THE PLOWBOY PAPERS ENERGY, ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS
(Page 10 of 11)
May/June 1974
By Mother Earth News
There was a famous theory in paleoecology called orthogenesis which suggested that some of the great animals of the past were part of systems that were locked into evolutionary mechanisms by which the larger ones took over from smaller ones. The mechanisms then became so fixed that they carried the size trend beyond the point of survival, whereupon the species went extinct. Perhaps this -is the main question of ecology, economics, and energy. Has the human system frozen its direction into an orthogenetic path toward cultural crash, or is the great creative activity of the current energy-rich world already sensing the need for change? Are alternatives already being tested by our youth so they will be ready for the gradual transition to a fine steady state that carries the best of our recent cultural evolution into new, more miniaturized, more dilute, and more delicate ways of man-nature?
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In looking ahead, the United States and some other countries may be lucky to be forced by changing energy availabilities to examine themselves, level their, growth, and change their culture towards the steady state early enough so as to be ready with some tested designs before the world as a whole is forced to this. A most fearful sight is the behavior of Germany and Japan who have little native energies and rush crazily into boom-and-bust economy on temporary and borrowed pipefines and tankers, throwing out what was stable and safe to become rich for a short period; monkey see, monkey do. Consider also Sweden that once before boomed and busted in its age of Baltic Ships while cutting its virgin timber. Later it was completely stable on water power and agriculture, but then after a few years of growth became like the rest, another bunch of engines on another set of oil flows, a culture that may not be long for this world.,
What is the general answer? Eject economic expansionism, stop growth, use available energies for cultural conversion to steady state, seek out the condition now that will come anyway, but by our service be our biosphere's handmaiden anew.
References and Notes:
1 . H.T. Odum, Environment Power and Society (John Wiley) 336 pp.
2. D. H. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Randry and W.W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (Universe Books, New York, 1972).
3. A.J. Lotka, Contribution to the Energetics of Evolution in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 8, 147—188 (1922).
4. I am grateful for stimulation and collaboration of many in our common effort including especially C. Kylstra, Pong Lem, and our keen graduate student group in the United States, and Jan Zeilon and Bengt-Owe Jansson in Sweden. Simulation work was supported by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on Contract At-(40-10-4398).
5. Energy systems symbols used for showing mathematical and energetic relationships between the parts of our system of energy, economics and ecology.
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