Just-in-time

Stockpiling - 'redundancy' - is a thing of the past:

One reason is just-in-time delivery. Over the past few decades, people who use or sell commodities from coal to aspirin have stopped keeping large stocks, because to do so is expensive. They rely instead on frequent small deliveries. Cities typically have only three days' worth of food ...    

Worse is to come. Perhaps we don't need a pandemic. Perhaps the very complexity of the present economy is in itself a threat.

Debora MacKenzie takes up this theme in her second paper for New Scientist: "Are we doomed?"

... what if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later?

A few researchers have been making such claims for years. Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at which even a relatively minor disturbance can bring everything crashing down.

Some say we have already reached this point, and that it is time to start thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to keep disaster at bay.

The present economy solves problems by creating greater complexity, but in doing so diminishing returns set in:

Western industrial civilisation has become bigger and more complex than any before it by exploiting new sources of energy, notably coal and oil, but these are limited. There are increasing signs of diminishing returns: the energy required to get each new joule of oil is mounting and although global food production is still increasing, constant innovation is needed to cope with environmental degradation and evolving pests and diseases - the yield boosts per unit of investment in innovation are shrinking.

Complexity, Debora MacKenzie usefully points out, has led to a situation where no one person can "get their head around the whole thing". As the current 'credit crunch' demonstrates, not only has the interconnected nature of the economy transmitted the impact world-wide, the banking system itself seems to be beyond control.

"A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism," [says Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute], "random damage is like lopping a chunk off a sheep." Whether or not the sheep survives depends on which chunk is lost. And while we are pretty sure which chunks a sheep needs, it isn't clear - it may not even be predictable - which chunks of our densely networked civilisation are critical, until it's too late.

"First, we need to encourage distributed and decentralised production of vital goods like energy and food," [says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist at the University of Toronto] "Second, we need to remember that slack isn't always waste ...

The electricity industry in the US has already started identifying hubs in the grid with no redundancy available and is putting some back in, Homer-Dixon points out. Governments could encourage other sectors to follow suit. The trouble is that in a world of fierce competition, private companies will always increase efficiency unless governments subsidise inefficiency in the public interest.

Lester Brown thinks we are fast running out of time. "The world can no longer afford to waste a day. We need a Great Mobilisation, as we had in wartime," he says. "There has been tremendous progress in just the past few years. For the first time, I am starting to see how an alternative economy might emerge. But it's now a race between tipping points - which will come first, a switch to sustainable technology, or collapse?"

New Scientist Issue 2650, 05 April 2008

Russian wheat export ban threatens higher inflation and food riots

The world faces an inflationary time bomb as shortages of food threaten to push prices to fresh all-time highs.

A variety of freakish weather conditions across the world has sent the price of staples including wheat, pork, rice, orange juice, coffee, cocoa and tea to fresh highs in recent weeks.

Yesterday's decision by the Russian government to ban the export of wheat to protect home consumers saw grain prices jump 8 per cent on the day, on what was already a two-year high ...

Taken together it suggests that Western nations will be hit by a sharp inflationary spike next year, as the price of bread, beer, petrol and many other everyday items climbs higher again.

Given the sluggish prospects for growth in Western economies it threatens a return to "stagflation" ...

In developing and emerging economies, however, the challenge is in some cases a matter of life and death ...

Politics and speculators have also played a part; the unrest in Kenya in 2009 sparked a rise in tea prices, while the activities of some hedge funds have been blamed for wild fluctuations in coffee and cocoa.

Earlier this month it emerged that hedge fund manager Anthony Ward had cornered a large slice of the cocoa market by buying 240,000 tonnes of beans ...

High and volatile food prices seem certain to lead to more calls for "financial food speculation" to be curbed ...

Independent  06 Aug 2010    Haber Bosch Food Crunch

Wheat price fears hit shares ...

Russia ... Bans Grain Exports

Volcano illustrates world's interconnectedness

"As long as the disruption is not too long" the 'Just-in-time' mode of business could manage. But what if Katla were to blow? The 1918 eruption lasted for 24 days; that of 1755 over 120 days.

In a wider sense, however, the events of April 2010 might well be regarded as a preview of a world where oil is no longer able to 'fund' 28,000 European flights a day, plus road and sea transport, plus Harber Bosch, and the manufacture of a wide variety of plastics.

The Invisible Hand will have developed the substitutes when the time comes.

Won't it?

Good luck with that.

A volcano erupts in Iceland, and the effects ripple around the globe: A mom in Romania frets about making her son's wedding in Texas.

A florist in New York worries shipments won't arrive. Patients awaiting treatment in Nigeria have to wait another week for the doctors.

The fallout from the ash cloud looming over Europe illustrates just how interconnected our world has become.

Thousands of planes fly millions of passengers and tons of cargo each day, providing the economic lifeblood of nations and businesses.

The flights deliver products for sale or items as small as a specialized tool that lets a factory keep operating ...

msn.com  16 April 2010

Iceland volcano could build into major business problem

There were few early reports of major impacts on exports and imports, but analysts stressed that the stakes would rise each day of the flight ban.

"Some businesses will be affected by the inability for freight to get in and out of the country," said Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in London. "As long as the disruption is not too long, this should not be a major problem. The main problem will be for goods that are perishable."

The pharmaceutical industry is particularly reliant on air freight because of the high value and low weight of their products ...

Eurocontrol, the European air traffic agency, said some 16,000 flights were canceled on Friday, more than half the 28,000 that usually operate ...

The Times of India  16 April 2010

Small business impact

Volcano forces BMW plant in US to cut production

Iceland volcano ... crippling Kenya's flower industry

'A major business headache'

Iceland volcano: why we were lucky ...

Iceland's Volcanoes

The Black Death arrived in Europe in the autumn of 1347 and quickly spread. Estimates suggest that Europe's population fell by between 25% and 40% and, given the misfortunes of the previous decades, it is not hard to see why so many perished.

As the American historian, David Hackett Fisher put it in his book on the history of prices, The Great Wave:

"The people of Europe suffered through the darkest moment in their history: it was a terrible time of starvation and pestilence, insurrection and war, persecution and political chaos. This was more than merely the collapse of the mediaeval economy. It was the death of mediaeval civilisation."

All the same ingredients are there today. We have an unbalanced global economy; we have governments running big budget deficits; we have high levels of inequality; we have wars, climate change and a broken-backed financial system. And, if the health experts are to be believed, we now have a pandemic to boot ...

It is truer to say that internationalisation – which certainly did exist in the 14th century – can amplify a problem by transmitting it across borders. Europe had developed a sophisticated commercial, banking and trading network during the 13th century which, at a stretch, could be seen as the first stage in the development of today's highly integrated global world.

The real lessons from history are somewhat different. Problems are magnified when they arrive simultaneously or in reasonably rapid succession. Swine flu, certainly at this stage, looks no more of a global threat than bird flu or Sars; its significance is that it has arrived hard on the heels of the biggest financial crisis of the post-war era. The immune system of the global economy has been weakened by the events of the past two years, and it would be weakened further were anything else to go wrong in the next few months.

In this context, it is not the existence of globalisation that matters but the way it has been structured and organised. It would come as little surprise to find that the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico is linked to industrialised farming methods designed to provide cheap food for consumers on the other side of the Rio Grande.

When the Nafta free-trade agreement was signed in 1993, the claim was that it would bring increased prosperity all round. The reality is that any benefits for US consumers have been blunted by the loss of jobs to the assembly plants in the maquiladora border region (many of which have subsequently been shifted to even cheaper locations in China), while Mexico has been blighted by financial crisis and rising poverty ...

Guardian  03 May 2009

Life-threatening disease is the price we pay for cheap meat

The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California’s sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere.

But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms and towns.

Across the valley, towns are already seeing some of the worst unemployment in the country, with rates three and four times the national average, as well as reported increases in all manner of social ills: drug use, excessive drinking and rises in hunger and domestic violence.

With fewer checks to cash, even check-cashing businesses have failed, as have thrift stores, ice cream parlors and hardware shops. The state has put the 2008 drought losses at more than $300 million, and economists predict that this year’s losses could swell past $2 billion, with as many as 80,000 jobs lost.

“People are saying, ‘Are you a third world country?’ ” said Robert Silva, the mayor of Mendota, which has a 35 percent unemployment rate, up from the more typical seasonal average of about 20 percent. “My community is dying on the vine.”

Even as rains have washed across some of the state this month, greening some arid rangeland, agriculture officials say the lack of rain and the prospect of minimal state and federal water supplies have already led many farmers to fallow fields and retreat into survival mode with low-maintenance and low-labor crops ...

The outlook for things getting better quickly is dim, despite forecasts of rain this week. Last month, California officials estimated the snowpack in the Sierra, a primary source of water for the state when it melts in the spring, at 61 percent of normal.

On Friday, the State Department of Water Resources said it would deliver just 15 percent of its promised contracts, a level it was able to maintain only because of the recent spate of rain. “It’s pathetic,” said Lester A. Snow, the department’s director.

Lynette Wirth, a spokeswoman for the United States Bureau of Reclamation, said water levels in all federally managed reservoirs in California were well below normal, with “abysmal” carryover from the previous year.

“There’s been no meaningful precipitation since last March,” Ms. Wirth said.

Farmers, of course, are also dealing with issues unrelated to rain, including tight credit from banks and recent court decisions meant to protect fish that have limited the transfer of water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which feeds snowmelt to farmbound canals. Many farmers refer to a “man-made drought” caused by restrictions.

At the same time, environmental groups say they also fear a range of potential problems, including depletion of the valley aquifer from well pumping, possible dust-bowl conditions in areas of large patches of fallow ground and concern about salmon and other species. “It’s a tough year for the environment, and people,” said Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council ...

NYT 21 February 2009

AS GOVERNMENTS struggle to prevent the global financial crisis turning into a deep worldwide recession, attention is also turning to the longer-term problem: how to avoid a similar crisis happening again. When politicians meet in Washington DC in December they are likely to agree that the "loose touch" approach to financial regulation of the past two decades will have to give way to tighter controls. But the global financial system now operates at a level of complexity no one has ever tried to tame. How do we re-engineer it so breakdowns don't happen again?

One place to start is the science of complexity itself. We now know that large interconnected systems, such as the weather, can behave in unexpected ways: for example, small changes can trigger fundamental shifts. New understanding of the principles governing such complex systems offers hope that the global financial system can be got under control. The snag is that politicians will have to accept that costs are likely to be involved ...

Days before winning the 2008 Nobel prize in economics last week, Paul Krugman of Princeton University published an analysis which concluded that the rapid increase in cross-border investments since 1995 is what allowed a local shock - the collapse in inflated US real estate values - to propagate globally, especially through highly indebted investment firms that can respond to a loss of money in one place by pulling back credit anywhere in the world. Krugman noted that "these channels are not yet part of the standard analysis". This is exactly the kind of linkage that the complexity theorists say economists have been missing ...

... In 2007 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a study, based in part on testimony from ecologists and engineers specialising in complex systems, which concluded that while vast sums were spent assessing the risks of individual investments, almost nothing was being spent on systemic risk - which could be much more grave.

"It is really frustrating to me and others that the warnings were not heeded," says ecologist Simon Levin of Princeton University, who was one of those who testified - all the more, he points out, because increased connectivity doesn't just propagate trouble, it makes the whole system less diverse and more vulnerable to dramatic shifts ...

According to Rockström, one of the key ways in which diversity was lost arose from the uniformity of criteria that have been used to judge economic success. One example of this is value-at-risk (VaR), the measure used by banks to report their potential losses from trading financial instruments.

Since the late 1990s, it has been standard practice for banks to publicly report VaR measurements. When use of this measure was proposed, critics argued that this would encourage herd behaviour, with banks rushing en masse to sell off assets that were depressing their VaR numbers, but their concerns were ignored ...

Bar-Yam thinks models of complex relationships such as those between predators and prey can help prevent such systemic problems, and show regulators how they can modulate market behaviour in a more sophisticated way. "We haven't had the scientific tools to do this for very long. But we can now model the global system and capture the key collective behaviour that causes collapse."

"At its core the science of complex systems is about collective behaviour," Bar-Yam points out. "The invisible hand of the market is collective behaviour." The problem till now, he says, has been that economic policy has failed to take into account the complexity and consequent unpredictability of such behaviour. In the absence of testable models, people "try to believe what they know really isn't true", he says - for instance, that real estate values always increase.

The remedy Bar-Yam proposes is to subject economic policies to verification with the same sort of rigour that is normal in science. That has never been done. "But with recent scientific advances, I believe we can now truly inform policy."

New Scientist 22 October 2008

What your interviewees ('It's a different world from ours, isn't it', October 14) don't realise, just as Lloyds TSB chief executive Eric Daniels appears to fail to understand when he spoke yesterday of unnecessary "over-capitalisation" by the government (Bosses pay the price as taxpayer moves in, October 14), is just how close it has come. No banks, no cashpoint. No credit card. No salary. No cash. No food on supermarket shelves.

Far more worrying than the credit crunch is the fact that so many people don't understand why, after centuries of worrying about national debt, governments around the world have, in the space of a few short hours, gone into hock over their eyeballs to save "banking". It's simple. Without the banking bail-out, within a few months London would have more closely resembled Mogadishu.

If anything comes out of this disaster, perhaps the most important benefit might be to throw a bucket of cold water into the faces of those ignorant of the risks inherent in how we have structured our society.

There is no redundancy, there is no resilience. We can only live as we do thanks to an incredibly complex and delicate economic structure, built on the unacknowledged but diminishing subsidy of hydrocarbon fuels, within a biosphere we are blithely destroying.

Unless we all wise up, either we or our children will spend our final days scrabbling for bread thrown from the back of an army lorry. Yes, you too Mr Daniels.

Bill Robinson
London

The Guardian 16 October 2008

In The Upside of Down, political scientist and award-winning author Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that converging stresses could cause a catastrophic breakdown of national and global order — a social earthquake that could hurt billions of people. But he shows that this outcome isn't inevitable; there's much we can do to prevent it.

And after setting out a general theory of the growth, breakdown, and renewal of societies, he shows that less severe types of breakdown could open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies.

Homer-Dixon contends that five "tectonic stresses" are accumulating deep underneath the surface of today's global order:

• energy stress, especially from increasing scarcity of conventional oil;
• economic stress from greater global economic instability and widening income gaps between rich and poor;
• demographic stress from differentials in population growth rates between rich and poor societies and from expansion of megacities in poor societies;
• environmental stress from worsening damage to land, water forests, and fisheries; and,
• climate stress from changes in the composition of Earth's atmosphere.

Of the five, energy stress plays a particularly important role, because energy is humankind's master resource. When energy is scarce and costly, everything a society tries to do — including growing its food, obtaining enough fresh water, transmitting and processing information, and defending itself — becomes far harder.

The effect of the five stresses is multiplied by the rising connectivity and speed of our societies and by the escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people, including, potentially, whole cities.

Drawing parallels between the challenges we face today and the crisis faced by the Roman empire almost two thousand years ago, Homer-Dixon argues that these stresses and multipliers are potentially a lethal mixture. Together, they greatly increase the risk of a cascading collapse of systems vital to our wellbeing — a phenomenon he calls "synchronous failure."

Societies must do everything they can to avoid such an outcome.

On the other hand, if people are well-prepared, they may be able to exploit less extreme forms of breakdown to achieve deep reform and renewal of institutions, social relations, technologies, and entrenched habits of behavior. This is likely our best hope for a prosperous and humane future.

The Upside of Down

I have devoted many columns to sustainability issues in terms of a single house. But every so often I like to pull back for the truly wide shot. From a global perspective, what is the state of our planet, and how might this affect our housing choices?

There is no better place to get a sense of this than the book "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" by environmentalist Lester R. Brown. His ability to make a complicated subject accessible to the general reader is remarkable, and he presents surprisingly recent material, frequently citing reports and statistics from just a few months ago.

Of the topics Brown covers, renewable energy is the most directly related to home building. The application of the rest of the book to home building requires some reading between the lines, but not much.

As Brown cites one stark statistic or report after another, it's clear that we cannot expect business as usual in any endeavor. The pressure exerted on the Earth's natural systems by 6.6 billion people and their basic need to eat, as well as by the nearly universal desire for a modern lifestyle, will eventually affect the supply and price of almost every material.

Even the simple desire for paper will have a profound effect on home building. To cite one of Brown's many statistics, if the consumption per person in China reaches the same level that it is in the United States -- a not-unlikely possibility by 2030, he argues -- the people of China will need twice as much paper as the entire world now produces.

And China is only one country. The people of India and many other developing countries will also want paper. We in America can go paperless with a vengeance and become ardent recyclers, but the demand for wood pulp will still force change in many directions, including the way we build our houses.

Brown discusses in some detail the many ways that human activities, on a scale unimaginable 50 years ago, are wreaking havoc with all our natural systems: our forests and croplands, our rivers and lakes, our oceans and air.

He follows this with a presentation of achievable solutions. He is generally optimistic about the future, if we act now.

A very bright spot is the potential for renewable energy to control global warming. This chapter should be required reading for every homeowner and builder, because climate change and buildings are closely connected.

In the United States, about 43 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the principal component of greenhouse gases, are building-related. Half our buildings are houses. Some of these emissions are produced on-site by gas-burning furnaces and water heaters, but most are produced off-site at power plants that run on coal or natural gas.

Huge efforts have been made to reduce home-energy use and consequently greenhouse gas emissions. There are, however, more than 80 million houses in the United States.

Brown discusses a number of alternate approaches that involve going to the source and changing the way local utilities generate electricity. By using existing technologies, we can power our entire national electric grid with clean energy tapped from the sun, the Earth and moving water.

Some types of clean energy have been used by individual homeowners for some time. For example, American homeowners have been tapping solar heat for domestic hot water for decades, though not in great numbers. Recently, some have been adapting their solar collectors to heat their houses, too.

When the heat of the sun is highly concentrated, it can be used to power turbines that produce electricity. The huge equipment outlays could be undertaken only by a public utility and such a project would be feasible only in an area with little cloud cover and plenty of sun. The Southwest has the right climate, and Brown cites studies showing that this region has the potential to provide seven times the current U.S. generating capacity from all sources.

When the Earth's heat is concentrated in certain geological formations, it can also be tapped to run turbines that produce electricity. The western United States, it turns out, is one of the world's "hot spots" in this regard. Utilities in several western states have about 60 projects in development or under construction.

Homeowners almost anywhere in the country could tap geothermal energy for home heat, but this option is uncommon because of its high cost relative to conventional heating systems.

High cost has likewise affected household adoption of photovoltaic systems, which convert solar energy directly into electricity. Because of the cost, photovoltaic systems are feasible only in places where the state government or local utility subsidizes them.

Moving water, commonly known as hydropower, is another clean energy source. Most hydropower is generated by turbines incorporated into huge dams in river valleys, but "hydro" can be small-scale as well. Individual homeowners who live by small streams can install a "mini-hydro" turbine that doesn't require a dam.

More exotic types of hydropower capture the energy in tidal waters and waves. A wave project has been proposed in California, and tidal projects are being planned on both coasts.

The wind coming off the Great Plains or off either coast could supply enough electricity to power the entire country. Wind turbines already dot the countryside here, as well as in Europe and Asia, and world demand for turbines is huge. To meet it, Brown suggests mass-producing them by adapting idled auto assembly plants.

Brown stretches the definition of "renewable resource " to include the endless stream of waste that we produce because it, too, can be used to generate electricity. There are 89 U.S. plants burning garbage to provide electricity to 6 million customers. Corporations and local utilities are also generating electricity with methane captured from rotting material in landfills.

In sum, there is a renewable energy solution for every utility and every homeowner. The entire country could be drawing clean electric power by 2020 if we make it a priority now, Brown says.

Washington Post 09 February 2008

Diamond lists eight factors which have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies:

Deforestation and habitat destruction

Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)

Water management problems

Overhunting

Overfishing

Effects of introduced species on native species

Human population growth

Increased per-capita impact of people

Further he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies:

Human-caused climate change

Buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment

Energy shortages

Full human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity

Wiki

Wright’s premise starts at the works of Paul Gauguin. A 19th century painter, Gauguin’s mural asks three questions that are vital to the understanding of our own environmental dilemmas of today: “Where do we come from? Where are we? Where are we going?”

For Wright, it is the third question, which intrigues him. “Where are we going?” Wright believes that careful reflection on the first two questions can ultimately answer where our species is headed.

In his book, Ronald Wright shows how the twentieth century’s runaway growth in terms of human population, over consumption and technology has placed a murderous burden on the planet.

When asking where this growth will lead us, whether it can be sustained, and what kind of a future world this world will give us, he answers that our modern predicament is as old as civilization itself, it is a “10,000 year experiment that we have participated in but seldom controlled.”

He reflects that “each time history repeats itself, the price goes up,” hence it is only by understanding the “patterns of progress and disaster” that humanity has repeated since the Stone ages, can Man recognize the “experiments inherent dangers” and with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.

In an effort to pave the way of the world and warn us of impending disasters, Wright guides his readers through the history of the world since the Ages to present, in a manner that is not only elegantly crafted and conjured but also thorough and expansive in its content.

Wright uses historical examples to show how human beings have constantly found themselves mired in a type of “progress trap.” For example, weapons.

Wright observes that since the Chinese invented gunpowder, there has been great progress in the making of “bangs”: from the firecracker to the cannon, from the petard to the high explosive shell.

Just when high explosives were reaching a state of perfection, “progress” found the infinitely bigger “bang” in the atom. He muses, when the “bang” we make can blow up our world, we have made rather too much progress.

Within the present setting, culture measures human progress by technology: however, one look at the natural disaster that struck the southern states of the U.S. reveal that all technology did was inspire a false sense of security against calamities, another progress trap.

Between 1994 – 2003, more than 2.5 billion people were affected by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters, a 60% increase over the previous two ten year periods.

These numbers exclude the millions displaced and killed by last year’s tsunami.

By another measure – property damage – in 2004, made it the costliest year for global insurers, who paid more than $40 billion on natural disasters.

Wright argues that progress, as an ideology is merely a myth.

Humans see their own progress and advancement in the rapid transition from an industrial economy to information based one, while the reality is that – the food technology of the late Stone Age is the only one we cannot live without.

The crops of about a dozen ancient people feed the 6 billion people of the world today. Despite more than two centuries of scientific crop breeding, the so-called green revolution of the 60’s and the genetic engineering of the 90’s, not one new staple has been added to our repertoire of crops since prehistoric times.

However, the invention of agriculture is itself “a runaway train”, as it led to the expansion of populations, but which, seldom solved the food problem because of two inevitable consequences: One, biological, the population grows until it hits the bounds of the food supply.

Two, social: all civilizations become hierarchical; the upward concentration of wealth ensures that there can never be enough to go around – another progress trap.

In conclusion, Wright urges all readers alike to take advantage of what we have, that is to use the knowledge we have of past mistakes and to use them to prevent a similar fate.

He argues that in our blind pursuit of material progress, we, similar to the Mayan Empire of the 9th century A.D. and the Roman empire of the 4th century A.D. are likely to self-destruct because like these civilizations, we too, are likely to face the collapse of our social and environmental order.

Terrorism, violence, war, poverty, malnutrition, natural disasters etc. are all evidences of such in today’s world.

strategicforesight.com September 2005

What causes societies to collapse? There are a myriad of theories: resource depletion, high taxes, environmental degradation, moral flaws in the citizens of the society, natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanos, and more. In The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter argues that none of these is an adequate explanation.

Tainter is not a flake or a doomsayer. He is an archaeologist, and The Collapse of Complex Societies is aimed at academic audiences. It's often used as a textbook for anthropology classes. And he does not believe our society is on the brink of collapse.

After reading his book, I'm not sure I agree with him. According to Tainter's research, everything from spiking oil prices to failing public schools to the increasingly bitter political divide may be signs of impending collapse.

The Collapse of Complex Societies provides terrific insight into the reasons complex societies arise...and why they collapse. It also provides some hints about what it might be like if our own society collapses, based on what happened when other complex societies collapsed.

Tainter claims that the proper basis for understanding complex societies is an economic one. The basic premise:

1. Human societies are problem-solving organizations.

2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance.

3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita.

4. Investment in complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.

So, in his view, complex societies arise as efficient solutions to problems. At first, relatively little investment in complexity yields great benefits. But eventually, diminishing returns kicks in, and greater and greater investment produces less and less benefit. Finally, the point is reached where investment in complexity can no longer yield any increase in benefits. Collapse becomes increasingly probable. At that point, a crisis the society easily weathered earlier in its history - a military loss, drought, resource depletion, etc. - is enough to cause collapse.

Why do marginal yields always decline? That is, why is it that we always get less and less return on greater and greater investment? Because the lowest fruit is picked first. The most accessible oil is pumped first. Teaching someone to read is cheap and has great benefits; getting them a PhD is expensive, and provides far fewer benefits for the cost. The most arable land is farmed first; expanding farms to less ideal territory will provide lower yields for the cost.

It is possible for a society to avoid collapse, by getting control of a new source of energy, either by technical innovation or by conquest. Eventually, however, it becomes impossible to keep doing this, because of declining marginal returns on whichever strategy you are pursuing (whether conquest, like the Romans, or technological innovation, like the Maya).

Tainter argues that we are already facing declining marginal returns, and provides numerous examples. Among them:

Agriculture: To increase world food production by 34 percent (between 1951 and 1966), it took a 63% increase in money spent on tractors, a 146% increase in money spent on nitrate fertilizers, and a 300% increase in money spend on pesticides. To get another 34% would take even more money.

Medicine: Despite the fact that we are spending more money on health care and medical research than ever, the American lifespan is not increasing much. The easy fixes - vitamins, vaccines, sanitation, etc. - have already been done. Now, we are struggling just to keep lifespan from decreasing (due to new challenges like AIDS).

Science: Most of the great work of science was done years, even centuries ago. Many of the greatest contributions to science were made by people without formal training. But the day is past when monks growing peas or people flying kites in the rain can make significant contributions to science. The general knowledge, which provided the greatest benefits, is already known. The specialist knowledge remaining to be discovered requires expensive education, for relatively little return. Something like 90% of all the scientists who have ever lived on earth are alive right now, yet technological innovation is slowing.

Oil: In 1950, one barrel of oil's worth of energy could get you 100 barrels in return. Now, it's more like 1:10 in the U.S., 1:30 for Middle East oil shipped here. That sort of decline applies to most resources: coal, copper, natural gas, etc.

R&D: Technology has saves us in the past; can it save us again? Probably not. Analysis shows that an increase in spending on R&D of 4.2% yields an improvement of only 2%. At that rate, even if every one of us becomes a scientist or engineer, we'll be losing ground.

Government: Increasing complexity means increasing bureaucracy, and all the expenses that entails. Generally, it means higher taxes. At first, the benefits of complexity - roads, schools, defense, public works - are so great that people don't mind paying taxes. But as complexity increases, taxes rise, and the local benefit decreases. The government must spend resources on enforcing compliance. Generally, the tipping point is about 20% - which we're past.

Does Tainter think we are facing imminent collapse? No. There's a fifth concept, to add to the four above:

5. Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum.

Even when a society is past the point of diminishing returns - when economically, they'd be better off not investing in more complexity - there is a situation where they cannot collapse. That is when there is a group of societies, of similar complexity, in competition with each other. No one can collapse, because if they do, they'll be taken over by a neighbor. Collapse, when it comes, will be a group affair. No one can collapse unless they all collapse at once. (Which is what happened to the Maya.)

That is the reason Europe did not collapse long ago, and that is the reason the next collapse will be a global one. A "powerdown" is impossible in the current political climate.

Tainter's discussion of past collapses was fascinating, and I couldn't help wondering if they might be hints of our own future. Complex societies ensure their existence by two methods: legitimization, and coercion.

Legitimization can involve nonmaterial elements (the emperor is a god, democracy is the best way of government). But no society can continue to survive unless it provides actual material benefits. The people must be shown that their taxes are benefitting them more than they are hurting. So, even while Rome was going bankrupt, they kept increasing the public dole. They had to, to maintain their legitimacy. Eventually, one out of three people was on the dole.

Coercion is another method, but it, too, is expensive. Higher and higher taxes are demanded, with greater and greater punishments for not paying. The state may control where you can live, what your occupation is, what you can say. People get more rebellious, and more resources must be allocated to social control. The wealthier areas that can make it on their own may try to pull away; the government won't let them, because it needs their production.

It's likely, as vital resources such as petroleum, water, even food, run out, our governments will use both methods. Taxes will rise, and so will handouts to the poor. We'll lose freedoms, as the government cracks down.

Given that possible vision of the future, collapse seems almost preferable. Indeed, Tainter argues that collapse is not necessarily catastrophe. Complex societies are a relatively new development in human history. They are what is unnatural, so collapse would be returning to a more natural state. And research shows that collapse does in fact yield benefits. Smaller kingdoms were more effective at repelling barbarian invasions than the Roman empire. Nutrition was better after the Mayan collapse than it was before.

The drawback, of course, is the huge population drop that accompanies collapse. An 80%-90% loss is not unusual. While in the old days, those extra people may have simply migrated somewhere else, that's not possible in today's world.

So what will happen if our society collapses? Some key points, taking the past as a guide:

Real Estate: Though survivalist types think salvation is a homestead in the country, that wasn't the case for Rome, or for the Maya. In both cases, people moved near the cities in the decades before the collapse. Taxes grew so high in Rome that many farmers simply abandoned their land. It was easier to get food in the cities than on the farms that grew it. Many laws passed involved ways to tax abandoned land. Eventually, Rome passed laws ordering that the sons of farmer be farmers themselves...then had to spend more resources on enforcing those laws.

Less is known about the Maya, but they, too clustered closer to the cities as the end approached. Likely this was because isolated farms and villages were vulnerable to raids. Too many people, not enough food, and no way out leads to only one outcome: warfare.

Population Growth: Societies that collapsed often suffered a leveling of population growth before the collapse; some even had decreases in population. This was seen as a serious social problem for the government, since it needed new citizens to provide labor and pay taxes. In Rome, laws were passed setting up state orphanages and offering tax incentives for having kids. Among the Maya, women were favored over men. While male skeletons grew stunted and diseased as collapse approached, the female skeletons remained as large and healthy as ever. Neighboring societies of the time honored reproducing women, and the evidence suggests the Maya did as well, feeding the females at the expense of the males.

I can't help but be reminded of that politican in Japan, who suggested cutting off social security benefits to women who don't have at least one child, or Pat Buchanan, who wants to end abortion and birth control, in part because it will increase the number of taxpayers.

Currency debasement: Collapsing societies tend to suffer from massive inflation. Even though the government knows it shouldn't just print more money, it can't resist when pushed into a corner. You have to pay the army and the civil servants. This is a way of pushing debts into the future, much as our deficits do. Because, as Tainter says, "the future can't protest."

Who suffers: The wealthy suffered last when Rome collapsed. First the poor suffered, then the middle class, and only at the end, the wealthy. But it was the opposite when the Maya collapsed. The elite disappeared, and only the peasants remained. In some areas, there are signs the remaining population tried to continue the rituals and building that had gone before, but simply did not have the knowledge. Those who did were obviously gone.

After the collapse: Sometimes a society recovers, but often, it never again reaches the complexity it once had. The Maya did not maintain their irrigation systems or raised beds. Either the land was too exhausted to make it worthwhile, or they had no inclination to go back to the way they were, once it was proven unfeasible.

Another point from the book that I found interesting and possibly relevant: scanning behavior. When a society is facing diminishing returns, something Tainter calls "scanning behavior" appears. People become dissatisfied; ideological strife intensifies. The entire society starts looking around for a better way. Segments of society may adopt foreign ideologies or ways of life. Some of these may be perceived as subversive, while others are the height of fashion. Taxes rise, as the government invests more in R&D, trying to find a better way.

Once a society reaches the point where investments in complexity no longer pay off at all, scanning behavior may cease altogether. The government enforces strict behavioral controls, in hopes of increasing efficiency. And they can no longer afford R&D.

I'm not sure if I find Tainter's book encouraging or not. One the one hand, he suggests that a soft landing is more likely than a sudden dieoff; the collapses he studied took place over decades. On the other hand, the years leading up to collapse tend to be very unpleasant, with brutal government control, high taxes, conscription, anarchy, banditry, widespread malnutrition, etc. Tainter expects that before collapse, we will be pouring a huge percentage of our GDP into R&D, trying to find a technology that will save us. That means the standard of living will fall, since there will be less to spend on other things.

But maybe engineering will be a growth industry, at least for few decades...

Tainter 1988