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Climate change - Prosperity without Growth?
Posted by Karl North on 12/9/2009
In Reply To:Climate change - Prosperity without Growth? Posted by Terren Suydam on 12/8/2009
Hi Everyone,
I think Terren has put his finger on the heart of the matter, and in doing so has given me an opening to constructively (I hope) explain my increasing frustration with the way the population issue is being handled in this thread. It is axiomatic to the ST/SD methodological paradigm that STRUCTURE GENERATES BEHAVIOR. From that perspective, to say that exponential population growth is the root of the problem makes no sense.
A systems approach makes exponential growth not a root cause but a PROBLEM BEHAVIOR, whose root causes can only be a FEEDBACK STRUCTURE that we need to model in order to understand. I hear Terren saying this in his more diplomatic way - when he says that the root causes of exponential population growth are STRUCTURAL.
But there is another systems paradigm axiom at stake here. For me, Terren's approach expresses it clearly: in building a model of feedback structure, one must continually (iteratively) CHALLENGE THE BOUNDARIES.
The problem with following this methodological principle is that it all too often leads, as it did in Terren's post, to breaking a taboo: finding the root cause to be in the structure of the political economy itself. My frustration with this conversation is because it exemplifies a perennial behavior I see in the ST/SD subculture (my anthropological training surfacing here): all too often, ST/SD modelers, consciously or not, respect the taboo, and in the process violate the axioms that, to me are what makes systems science a true Kuhnian revolution in how we do science.
So how would one model the problem behavior of exponential population growth in a way that respects the axioms? Once the BOT had been graphically illustrated and backed up with the usual historical documentation, one next step toward a model of causal structure might be to look for historical structures that did NOT generate exponential growth. In fact, if Malthus had not been such a venal servant of the British upper class, he could have pointed to structures that in his time had reduced population growth in the British upper class to zero. Of course the British ruling class was/is rich, and as is well established, affluence tends to solve the population problem.
Then the ST question becomes, Can we find instances of population control in poor populations, and what are the responsible structures? In fact we can. Kerala, a poor state in an Indian subcontinent not known for population control, has reduced its population growth rate dramatically in comparison to the rest of India. Cuba, another poor nation, has practically zero growth as well.
So then the question becomes, what STRUCTURES cause this behavior and solve the population problem in these cases? Well, there are layers to the onion. The first layer I see is that these nations have to a significant degree brought about a set of social conditions, some of which have been mentioned in this thread. Population activists, especially radical feminists (to their great credit) have been enumerating these conditions at population conferences for years. They
are:
1. Equal education of women
2. Equal economic empowerment of women
3. Family economic security (not necessarily affluence, mind you) 4. Equalization of wealth and status across society
As any holist should recognize, these conditions do not work well if implemented individually; the hoped for emergent behavior comes essentially from their implementation together, to benefit from the interactive feedback that is generated.
Of course this begs the question: What is the socio-economic-cultural structure that will achieve these goals? But the answer to that, as in Terren's post, while adhering to the axiom "challenge the boundaries", violates the taboo. It is embedded in our subconscious that we never must question the structure of the political economy itself. So we don't do it, even though a cardinal rule of the ST/SD methodological paradigm tells us we must.
I thank Terren for having the courage to violate the taboo in order to respect the axioms.
Karl North
Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
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