of all thank you all for the responses. Jack, I do not know
the root cause yet, but am trying to formulate a hypothesis. Roy and Bob
point to interesting evidence and beliefs. I personally do not think we
carry out a rational economic analysis for determining the number of
children we should have. We want to have them because they are our
little toys who bring joy to life (and the pro-creation process is fun
too). Also, children add to the social standing in most cultures. They
also bring relief in taxes and create concessions in employment and
every day life. In societies where alternative sources of joy are fewer
(like poor countries) and social standing is hard to achieve through
alternative channels due to the limitation of opportunity, there might
be a greater value placed on having more children.

Re the relationship between population, workforce and economic growth,
the connections might also occur through a larger pool of entrepreneurs
entering the market in a larger population and an expansion in demand
for goods and services arising from a larger population. I also thought
of marketing since it might provide further impetus to the growth
process by forcing us to buy things that we do not need and thus
creating overproduction. I think the research on the connection between
population and economic growth has been based on beliefs rather than
facts and considerable rethinking is needed on this issue for a policy
search aimed at containing the growth in population.

Best,

Khalid
Khalid Saeed, PhD
Professor of Economics and System Dynamics
Social Science and Policy Studies Department
WPI, Worcester, MA 01609
Posted by Khalid Saeed <saeed@wpi.edu>
posting date Mon, 26 May 2008 13:43:53 -0400
_______________________________________________

[""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher]

Posted by ""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher@gmail.com>

If we look for the root problem of how population, technology and
capital interact, perhaps anthropologists might be able to help. That
is not my field, however, to my knowledge, most anthropologists don't
concern themselves too much with estimating when loop dominance
shifts. It's probably that some of this has been studied
statistically, but I'm not aware of any System Dynamics perspectives
on these type questions. But then again what I don't know far exceeds
what I do know, so I could well be wrong there (as well as elsewhere
for that matter.)

We do know that have been periods of relative population equilibrium,
but there were also periods before industrialization when population
growth was relatively rapid for short periods. We also know that
there are several cultures today where population growth is flat or
even negative. The good news is that anything that exists is possible.
The bad news is that the signals in cultures which naturally stabilize
and control population growth do exist, but the signals may be weak,
inconsistent or delayed - the point of being 180 degrees out of phase
at times.

If we look for the place in human history where the loop dominance
shifted towards population growth, Jared Diamond, generally a pretty
insightful gentleman, suggested (if I interpreting him correctly),
that the tipping point was simply the development of organized
agriculture. This conjecture is not particularly radical; however,
if true, the implications for long term stability of human populations
might be somewhat ominous. In short - human populations might be
inherently unstable - or at least have strong tendencies to move into
regimes of behavior which are not stable when ""natural"" decision rules
are allowed to run the show.

It is not too much of a stretch to state that organized agriculture,
for the first time, allowed for sufficient accumulation of capital,
population density and food production capacity to allow for the long
term dominance reinforcing loops in population. Unlike humans, most
species exist in relative long-term equilibrium. Successful species
populations, as others have commented on, tend to have modes of
dampened oscillation. Human populations, to date at least, have not
shown any sign of smooth population transition of any kind. Perhaps
that because of the big Archimedes Lever of technology - which allows
for, among other things, the manipulation and use of energy beyond
that which we naturally possess. We have it - other species do not.
There are those who still believe the human population will transition
to equilibrium in a smooth S-Curve, but that position seems difficult
to support with the signs of overshoot now becoming painfully obvious.

Oscillation has been observed in human populations, but I'm not sure
if anyone has defined that in our terms. We can, for now at least,
rule out dampened oscillation as the underlying mode. Again, I'm not
aware of everything that has been done in this area, but if we look at
the balancing loops right now, they appear to be very weak until the
limits are very close - that could imply some kind of limit cycle
perhaps? Even a regime of exploding oscillation is not inconceivable
in conditions where technology loop stays strong even after a
population crash - assuming that the policies that manage population
do not change appreciably.

Additionally, we simply have the fact that human decision making has a
rather poor grasp of the implications of accumulations. Generally
human decision rules in population management are largely rather naive
reactions which manage the short-term adjustment of the inflow
(births). This is typical intuitive human short term decision making
of course. We know that people have difficulty conceptualizing the
long-term impact of the accumulation, or effectively consider how
inflows and outflows interact. Simply put, it was these informal
population control heuristics which placed us in our present position,
so relying on these weak signals (even if we artificially strengthen
them) to manage population is probably not a good strategy.

Humans are a interesting species, sometimes quite brilliant, but not
nearly as brilliant as we would like to think. We can combine
unbounded technology use with decision heuristics which are totally
dominated by local short-term optimization within an often
deliberately limited information space. That is a very dangerous
combination of characteristics. Essentially, we are blind in one eye.
We lack the ""dept perception"" to plan effectively in the time horizons
required to reach an equilibrium with the earth - in fact we are still
struggling to even conceptualize what such an equilibrium could look
like. But we must do so. We have developed some tools to address this
issue and I would count SD among them.

The accumulation of population itself present the most urgent dilemma.
The paradox is that the only lever that we have is the inflows, and as
shown in LTG and elsewhere, even relatively radical policy changes to
address the inflow do not influence the stock sufficiently within time
frames that appreciably change outcomes.

The immense inertia of the stocks make that task appear nearly
impossible on the surface. Unfortunately, the dire alternatives mean
we cannot abandon that task simply because we believe it to be nearly
impossible. After that herculean task is solved we might have the time
to devise policies to maintain equilibrium, but before we do that we
have to put our hand on the flywheel.

Unfortunately, we need to go beyond even that level of thinking to
what I would call the ""Real Plan B."" If we look at the huge stock
accumulations, and the time-constants involved (and the current slow
rate of policy implementation) we should admit realistically that
overshoot and collapse is not just likely - it is the most probable
scenario at this point. Let me say that again, it is the most probable
scenario at this point.

To put it crudely, rationally, we have to consider not sustainability,
but survivability. To do otherwise is simple psychological denial. We
have to consider that our well intentioned efforts to design ""soft
landing"" policies, while not abandoned - have a low probability of
success. They could be efforts that amount to rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic. Rationally, we must provide for plans that
start building sea-worthy life boats. The modes that result from
overshoot are pretty well understood. Since the exact future is not
known, rationally we must must make plans for all eventualities. We
must even go so far as to understand the scenarios involving
extinction and near extinction - so that these possibilities can be
avoided. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

More optimistically I would recommend the ""The Real Plan B."" That is,
start designing AND BUILDING, small robust, self-sustaining
low-energy, high-tech regional communities which can sustain
themselves in a world which is 3 degrees hotter than today and with
enough ""slack"" engineered in to stay clear of their environments'
carrying capacity, and sufficient culturally supported long-term
planning to make it happen.

Real change happens by doing things differently -not talking or
writing about it. Instantiating such communities and showing they work
might mean that the idea starts to catch on.

We return again to changing ways of thinking. If it can clearly be
shown that people can live very differently than today, perhaps with
different fundamental social goals and still enjoy a quality of life
equal or better to today, it could provide a workable model. Again,
once it exists, it becomes possible.

Clearly some different mode, much different than today, will emerge
in any case, but if it is allowed to develop ""naturally"" it is very
like to be a highly undesirable one. The good news is that there is
still time - perhaps 20-40 years to design and build the future -
plenty of time for a world which is just about out of time.


------------------------------------------------------
Michael E. Fletcher
Posted by ""Mike Fletcher"" <mefletcher@gmail.com>
posting date Mon, 2 Jun 2008 22:06:52 -0400
_______________________________________________