Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Echoes of inequality and its effects through the ages

I've just read a fascinating article in New Scientist (18th August 2012 P46-49) about a mathematical ecologist by the name of Peter Turchin who has turned his hand to developing models based on history.  Turchin notes that there are cycles inequalityand civil unrest and that their length is approximately two generations. This two generation idea captured my attention because I'd read about Kondratieff,a Russian economist, who noted economic cycles of approximately 50-60 years.  I had always thought that this was about two generations: i.e. enough time for people to forget and, once again, allow the conditions that caused the problems to reoccur. 
As a modeller, Turchin is essentially looking for patterns across different histories and societies around the world.  All models simplify reality and his model leaves out the effects of climate change, or of remarkable individuals (for example), both of which have had significant effects on past societies.  However, the model provides a way to take lessons from the past and project them into the future, to make predictions.  Turchin predicts major civil unrest in the US and Europe around 2020 - not that far away (he adds that he hopes that he is wrong about this).  As part of his reasoning, he points to problems with the distribution of resources across the population - something that he argues is destabilising the social order.
Why does this excite me?  As a social scientist I am aware that civil unrest is very likely to be the outcome of overpopulation and us hitting resource limits.  In these, I also include climate change and its predicted effects. When resources become scarce, and the uneven distribution of these resources makes it difficult for much of the population to provide for their children, you have a system "primed with people who feel that they have very little to lose. However, Turchin notes that it is not the poor who usually rise up.  Generally the rich and powerful are the ones who incite unrest because they want to increase their status and power.  As we saw in Rwanda, the unrest can be triggered by people who incite violence by scapegoating a section of the community, but the underlying instability comes from the lack of resources.
We could work to do something about this - tax the rich, prevent them getting all the economic advantages they currently do, ensuring fair pay for employees (a decent living wage), work at community level to get people to know each other well and to learn to pool resources.  But, as we've seen, those in power are acting to prevent the rest of us from learning what is going on  and many of us feel too busy to do much and lack a plan of action or even to get to know our neighbours.

The other thing that Turchin’s work suggests to me is the importance of respecting all knowledge if we are to build a sustainable society.  The learning and ideas of young people give a society huge adaptive capacity, but it is equally important that this knowledge sits alongside the knowledge and collective experience of a society’s older members rather than just discarding it as outdated. It is this that can help us move past repeating the mistakes of the past.

Friday, 19 July 2013

Economy and Environment intrinsically connected

I know many of you will already know this.  It is obvious when one uses a strong sustainability lens that our economy relies on the many ecosystem services and resources that nature provides although I do know some economists who disagree with this.  However, recently I've come to understand the interlinking of the two in a slightly different way.

For some years now I've been concerned about climate change and peak oil and in fact peak everything (read the likelihood that the human race has moved into overshoot and has used up many of the resources that we rely on in the present day).  I have even spent a bit of time being an activist around this - usually in relation to local transport issues but also keeping my eye on the bigger picture.
I went to a talk the other night at the one of the local universities.  It was Robert Wade talking about inequality and may parts of it grabbed me.   The guts of his argument was that inequality of wealth is a major issue in today's world, and while many people are working on poverty, it would appear that we need to be thinking at least as much about the problems of too much wealth at the top.  Many people don't see that the economic structure that creates a small number of super rich people is what keeps millions if not billions in poverty.

On a worldwide scale, for example the world's richest 300 (yes, three hundred) people control the same wealth as the world's poorest 3 billion people (i.e. more than the populations of India, China, the US and Brazil combined).  On top of that the top 1% are also commandeering most of the economic growth where the costs of that are shared amongst us all.  Most economic policy in places like the US, the UK, parts of Europe and in New Zealand amongst lead to the rich getting richer and the poor becoming more so.

Prof Wade argued cogently that the rich control governments through funding arrangements and by their close relationships with those in government in some countries and therefore what we think of as a democracy is in fact a plutocracy that works for the advantage of the rich.

Add to this that the richer people get (and any of us are potentially susceptible to this) are less generous, less empathic, more likely to consider the poor are there because of their individual failings and also that they feel insulated from the bad things that happen to other people.





And now you have a recipe for why our environment continues to be degraded, and why all the warnings about the awful effects of climate change continue to be ignored by governments.  In other words, it seems very likely to me that until something happens - e.g. people take action, a mighty financial crash happens (both things that have happened in the past, and which look both immanent and very likely), we will make no progress on climate change, transitioning to new forms of energy or even looking squarely at the issues of peak everything!

The rich feel that it won't affect them and that they will have the resources to buffer themselves from any bad weather or loss of energy.  Jared Diamond discussed this in his book Collapse noting that more it was egalitarian societies that changed or transitioned rather than collapsing and disasppearing.  The greater the inequality, the less adaptable we are, and yes the rich may be able last longer than many of the poor (under some circumstances) but it may not not necessarily be the case.

There is obviously more and I can think of a few questions about this but this is something I suspect that environmentalists may need to consider.


Monday, 15 July 2013

Cycle Action

This blog continues from my old blog and I've started it mainly as a way of rationalising the many different things I contribute to around the place. 
I have the urge to write again.  As ever, I have major concerns about the state of our environment, the lack of action on the part of governments to deal with the issues and at the same time I'm keen to stay positive or at least, to face it all with some sense of equanimity. 
I've also been reflecting a bit on previous experiences - some of which I wrote about in the other blog.  One of these is working on cycling advocacy in Christchurch - something that at times has felt like a thankless task.  However, despite being considered slightly mad and not worthy of consideration, for quite some years, those of us who work on this considered it important to keep on doing it, albeit to trying doing some things differently.
One of those differences was to work on getting other people to support our work by putting pressure on the City Council.  This seems to have been the ingredient that we were missing because since we began this, there appear to have been some major shifts in policy (although they are yet to be put into action on the ground!).
I think my greatest learning from the work that we have done on this is that many people are not apathetic at all.  But they are busy, they do feel disempowered and they are not sure what to do. I guess all we did was highlight some relatively simple ways in which they might help, and many took up that challenge - it appears, to good effect! 
We may have to keep up the pressure, though, to ensure that our promised cycle network really does materialise!