Ed,
Thanks for attaching your excellent review of Homer-Dixon's book, "The
Upside of Down". Well worth reading. At the end you quote Homer-Dixon,
writing about the concept of catagenisis (a new word for me!), " . . . a
collapse or breakdown to a simpler form, but . . . the birth of something
new, unexpected and potentially good."
Well, I think he's right. You chide him for not succeeding. But there is a
candidate for this which answers to Homer-Dixon's previous selection of
energy as being the most important of the stresses which bring down
empires. This is the concept of EROI (energy return on investment). A
better acronym, as used by some, is EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested).
This is already negative as regards agriculture where the energy costs of
manufacturing nitrogenous fertilizer, pesticides and trace minerals, and
also the cost of supplying sufficient water, and also the cheapness of
farming mechanization exceed the energy obtainable from food.. It is only
because the relative cost of energy is still below the cost of food that
this paradoxical situation can possibly continue. But this is only for the
time being. The cost of energy is already approaching the time when the
cost of world-wide agricultural production cannot possibly be afforded by
those who are semi-starving already -- approaching 2 billion so far. When
the cost of energy rises still further it will then increasingly be the
case that even the average wage earner of the advanced world will be unable
to afford the prodigious supply of consumer goods and services that has
hitherto been affordable in the last 200 years because of decreasing energy
prices. With the decline of real wages since about 1985, consumer goods
have only been able to be bought in large quantities due to a vast
extension of credit card debt and the increasing cheapness (so far!) of
Asian goods.
What is the candidate? It is something which many researchers are now
investigating at the J. Craig Venter Institute and several other top
university teams in America mainly funded by the US Department of Energy.
It is to produce a hybrid bacterium which will produce hydrogen with high
efficiency from water. This will be energetically positive, unlike the
present method of electrolysis which is already substantially energy
negative. There is nothing impossible about this in principle. Bacteria are
notoriously free and easy in the way they will absorb genes from one
another. However, encouraging two complex genomes to produce an even more
complex bacterial genome to do this job is proving to be phenomenally
difficult. But it could happen tomorrow, or it could happen in ten years' time.
Keith
At 20:06 02/03/2010 -0500, you wrote:
The Ferguson paper
(<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24874.htm>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24874.htm
) that David Delaney posted is interesting, but in my opinion its emphasis
is too much on short term events that bring empires down and not nearly
enough on the longer term factors that make them vulnerable to collapse.
In many cases, the reason that empires are brought down is because they
have so overextended themselves that they can no longer really work. At
that point any little event can prove fatal to them. An important factor
is that EROI (energy return on investment) has become negative, so
negative that the empire lacks the resources to keep itself going. Another
is complexity. In many cases, empires have become so complex that they can
no longer function as coherent systems. This is what Thomas Homer-Dixon
argues in the case of Rome (see my review of his book "The Upside of
Down", attached). While the Roman Empire might have muddled on in a
peaceful world, the world was not peaceful. Any number of minor events
could then move it into a state of collapse.
One might also look at the collapse of the Soviet Union. After spending a
month at a university level institution in Moscow in 1994, shortly after
the collapse of communism , I concluded that the Soviet Union had, like
Rome, greatly overextended itself and had become so complex as to be
ungovernable. Two things had played major roles. First, with the war in
Afghanistan and the suppression of rebels in Chechnya and other states, it
had taken on more than its economy could handle. Secondly, the planning
system that had been installed to run the Soviet economy after the
revolution was no longer manageable. Initially intended to provide for
modernization and growth, it had become a vast, inflexible and static
bureaucratic machine, a true drag on economic activity. You had to use it,
for example, to get a spare part for an oil rig or an engine. Months
later, when the spare part finally arrived, it wasn't the right kind and
the process had to be repeated, perhaps several times. You had to use the
system because there was no market economy, at least not on the surface.
So, while I agree with Ferguson that when an empire (nation, economy,
whatever) is ready to collapse, almost anything can bring it down. Yet I
would put far more emphasis than he has on the long process that brings
the empire to the threshold of collapse.
Ed
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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