Cycle of Nature by Karl-Henrik Robert – on the Conditions for the Survival of Civilization

“There are three conditions placed on civilization on Earth. We cannot take more from the Earth’s crust than is redeposited again – which is a minimal amount compared with what we are extracting today. Secondly, we cannot emit more waste products than nature can process. And, thirdly, we must preserve nature, at least because it is the only large scale net producer of quality. How can we achieve this? We need to do more with less.”

Plants and Animals – Producer and Consumer – Cleaner and Polluter

Because of the second law of thermodynamics our world would be doomed to decay if it wasn’t for the fact that energy is obtained from outside the system, reconcentrating and restructuring substances in the ecosphere “free of charge”. There is only one large scale production unit which systematically “pays the bills” from decay in our habitat, and that is the plant cell.

The plant cell does not need to run a combustion process in order to produce. It is the primary producer, working free of charge, net concentrating and restructuring of the decay products from everything, including human beings.

We do not have solar cells on our heads, so we need to run a combustion process, eating a variety of things and breathing in oxygen. Our bodies emit waste products. But the trick is that “the bills” are all paid because the solar driven water cycles and solar driven winds feed waste products into new primary production. This cycle is the stream of life going on all around us.

The one major difference between human cells and plant cells is that the latter have chloroplasts which are able to utilize solar energy. So the great stream of life refers to the quality cycle between plant cells and animal cells, with quality being run down by animal cells and rebuilt by plant cells.

The Conditions for Civilization’s Survival

However, the last century has seen a drastically increasing linear flow of materials, powered by fossil fuel sources. The end products from rubbish bins, chimneys, exhaust pipes, drains and sewage treatment works, do not simply disappear – nothing can disappear. Any of this which is not recruited into new resources, by either society or nature, will accumulate as waste whilst at the same time the available resources will diminish. All environmental issues linked to survival take part in this linear process. Human societies can survive in the long term only if we regain the balance between the consumption and recreation of resource quality.

There are four conditions for achieving this balance within the whole system of ecosphere and society; we can call them system conditions.

The first is that we do not take more from the Earth’s crust than is slowly redeposited. If we do, there will be a systematic increase of matter from the Earth’s crust because matter disperses but cannot disappear. To begin with, this matter collects up in products in society, but sooner or later, it will accumulate as dispersed matter in society. Hence, even if we recycle 95% of all batteries containing cadmium, and in each technical cycle only 5% escapes into nature, a time will come when the entire cadmium content from our mines has leaked into nature. In other words, there will be a systematic increase in nature. So the rationale for recycling minerals from the Earth’s crust is that it should lie so efficient that we do not need to take more from the Earth’s crust than is slowly being redeposited.

System condition number two is this: nature cannot sustain a systematic increase of chemical compounds. At present there are around 70,000 of them – PCBs, DDT, dioxins, bromide organic compounds are just a few examples – which cannot be processed by nature because they are foreign to nature. Even such substances that can be handled by nature must not be produced at a faster pace than they can be broken down and integrated into the cycles of nature or deposited into the Earth’s crust. If not, they will continue to accumulate just like the ink in the bathtub. Everything disperses but nothing disappears. The whole global bathtub is slowly turning light blue.

The first two system conditions are rooted in chemistry. The third system condition is physical: we cannot keep on pushing nature away. The physical basis for productivity and biodiversity in nature cannot diminish. We cannot keep putting ever-increasing amounts of asphalt over green surfaces, or allowing forests to turn into deserts, or agricultural soils to be degraded, or harvesting fish stocks faster than they can regenerate. Our health and our prosperity depend on nature’s solar powered capacity to add value by reconcentrating and restructuring dispersed substances into new resources.

So there are three conditions placed on civilization on Earth. We cannot take more from the Earth’s crust than is redeposited again – which is a minimal amount compared with what we are extracting today. Secondly, we cannot emit more waste products than nature can process. And, thirdly, we must preserve nature, at least because it is the only large scale net producer of quality. How can we achieve this?

The bottom line, given these three conditions, is that there must be fair use of resources in order to meet human needs on Earth. When one billion people are starving whilst another billion are overproducing disposable plastic bags, this cannot be perceived as efficiency or fairness. People whose basic human needs are not being met will hardly want to hear about system conditions. This is the challenge. The first three system conditions restrict the sustainable resource flows available to society. So, in order to achieve fairness, the available resources must be used with high levels of efficiency and sophistication. We need to do more with less.

Collective Stupidity Amidst Individual Intelligence

In spite of our record, we are intelligent as individuals. Anybody can understand the system conditions, for instance. But together we are extremely stupid. We send out carbon dioxide specialists and ask them about the greenhouse effect. We send out cadmium specialists and ask them about cadmium toxicity. Decade after decade, society continues asking specialists the same dumb questions:

“Has the threshold for this compound already been exceeded? Is the greenhouse effect already here? Are we already suffering from cadmium diseases in our kidneys?” We find the scientists downstream, immersed in arguments about the extreme complexity involved. Society sits back and waits for an answer, taking this as a cue to relax. Meanwhile, the overall principles continue to be ignored and dispersed junk continues to accumulate.

Problems must be dealt with upstream. The sort of stupidity that we are displaying collectively is analogous to an individual standing in a flooding kitchen. There are three taps in the kitchen, and a fourth tap for the mains water. Instead of simply turning off the gushing taps, this individual asks questions about thresholds in the system. Where will it leak out first? Will it flood the living room or the dining room? He phones various specialists, and they argue amongst themselves. He feels comforted by the fact that the specialists are not fully agreed. On the other hand, he does not need specialists to tell him that he is getting wet feet. The problem is obvious, so whilst the taps flow he mops the floor!

At what age does an individual get smarter than this? The answer is, when he or she is around three years of age. Suppose there is a small child and a stone is thrown over her head, hitting the wall behind her. If she were still undeveloped in her systems thinking, she would look down toward the stone. But after a certain age she would look up for explanations. Where did the stone come from? Who threw it? Why?

We can see the kitchen flooding; asthma and allergies are increasing, less and less water is drinkable, more and more people cannot fred themselves. Wastes are mopped into garbage dumps, filter deposits, air, water and soil. What shall we do when all the towels are wet? Do we really need the specialists to agree every detail? Each day we delay means less resources and more dispersed junk. We haven’t even yet seen the full consequences on nature. Even when we have stopped producing persistent substances and stopped digging for minerals the problem will grow as wastes slowly leak out from society.

The Survival of Civilization

The system conditions are not just one way of looking at these questions. They actually represent an overall frame for sustainability. Why is that? They are relevant to the whole of society, and at any scale of operation. They cover all significant environmental issues and describe the problems upstream where they can be resolved. Linking principles to details, they enable greater control over the outcome of activities, and they also make sense of other tools like environmental auditing and life-cycle analysis. Environmental auditing and life-cycle analysis without contact with the overall principles may even be dangerous in that they can lull company management into a false sense of security.

A sceptic might say: “What if there is no hope? Civilization might not make it. If we are on the Titanic, we may as well travel first-class!” Some people really think like this. But even if we cannot survive, even if we are bound to fail, we must ask an important question. What will the future look like for a company investing against the system conditions? It is like placing a bet against the laws of nature. Prices will rise for raw materials, there will be taxes, fees and financial penalties for dangerous emissions, as well as plummeting confidence in their business and international trade restrictions. Sooner or later, in one way or another the laws of nature will impose themselves, no matter how we act, no matter what we want to believe. We are all in the same boat and whether or not it is the Titanic, first-class [should] mean going along with the laws of nature.

~ Excerpted and slightly modified from “Cycle of Nature” by Karl-Henrik Robert at Resurgence Magazine

Related reading:

1. Designing a Life-Sustaining Industry and Economy with First-Order Principles of Sustainability and Backcasting
2. Permaculture . . . Design Philosophy and Practice for a People-Planet-Caring Civilization

Keywords : system conditions, the natural step, ecosocial crisis, fair share, resource productivity, carrying capacity, survival of civilization