Skip to main content

Author: enrique.lescure

Petulance as Political Performance

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Articles, Politics, Social, Social Science. No Comments on Petulance as Political Performance

Petulance as Political Performance

By Enrique Lescure

Introduction

The image above is, at first glance, almost amusing. It is a familiar kind of social-media screed, written in all caps, heavy with expletives and indignation, expressing a sense of cultural suffocation and personal grievance. Anyone who spends even a modest amount of time online will have encountered dozens of variations of it. The tone is petulant, the demands are oddly specific, and the outrage appears simultaneously exaggerated and banal.

For readers unfamiliar with Swedish, the text reads as follows:

**NOW DAMN IT I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THE STUPIDITY…………

I CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS HOW I WANT NO DAMN IDIOT SHOULD BUTT IN.
I EAT GINGERBREAD COOKIES AS MUCH AS I DAMN WELL WANT.
I WANT TO SEE GINGERBREAD MEN IN THE LUCIA PROCESSION.
I WANT TO SEE CHILDREN IN SANTA COSTUMES.
I WANT TO SEE CHILDREN IN CHURCH AT SCHOOL GRADUATIONS.
I WANT TO CELEBRATE MY HOLIDAYS THE WAY I WANT.
I WANT TO HAVE MY TRADITIONS THAT I’VE ALWAYS HAD.

TO HELL WITH MY HERRING AND A SHOT ON MIDSUMMER’S EVE.

AND ONE MORE THING
IT’S CALLED A “NIGGER BALL” SO THAT’S THAT
OH HOW GOOD IT IS**

Stripped of its local references, the structure of the message is immediately recognisable. This is not merely a Swedish phenomenon. Variants of the same rhetoric can be found across the contemporary Western world: in comment sections, in viral posts, in campaign slogans, and increasingly in the language of political actors themselves. What differs are the symbols invoked; what remains constant is the posture.

The roots of this mode of expression arguably lie in the culture-war politics that crystallised in the United States during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and which have since diffused outward through global media ecosystems. Since I published Globalism contra Nationalism roughly a decade ago, this tendency has accelerated. The world has continued to slide toward forms of neo-nationalism, hardened identity politics, and a geopolitical climate marked by increasing mistrust and a growing risk of large-scale conflict.

Much ink has been spilled debating whether this development represents a resurgence of fascism, or merely a return to older forms of conservatism. Such debates, while understandable, are of limited analytical value. The kind of “I WANT” discourse exemplified above does not map cleanly onto either tradition. It is something else—less disciplined, less civic, and less intellectually coherent, but no less consequential for that.

At first glance, this form of politics appears disengaged, unserious, even harmless. It presents itself as nothing more than an insistence on personal preference and cultural familiarity. Yet history offers ample reason to be cautious with political cultures that elevate appetite, grievance, and identity while shedding obligation, restraint, and moral universality. Beneath its seemingly innocuous surface, this mode of politics has the potential to drift into far darker territory.

To understand why, it is necessary to examine how contemporary right-wing populism differs—structurally and morally—from both conservatism and twentieth-century fascism. That examination begins below.

Conservatism

Conservatism, in its classical European sense, did not begin as an ideology of anger, nor as a defence of personal preference. It emerged as a philosophy of continuity, shaped most clearly by Edmund Burke in the late eighteenth century, and later refined through a long interaction with Christian ethics, inherited institutions, and local customs. At its core lay a simple but demanding insight: societies are fragile achievements, not abstract constructions, and must therefore be treated with care.

Burke’s conservatism was not nostalgic in the shallow sense. It did not idealise the past as a frozen tableau, nor did it deny that change was sometimes necessary. What it insisted upon was that change should be organic, cautious, and respectful of accumulated wisdom. Traditions were not ornaments, nor consumer goods, but living practices handed down across generations. They carried obligations as well as comforts. To inherit a tradition was to become its temporary custodian, charged with passing it on—intact, meaningful, and dignified—to those who would follow.

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, this conservative worldview was closely intertwined with Christian ethics. In Sweden, as elsewhere, Lutheranism shaped a moral culture that emphasised restraint, duty, humility, and social responsibility. The individual was never imagined as standing alone. Family, parish, guild, and nation formed a layered moral ecology in which rights were inseparable from obligations. Even those who rejected religious belief often retained its ethical grammar: the idea that one’s conduct in public reflected one’s character, and that self-control was a civic virtue.

Against this background, it is not difficult to imagine how Edmund Burke would have reacted to the “I WANT” screed. He would not have recognised it as a defence of tradition at all. He would have seen in it a collapse of manners, a confusion of inheritance with entitlement, and a profound misunderstanding of what traditions are for. Rage, vulgarity, and obsessive self-assertion would have signalled not strength, but moral immaturity. For Burke, legitimate traditions did not need to be shouted into existence; they endured precisely because they were embedded in shared practice and mutual recognition.

Nor would the reaction have been very different among ordinary Swedes of earlier generations, regardless of class. A farmer, a factory worker, a schoolteacher, or a civil servant in early twentieth-century Sweden would likely have perceived such a screed as embarrassing rather than empowering. Public tantrums were not political statements; they were signs of poor upbringing. The insistence on personal desire, detached from consideration for others, would have been read as selfishness and petulancy.

Classical conservatism understood traditions as something to be nurtured—through participation, respect, and a willingness to subordinate personal impulse to communal meaning. Traditions survived because people showed up, learned the forms, accepted their limitations, and found dignity within them. The “I WANT” screed inverts this relationship entirely. Traditions are no longer practices one belongs to, but commodities one consumes. They are treated as personal possessions, owned individually rather than held in common, and valued only insofar as they deliver immediate emotional gratification.

In this sense, the screed is less a defence of heritage than a symptom of late consumer culture. It resembles the disappointment of tourists in Norrland who feel cheated when the northern lights fail to appear on schedule, or the bewilderment of visitors to Yellowstone who ask park rangers when the grizzly bears will be holding their parade, or when the geysers are going to be turned on. Nature, in these cases, is mistaken for a theme park; tradition, in the screed, is mistaken for a product.

What emerges is a form of egocentric consumerism applied to culture itself. Customs are stripped of context, obligation, and shared meaning, reduced instead to objects of individual demand. This is not merely alien to conservatism—it is antithetical to it. A conservative tradition grounded in stewardship, restraint, and reverence would find little to recognise, and much to abhor, in a politics that treats inherited culture as something to be owned, consumed, and angrily defended as private property.

In this light, the “I WANT” screed does not represent a continuation of conservative thought, but its negation. It signals not the preservation of tradition, but the hollowing out of tradition under the logic of consumer desire—a logic that conservatism, at its best, existed precisely to resist.

Fascism

Contemporary nationalism in the Western world—whether carried by movements that present themselves as populist outsiders or by parties with clearer roots in neo-fascist traditions—draws much of its emotional energy from the sentiments encapsulated in the “I WANT” screed. This is true even when the ideological genealogy of these movements differs. The affective core is the same: resentment, cultural anxiety, and a sense of personal dispossession framed as political grievance.

If the screed is not conservatism, the question naturally arises: is it fascism?

At first glance, the temptation to answer yes is understandable. Fascism and National Socialism remain the historical reference points for any discussion of militant nationalism, and for good reason. These ideologies produced catastrophic violence, genocidal policies, and an unprecedented collapse of moral restraint. Any serious analysis must begin by condemning them unequivocally.

Yet an honest examination also requires intellectual precision. Early twentieth-century fascism and National Socialism were not merely reactionary tantrums directed at a changing world. They were profoundly modernist movements in their own way. While they rejected Enlightenment liberalism, parliamentary democracy, and universalism, they were forward-looking, revolutionary, and animated by visions of radical transformation. They imagined a future defined by duty, hierarchy, discipline, and collective effort. They demanded sacrifice—not only from designated enemies, but from their own populations. They promised meaning through submission, belonging through obedience, and transcendence through struggle.

This distinction matters.

Fascist politics revolved around the idea of the nation as an organism greater than any individual. The citizen was not a consumer of tradition, but raw material for a national project. Personal desires were to be crushed, sublimated, or redirected toward collective goals. Suffering was not denied; it was glorified. Comfort was not a right; it was a weakness. The language of fascism was not “leave me alone,” but “tell me what must be done.”

Against this background, it is worth asking how the leading figures of twentieth-century fascism and National Socialism would have viewed the “I WANT” screed. The answer is unlikely to flatter contemporary right-wing populists. Their objection would not primarily have been to the word want, but to the word I. The screed’s obsessive focus on personal desire, private gratification, and individual entitlement would have appeared decadent, bourgeois, and contemptible. The author would not have been seen as a defender of the nation, but as a symptom of the very moral decay these movements claimed to oppose.

Where the “I WANT” screed demands that the world stop interfering with personal preference, fascism demanded the annihilation of the private self in service of a higher collective. Where the screed clings to comfort, fascism demanded endurance. Where the screed frames tradition as a personal possession, fascism treated tradition as a weapon to be reforged for a new historical destiny.

In this sense, the “I WANT” posture is not fascism revived, but something more hollow. It lacks the grim seriousness, the tragic ambition, and the perverse moral coherence that characterised fascist ideologies. This does not make it benign. On the contrary, it makes it unstable. Detached from duty, sacrifice, and collective responsibility, the politics of appetite floats freely, ready to be captured, redirected, and weaponised by actors far more disciplined than those who initially voice it.

The danger, then, is not that the “I WANT” screed represents a faithful continuation of fascist thought. It is that it creates a moral vacuum in which far darker projects can later take root. Fascism, for all its horrors, still believed in adulthood. The politics of unrestrained desire does not.

Pre-Politics and the Infantilisation of Public Life

The sentiments expressed in the “I WANT” screed are, at their core, not political. They are pre-political, and in an important sense also pre-adult. They do not articulate interests, propose solutions, or engage with competing claims in a shared civic space. Instead, they operate on a level prior to politics altogether: the level of unmediated desire.

To illustrate this distinction, it is useful to recall a small but telling pedagogical experiment. At a middle school, teachers once decided that fourth-graders should learn about democracy by forming political parties. The result was predictable and revealing. Instead of programs or policies, the children formed entities such as The Ice-Cream Is Good Party and The Girls Smell Poop Party. These “parties” were not designed to govern, negotiate, or persuade in any meaningful sense. They were performative identity statements. Their purpose was not to build coalitions or win elections, but to signal belonging, humour, provocation, or personal taste.

To a troubling extent, contemporary Western identity politics—particularly on the populist right—has adopted a similar mode of expression. Instead of saying this is what our material interests are, and this is how we intend to pursue them politically, the message increasingly becomes this is what I like, because this is who I am. Political speech collapses into personal branding. Identity ceases to be relational and becomes declarative.

This shift cannot be understood without reference to consumerism. In earlier social orders, identity was embedded in networks of obligation: family, profession, community, church, union. These structures were often restrictive and imperfect, but they grounded the individual in a web of mutual expectations and responsibilities. Consumer society, by contrast, has steadily degraded identity into a bundle of preferences. To be someone is to like certain things, dislike others, and signal these affinities through consumption. Meaning is no longer something one builds or inherits; it is something one selects from a shelf.

Under such conditions, it is hardly surprising that identity markers begin to function like cargo cults. When meaning is scarce, symbols become sacred. When life feels hollow, rituals are clung to with desperate intensity. The removal, alteration, or even questioning of such markers is no longer experienced as a cultural evolution, but as a personal assault. The stakes feel existential, because nothing deeper has been allowed to take their place.

What follows is a broader infantilisation of politics. The citizen is recast as a consumer, and politics as a service industry tasked not only with delivering material outcomes, but with maintaining certain emotional states. People come to expect not merely protection of rights, but protection from discomfort. When this expectation is frustrated, the response is not organised opposition or political engagement, but petulant and impotent rage—rage that cannot be satisfied by compromise or policy, and which therefore seeks its outlet in cruelty toward groups that do not share the same preferences.

There is also a demographic dimension to this phenomenon that is rarely acknowledged. Much of this discourse appears among people whose basic material needs are already met. They live comparatively comfortable lives, often as retirees or semi-retirees, buffered from economic precarity and insulated from the harsher consequences of political decisions. Yet comfort has not brought contentment. Instead, it has produced boredom, alienation, and a gnawing sense of meaninglessness. In the absence of purpose, anxiety metastasises. The result is not despair, but paranoia: a fixation on symbolic slights, imagined losses, and trivial changes framed as civilisational threats—such as the fear that “Merry Christmas” might be replaced by “Happy Holidays”.

The most serious problem, however, is not the existence of such sentiments, but their social acceptance. What was once recognised as childish petulance is increasingly legitimised as political expression. Worse still, it has become an effective tactic for garnering votes. By amplifying grievance, flattering resentment, and validating emotional impulsivity, political actors are rewarded electorally—while substantive issues are left untouched.

In Sweden, this has had concrete consequences. While public debate is consumed by symbolic culture-war skirmishes, successive governments have allowed foreign mining, IT, and energy companies to extract enormous value from national resources, often at the expense of local communities and long-term sovereignty. The spectacle of identity outrage serves as a smokescreen, diverting attention from decisions that materially shape the future of the country.

The “I WANT” screed, then, is not a coherent ideology. It is a symptom: of consumerism hollowing out identity, of comfort eroding civic adulthood, and of a political culture that has forgotten how to translate private feeling into public responsibility. Left unchecked, this pre-political rage does not remain harmless. In a world of finite resources and mounting crises, it becomes fertile ground for far more destructive forces.

Metastasis

Once, while working as a substitute teacher in a ninth-grade mathematics class, I was tasked with explaining statistics and percentages. Toward the end of the lesson, I introduced a simple applied exercise. I told the students that humanity currently consumes resources at a rate equivalent to roughly 1.7 Earths per year—that we are running an ecological deficit, drawing down stocks that cannot be replenished. I then asked a straightforward question: how should such a problem be addressed?

I expected suggestions along familiar lines. Reduced extraction. Technological innovation. Changes in consumption patterns. Perhaps even population control—an intellectually lazy answer, but one that at least acknowledged the existence of limits. Instead, after a moment of hesitation, a loud minority of boys offered a different solution altogether. The populations of India, China, and Africa, they said, should simply be wiped out. Consumption would plummet, and they could continue to live as they were accustomed to.

The remark was not made with theatrical cruelty. It was delivered casually, almost pragmatically, as if proposing the removal of an inconvenience. And in that casualness lay its significance. This, in distilled form, represents the end point of “I WANT” politics.

When ecological conditions deteriorate and abstract debates are replaced by concrete constraints, societies are forced to choose. Such moments demand civic responsibility, social obligation, and a willingness to accept sacrifice in the name of shared survival. What we increasingly lack, however, is precisely that moral infrastructure. Instead, we find populations—particularly in the affluent West—who have been sheltered from material scarcity for generations, and who react to even minor disruptions of comfort with disproportionate outrage.

This is not the politics of citizenship. It is not even the politics of interest. It is anti-politics: the howl of individuals who have been trained to understand themselves primarily as consumers, and who experience any limit as a personal affront. These are not impoverished masses fighting for survival, but what might accurately be described as decadent labour aristocrats—people whose basic needs are met, whose lives are saturated with consumption, and whose primary emotional register is boredom mixed with anxiety.

The danger lies not in their anger, but in its directionlessness. When meaning has been reduced to lifestyle, and identity to status markers, then preserving those markers becomes an absolute priority. The question is no longer what must we do together, but what must be destroyed so that I may continue as before. Under such conditions, cruelty ceases to be a moral transgression and becomes a technical solution.

This is why the “I WANT” politics cannot be understood as conservative or fascist. They are reactionary in a far more literal sense: reactive, impulsive, and unmediated by ethical reflection. They resemble, more than anything else, the sentiments of depraved eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landed aristocracies, who believed themselves entitled to the fruits of privilege while rejecting the social obligations that once justified it. When confronted with famine, revolt, or ecological ruin, such elites did not ask how to reform the system, but how to insulate themselves from its consequences.

Western consumerism has produced a similarly disassociated individual. A person taught that the meaning of life lies in the accumulation of experiences and goods, and that society exists to provide them. As ecological reality begins to unravel—through climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion—this worldview collides violently with the limits of the planet. The result is not collective adaptation, but a retreat into paranoia, resentment, and increasingly brutal fantasies of exclusion.

The metastasis of “I WANT” politics is therefore not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of a culture that has stripped identity of obligation and politics of adulthood. In a finite world, such a culture does not merely fail to solve problems. It begins to search for victims.

Continue reading

The Hazards of Technological Determinism

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Science. No Comments on The Hazards of Technological Determinism

The Hazards of Technological Determinism

Written by ENRIQUE LESCURE

Foreword

The 2020’s, perhaps more than any prior decade, is characterized by self-contradictions – and with that I mean a mixture between an extreme sense of dread and paranoia on one hand, and an equally extreme naivety on the other hand. 

The fear of the unknown – of climate change, pandemics, geostrategic adversaries, terrorists and political extremism – is perforating the very air we breathe. Meanwhile, we are actively pursuing choices which are exacerbating our dependency and vulnerability. 

In the economic and political sense, we are moving towards both a greater concentration of wealth and of the de-facto political power in the hands of wealthy and centralized supra-national institutions. 

In the technological sense, we are pursuing the further integration of our infrastructure with the world wide web, while cracking mechanisms become ever more sophisticated and accessible. 

The increased vulnerability is already a fact, and numerous debilitating attacks have already been conducted.

Prevailing as a narrative is however the notion that the current development is determined and fixed, that the short-term demand for greater dividends must trump reason and collective and individual safety concerns. A sort of technological determinism rules the day, and this technological determinism could risk us sacrificing our freedom and democratic sovereignty, without becoming safer.

Summary 

  • The Internet of Things should be understood as the digitalization of infrastructure and the further interconnection of data within a wider cloud.
  • The benefits would entail further automation, specialization, the elimination of bottlenecks and increased economic growth.
  • During the 2010’s, an increased amount of hacker attacks and “compromizations” of software have been an evident trend.
  • The narrative is that “Democracy is under attack” – the answer is an increased amount of centralization, self-censorship and surveillance.
  • The technology of vulnerabilities is by itself never questioned, and it is taken as self-evident that we must continue on the current trajectory.
  • The effect would be an increased risk for slipping into techno-totalitarianism of a Chinese or similar variety.
  • An alternative would be a de-centralized, sustainable holonic structure characterized by inclusion, autonomy and self-reliance. 

 

The Internet of Things and its benefits

A part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the increased digitalization of production, maintenance and infrastructure. We are already seeing how education, transport, retail and appliances become ever-more interconnected on the web. The features of this trend most visible are those which resemble the cyberpunk future envisioned in many works of science fiction – for example self-driving vehicles, stores without human employees, package-carrying drones.

Yet, most people experience far more prosaic changes to their life – most common less usage of cash in their daily transactions. One example could be bus tickets. In not a few cities and towns in cities, tickets could no longer be purchased by the driver. Rather, the weary traveller would have to download an app through their smartphone, use their cellphone camera to record a QR code and pay through apps like Swish which they download through their mobile Bank-ID app. Following this, the amount of freeloading in public transit has had a certain increase among the “above 80’s”, to speak bluntly.

The benefits are obvious. The existence of cash is exposing drivers for both robbers and germs. Counters and credit card readers cost money to install, and produce receipts which the customers do not desire. The overview of the amount of customers is immediately centralized and can be accessible and broken down in studies when for example the redrawing of public transit is made.

The same is true for the wider Internet of Things. Apps can benefit both travellers and businesses when they visit new towns and are recommended stores and establishments corresponding to the conscious, unconscious and subconscious choices indicated by the algorithms surveilling the individual user. This has also created new markets – for example has the recent rise of involuntary celibacy among males a certain correlation with the rise of dating apps, which has commoditized and streamlined the previously so messy and haphazard process of courtship. The next step would likely be a marketization of friendships, which further would serve to alienate the human being but also create a new avenue for growth and a new generation of tech billionaires.

In terms of the infrastructural benefits, they are mostly related to logistics, maintenance and informatics. Instead of having their own server halls, corporations can store their data on the cloud, saving the need for staff and rent. Elevators can be operated and managed from afar. In the future, with self-driving trucks, the challenge imposed by pesky “freedom convoys” can be a thing of the past. In fact, self-driving trucks can unload their cargo in storage halls, offering driver-less carrier trucks the opportunity to move the goods direct to the store.

Already, refrigerators can notify both their owners, their makers and the retailers what the owners are consuming and when the date of expediency will come. Smart jackets and sneakers will be able to tell doctors and producers of sport gear how many calories their owners are burning on a daily basis. Though Neuralink, for all purposes, currently in its most wild form best is described as something between a science fiction-dream and an (in)advertent scam, there is research aiming to connect the human mind to the Internet, in new and revolutionary forms.

All of this development will open up new markets for growth, especially in the so-called Metaverse. Investors, tech companies, a vast army of consumers and western governments are all embracing this new the latest of golden calves. This will be a driver for creative destruction, multiply monetary wealth and serve to shift wealth ever-more from nations and communities into the hands of multinational corporations and conversely into tax havens – all while at best creating a few new jobs down the line. But politico-economic orthodoxy dictates that what market-driven development craves is also the best future for the entire economy.

The question, however, is what the risks are. 

Caveats, dangers, hazards

Since the Internet began to emerge in the 1980’s, malware and hacking have followed suit. The DDOS attacks of the 1990’s gradually came to give way to more sophisticated types of criminal activities. Nowadays, as all of society is rapidly being digitalized, all of society is likewise affected by hacking.

Billions of people are affected by identity theft. Refrigerators in Moscow, credit card readers and harbours in Sweden and Tesla cars and university printers in the United States have all for varying purposes been overtaken, controlled and/or held ransom by various groups. The smart cities of the Internet of Things are also extremely fragile and vulnerable, especially as the centralization and internationalization of information creates nodes accessible for anyone with a minimum of resources and talent – in a world with billions of desperate, poor and smart minds.

With quantum decryption follows cracking software which can run billions of passwords simultaneously, and soon retinae and fingerprints won’t be hacker-proof either. The attacks are already happening, yet what is criticised is never the manner in which the technology is implemented.

Rather, the problem is deemed to be the people.

 

The emergence of techno-totalitarianism  

It is evident that we today are living in a society characterized by fear. During the 1990’s, mainstream popular music and comedy flirted with anti-establishmentarian, revolutionary sentiments and dangerous symbols. The attitude towards government power, authorities and media – even from parts of the establishment itself – was characterized by scepticism and cynicism. It was seen as healthy to question the intentions of governments and mega-corporations.

Of course, the prevalent tendency of the then dominant strand of neoliberalism was that history was at an end following the end of the Cold War, and that all expressions of youthful resistance rather than implicit threats were promises of rejuvenation of the system, following the appropriation and defanging of the revolutionary symbols.

Nowadays, the public narrative – especially within the framework of the wider English-speaking world – is rather characterized by a sense of dread and chilled anticipation. Public discourse is gradually replaced by echo chambers, and the struggle between ideas have been replaced by a fight between tribes. The purpose of public discourse is no longer about civic ideals and winning at the marketplace of ideas, but about delegitimizing opponents as extremists, by associating their positions with odious ideologies and tendencies. This trend began with the War on Terror and was initially experienced by ethnic communities of certain backgrounds, but gradually the groups suspected of harbouring extremist sympathies have been expanded.

I would argue that a surveillance state is not per definition an unhappy accident made possible by the emergence of the unsavoury application of new technologies – but a feature of what Zbigniew Brzezinski defined as “the Technetronic Era”.

The very vulnerability – the sheer nakedness, of the cloud, of the grid and of the networked infrastructure – will necessitate an increased amount of surveillance and policing, and therefore a new narrative. The vast openness of enormous quantities of data in the most open society ever realized has paradoxically birthed a siege mentality, where our systems suddenly are very fragile.

Gradually, this process will lead to the ban of anonymous usage of the Internet, to the increased division of the world wide web between vast tech baronies, by increased amounts of subjects not allowed of speaking of. What previously was considered legitimate critique of the practices of pharmaceutical and technological companies is increasingly viewed as subversive and proto-fascist.

And the more the Internet of Things will emerge in all its glory, the deeper surveillance will burrow in the social body, and the narrower the scope of what is deemed acceptable discourse will be.

No matter what political ideology will triumph in the ideological battle for ideas in the current western world, the characteristics of the emergent society will be techno-totalitarian in its characteristics – and the citizen will experience a loss of autonomy, agency and dignity, reduced to a consumer and component, while the arena of politics will continue to shift towards legalistic and clandestine conflicts between tech baronies and financial institutions.

Such a system will moreover be incapable of addressing the environmental crisis and its array of phenomena – climate change merely its most recognizable and well-published expression. A stupefied, brutalized, silenced and distracted citizenry is no longer a citizenry, and cannot be expected to take charge in terms of transitioning the human civilization towards a sustainable future.

Determinism is dangerous

The manner in which the Internet of Things is implemented today can only be described as criminally negligent and hazardous for public health and safety. The solutions to the sensitivity caused by the single-minded pro-business implementation are kryptonite for the fabric of what is worth preserving of soon to be three centuries of Enlightenment thought.

If one would ascribe to the ideas of technological determinism – that we only have one tech tree and that markets should dictate the progress of civilization, and that we are unable to steer development in another direction – then certainly a techno-totalitarian surveillance state would be a reality impossible to escape, and maybe the least worst conclusion of many bad options.

If we instead ascribe to an alternative view, one wherein we all are in power, we will begin to take back the power over our own future and determine our own fate. But that requires not only a critical analysis over the way in which technology today is implemented, but also the courage to imagine an alternate technological society. 

When we are empowered

The vision outlined by the Earth Organisation for Sustainability – a vision where you can play an important part – is akin back to the early days of the Internet, back to the future which Linux and early Wikipedia pointed towards.

A vision where the users are in charge, and are building the infrastructure not only of the virtual world but of real life itself.

Foundational for this new world will be a constitutional document to which millions of autonomous groups of people are ascribing – containing the Three Criteria and the Universal charter of human rights. These groups can vary in their functionality, their geographic dispersion and their ideologies and cultures, but they will all be active part in the formation of a new society, where power is distributed and egalitarian.

Communities will have the control over their own ability to sustain themselves on food, energy, heating and communications. Instead of techno barons fearful of the uprising of gaslighted and repressed subjects, we will have a world of people who respect and love one another, because nobody is under total dependency of anyone else, while all will still of course be interdependent.

Under this world, software will still be prone to breakdowns, malware attacks and sophisticated sabotage, but the damage will be limited by the vast distribution and the dispersion and availability of data. Compromised holons can be aided or isolated by their peers, and overall vulnerability will be reduced by a greater general knowledge of technological systems.

It will be a world of distributed power, where factories and software systems will be open source and available for all people, rather than closely and jealously guarded domains of distant rulers.

It is a world that you can be a part in creating, but it demands that you dare take a stand, and organize where you can have the greatest impact. The sustainable future of tomorrow shall not be a virtual palace economy under the ruler-ship of Tech Pharaohs and Cybernetic Satrapies, but a teeming garden of a billion autonomous groups comprising all of humanity.

And yes, that is probably impossible to achieve. But the more we tend to that garden, the more of that dream we can realize.   

Continue reading

Mines and factories in a technate

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Infrastructure. No Comments on Mines and factories in a technate

Mines and factories in a technate

Written by

Introduction

A critique has recently surfaced against aspects of Energy Accounting, which to some extent is a novelty. Usually, criticisms of the Design have been focused on the technical ability to manage information about the environmental capacity of the entire Earth and the production of our civilization, as well as the issue of incentives. These critiques have been levelled at us by proponents of the current or more radical forms of market capitalism. This time, however, the critique was directed from adherents of the Marxist-Leninist variety of central planning. It is certainly not every day one gets the opportunity to be criticised for unintentionally aiming to wreck the environment by people who in principle find the systems employed during the 20th century in the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, the German Democratic Republic, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Democratic Kampuchea to be steps in the right direction.

Given that, the critique was fair, if we assume that we had intended the production lines to be arranged as the friendly detractor pointed out.

In short, their thesis was that it would be inefficient to give each human being a share of the Earth’s production capacity, and that it would be a logistical and environmental disaster to only produce complex goods when people are actively asking for them to be produced. For example, if an individual should be allocating energy units to a new computer, should then all the mining equipment have been dormant until the request for that computer was made? Should then a special train be commissioned, only to transport that computer to that particular consumer? And should that computer be produced locally?

The critique correctly pointed out that such a logistical chain would be insane. Luckily, that is of course not what we are proposing, though a very literal-minded reading of our article on Energy Accounting could certainly give the impression that we intend to throw away millennia of knowledge of how to set up logistical transport systems.

One should not forget that  our Design is just a broad outline, not even a proposal but a hypothesis, and that we – not unlike orthodox Marxists of the pre-Lenin variety – do not want or even believe that we in detail can predict or design the system of the future in a detailed manner reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral. Given that, the questions which have arisen from this critique are worthy to ponder on, and why not – when we are able to – provide a more detailed outline of how resource extraction and industrial production may look like under the umbrella of a technate?

That is precisely what we intend to do with this article

TL;DR Summary

  • In order for human beings to survive and thrive, human beings need to utilise resources taken from nature.
  • Human beings are communitarian animals and tend to use language and organisation to reduce the amount of time and increase the amount of resources which can be extracted. This is the economic aspect of civilization.
  • This needs repetition – when we are using surface area of our planet, we are depriving other species of habitats and resources, and thus reducing the biodiversity of the planet. And we must do that in order to survive.
  • Our current civilization is built on the compulsion of exponential growth, driven by a system of debt and interest.
  • We have developed an alternate system, known as The Design, which is aimed at creating the foundations for a sustainable civilization, by being intrinsically adapted to the Three Criteria.
  • One part of Energy Accounting, which is an intrinsic part of the Design, is that the individual users should be able to distribute their energy units to what they want to be produced for themselves, and that no cell-phones, computers, sneakers or furniture for example which people are not actively asking for should be produced.
  • The problem of course is that production is a multi-step process, and it would represent a huge problem if for example industrial equipment is used just to produce one sofa set, and one train set to transport the raw materials and the finished product to the specific user. It would in short be a logistical nightmare.
  • The critique also misinterpreted our calls for de-centralisation with that we somehow would want every village or town to for example have their own computer factory. That is not the case.
  • Regarding mining, one could say that there are two methodologies to combine the need for large-scale benefits (which actually could be positive for the environment) with Energy Accounting. These two methodologies could also be combined.
  • The first methodology is to gather all allocation data into bundles and then proceed to initiate the extraction of minerals, wood and other materials at a given time during the energy accounting cycle.
  • The second methodology would be to guesstimate the amount of minerals and other materials needed during an accounting period, to gather the resources and allow the users to order, with a steep increase in prices if we run out of reserves.
  • Regarding industry, to build numerous small factories to produce identical goods would indeed be a waste of resources and a strain on the transport system. It is very likely that the amount of factories under a technate would be lower, but that production would still be de-centralised.
  • Because of the intrinsic nature of production under a technate, the abolishment of the growth incentive and the obsolescence of copyright infringement, factories would no longer need to be the exclusive property of companies, since companies would have less need to guard their secrets.
  • The Design is at this point only a hypothesis, and it cannot be stressed enough that it as it currently is constituted should not be taken as a political programme or as a finished plan ready to be implemented. Rather, it should be seen as a sufficiently vague blueprint which establishes a model to which we can approximate our ways of resource management.

We do not plan to individualise production

No one has seriously considered that production and mining should be completely dormant for every second and minute until a new individual order dips in, and that a mining machine only should take up the minuscule amount of gold, silver, iron ore, tin, copper, mercury or titanium which is needed to for example make an alarm clock, and then immediately cease with the extraction and wait for three minutes until someone in China requests a tricycle.

That would be a ludicrous way of administering production, and would probably affect the environment in a way which on the whole is as destructive as the system currently applied over most of the Earth’s territory.

So no, the Design is not envisioned like that. Period.

How then could mining be conducted under the system of Energy Accounting as envisioned by the EOS?

Mining

Mining is, generally speaking, a hugely disruptive endeavour for the environment, especially in terms of managing the waste products, which could threaten freshwater reserves and biomes. One especially heart-wrenching event was the 2015 Rio Doce disaster in Brazil, which saw 60 000 tonnes of toxic sludge released into the environment and destroying an entire river.

The second criterion for a sustainable future stipulates a circular economy. This means that materials used within infrastructure and product lines would primarily seek to be made from renewed sources, and that there should be systems in place to regularly recycle discarded products to either make nearly identical products, or towards other kinds of use within the economy. However, it is unlikely that mining will cease to be an important part of our socio-economic system.

A central aspect of Energy Accounting is that costs for operations should be equivalent to their total emergy cost, from the establishment of an operation to its closure, as well as the cost for compensating for negative environmental effects. This will mean that mining operations in general will pay a heftier price for the effects they delve upon their immediate environments and the surrounding hydrosphere.

Another factor, which isn’t necessarily a part of the Design, is derived from our view of rights and from the Ideology, under which relational rights can be seen as a subcategory species. From our views on rights follow that all things which affect the livelihood of local communities should be under partial or whole influence by said local communities. In short, primary stewardship over natural resources will always primarily be in the hands of the people who live within an area potentially affected by the hypothetical extraction of said natural resource.

Having written that, how would mining be conducted under a Technate?

One could state that there are two main routes to get around this challenge.

The first one relates to the fact that energy units – if we assume that the technate is not anarchistic – are distributed out both to the infrastructure/public sector and to individuals. Mining procedures could theoretically be put under the responsibility of the public sector, even though the individual mining Holons may be operated autonomously, and may get increased resources if they for example manage to improve their environmental footprint. In short, the industry will order a specific amount of stock minerals and other natural resources – timber for example – every year.

In that case, the costs of extraction are compensated through the share of energy units distributed to the public sector.

If we however stipulate that a scarcity of a raw material emerges, then orders for extra production will start to kick in, to a significantly higher cost for the consumers. Thus, the market mechanism – which in a technate is dictated by the environment – would constrict the potential damage. This means there could be potential hikes of costs. For the next accounting period, the user behaviour during the previous accounting period could be taken as an indicator for where things are heading.

The other way, is to go through delayed personal Energy Units, meaning that everyone who orders (for example) personal computers during one period will receive them 4-6 weeks later. This follows the opposite logic, and herein the consumers will pay a higher direct cost (on the other hand, everyone who is not in need of a personal computer will get a higher share of the available Energy Units because under this methodology mining will be considered a part of the user sector).

Both methodologies have benefits and potential setbacks. In the first method, we sacrifice some of the accuracy in the way in which we match supply and demand, for the sake of delivering base materials to Industry in a regular stream. Under the second methodology, consumers would have to wait a longer time to get the products and services they have requested, but we will gain a higher degree of accuracy and probably use a smaller environmental footprint.

Ultimately, probably neither of these two models will be used if the Design is actually implemented, but the end product could well borrow traits from both of these methodologies, in accordance with what is least environmentally damaging and provides the optimal degree of satisfaction amongst the public.

Industry

We strive towards an increased amount of resilience. It is not only a matter of ecological sustainability, but of autonomy, security and democracy. In a world with increasingly sophisticated and “smart” electronic systems, it has been shown that centralising the power grid as well as the sewage and heating systems can make communities vulnerable to terrorist attacks conducted by hackers. It is also a question of power – if local communities are in control over their production of food, electricity, heating and their water management systems, their freedom would increase and they would not find themselves in situations where distant actors compel them to changes which are adversarial for them.

It could be easy for one taking texts describing broad outlines and principles instead as detailed instruction manuals to misinterpret these goals as that we want everything to be locally produced. That is not the case, not even for food – as most communities will still import food, though the cost of food – just like every other item, will be determined by the emergy cost of its journey through the production chain. Therefore, the transport costs will measured into the amount of energy units allocated to food imports, but food imports in themselves won’t be sanctioned.

Regarding factory floors, the idea that each community would have small factories which make everything they need is as ludicrous as the previous assumption that mining would only commence immediately when individuals have allocated their Energy Units, and that an excavator would only dig up enough minerals to make one cell-phone.

It is very likely that there will be community workshops and factory floors, which mostly would focus on repairs, maintenance and spare parts for the community infrastructure. These will be accessible to the public and to Holons, and serve a similar but more expanded role as study associations in Sweden, as well as probably a few vital societal functions.

Regarding the production of microchips, bolts and screws, panels, electric gears and other aggregates, as well as finished products, infrastructurally speaking there is an opportunity to move towards fewer but larger factories than we presently have. The reason why fewer is that under a technate, there would be no need for the Holons of Ericsson and Nokia (for example) to have separate factories to make their products. The bottlenecks represented by copyright and the situation when two cell-phones are competing for the same client would evaporate, and therefore there would be no rationality in having separate factories.

The same applies in an even higher degree for micro-components and hardware, which can be modularized. Thus, even if production is reduced as a total – due to the fact that The Design is explicitly made in a manner which doesn’t stimulate exponential growth, which doesn’t reward any indulgencies into immediate-reward consumerism and which doesn’t engage in trying to brainwash consumers to maximise their consumption – the load factor, which means the usage rate of the factory floors will be the same.

Also, it could make environmental sense for such factories to be somewhat centralised, at least in their geographical distribution, as it would – maybe a bit counter-intuitively – lead to less transport overall. That would however most keenly be addressed by the overall tracking of the effects on our global footprints, not by well-meaning planners.

However, in regards of how the factories could operate, while there need to be specific Holons maintaining the infrastructure of the factories, the eventual food intake they need, as well as the supply of electricity, heating and water, the operation of the various industrial functions will most likely be shared by numerous separate, autonomous Holons which strive to supply the users with their demand. And these do not need to conform to any other plan than the constraints of our planetary carrying capacity and the input provided by the allocation of Energy Units.

My analysis of how factories probably are going to work within the framework of a technate is based not on ideological convictions, because I believe that ideology should not dictate structural organisation beyond the scope of guaranteeing human rights and striving towards ecological sustainability, but because we can already see this trend today (for example taxi companies which do not own their own cars, hotel chains which do not own any hotels, and so on). A factory which does not produce anything, but which allows multiple businesses and cooperatives to use its space to produce goods and services, is not unfeasible even under today’s unsustainable system.

There would most likely be regional variations, and no one would be compelled to organise a factory or a mine in a certain manner. Our Design opens up for wide diversity and opportunities for those seeking to adapt further towards sustainability.

It is true that immediate satiation of consumer needs is not possible to combine with Energy Accounting under the Design, as it currently stands adapted. It is not feasible to just mine resources needed for one individual cell-phone, or just cut down trees when one individual sofa needs to be made. It is also not possible to perfectly match the resource usage with the allocation of Energy Units.

That a Perfect system of Energy Accounting is impossible is however not an argument against the Design, since the Design is not modelled to become a perfect system or an ideal imposed on reality. Reality is complex and messy.

What this article has unfolded is that the distribution of Energy Units can be utilised in various ways, dependent on whether they are distributed to the infrastructure/Holons or to individuals/users, in this case with the example of mining. We have also described how a large factory might work under such a system, focusing on the structural rather than the environmental aspects.

Ultimately, a technate where all Energy Units are distributed directly to all individuals currently is very unlikely and unrealistic to succeed, but a technate operated as a centrally planned economy, where all energy units are distributed to the infrastructural aspects which are tasked with providing for all the needs, would probably degenerate into a static, stratified society ruled by bureaucrats rather than the communities themselves.

The most realistic route to expect is to strike a balance between two extremes of that kind, and to facilitate a good cooperation between the users and the infrastructural elements. It is my personal conviction, however, that we should strive towards maximising the possible autonomy of the individual and the community within the framework of such a system, because a de-centralised, localised civilization with an active, informed population would become more resilient, more dynamic and a place where everyone can readily access the tools to improve their well-being.

Continue reading

Growth, Globalization and the Future

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Economy. No Comments on Growth, Globalization and the Future

Growth, Globalization and the Future

Written by

Introduction

The discourse surrounding globalization has often been shrill, repetitive and emotional – on all sides of the aisle. The proponents point out how trade and growth have increased GDP and living standards, while the critics point out that inequality has grown and the poignant fact that the global biosphere has seen better days, upon which the proponents may claim that the detractors want to deny the developing world the opportunity for raised living standards. There might be acknowledgements that there have been bad effects, but the foundation for the current development is seldom questioned.

Both sides definitely have points, but where our focus must be centred is on the fact that our current way is inherently unsustainable, and grows more unsustainable with every passing year due to our glaring inability to come to terms with quantitative environmental problems. While many of those in power are worrying for ageing, unemployment, integration or lagging growth numbers within the next two years, the reality we are facing on a global scale is that of an approaching Sixth Mass Extinction Event. In comparison, all other problems appear as minor nuisances.

This article is intended to discuss globalization in terms of different aspects, which can be termed the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – but also try to explore the issue connected to the wider issue of global resource flows. Ultimately, what we all need to do is to let go of our presupposed positions, untangle the web of preferences, aesthetics and politics and look at our world – the only one we have – from a physical perspective. Then, the ways where we can go will reveal themselves.

n short, we need to acquire ourselves a sober, technocratic view on the subject. What we also need is to iterate our line as an organisation on globalisation from our perspective and from the point of view of our ideology and our knowledge about the reality we all are inhabiting.

TL;DR

  • Globalization is not a new concept, but is a process which has begun from the moment civilization emerged.
  • The current phase of globalization began during the 1970’s with the ascent of new information technologies.
  • Like the industrial revolution of the 19th century, it has vastly improved the lives of billions of people.
  • Like the industrial revolution of the 19th century, it has also led to increased inequalities across the spectrum within countries – but a convergence between the first world and the developing world.
  • Another aspect of globalization is the establishment of multinational corporations with political clout sometimes exceeding that of states.
  • Is it likely that this process can continue for the remainder of the 21st century?
  • No.

Globalization – one process, many aspects

One could say that globalization, roughly speaking, has several aspects. For the purpose of this article we are going to focus on three of its aspects – the technological, economic and political. All of these different developments in their turn have sub-aspects which can affect the world in conserving or disruptive ways. It is also paramount that we understand that globalization is a partially intentional and partially emergent process, much alike most policies enacted by human polities – but on a much grander scale. Therefore, for the sake of clarity, I am going to investigate the three aspects on their own.

The technological aspect

The technologies which are cultivating globalization are generally emerging as innovations within the fields of communication and transport. The first major disruptive technologies within this area were engineered during the early part of the 19th century, with the appearance of the telegraph and railways. These technologies allow the faster transmission of information, people and resources, and are hugely disruptive as they often overhaul local economies and allow for rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Secluded local economies are connected to the outside world, fostering a process of creative destruction. Meanwhile, it fosters innovation and an opportunity for trading, thus fostering innovation and increased prosperity and opportunities for a larger share of the population, providing – for the first time – choice to people previously relegated to being farmers to build their own lives and change their paths.

Today, the major disruptive technologies are within the sphere of Information and Robotics technologies, which on one hand is de-centralising information spreading and turning every content consumer into a potential content creator (imagine for example the impossibility of such a phenomenon as “Ugandan Knuckles” arising during the 1960’s, when content could only get through more centralised hands).

It must be stated that the technological development of the last two centuries have had many undoubtedly positive effects for human well-being, for health, longevity, child survival rates, maternal care, nourishment, education and living standards, at least for a significant part of the planetary population. That is a proven fact, and our organisation – which strives that human beings should have dignified lives – is viewing the benefits of industrialisation, technological progress and growth in largely positive terms.

The economic aspect

It can be argued that prosperity is a combination of technology, in terms of our ability to harness external energy sources (whether renewable or non-renewable) and the dynamics of an economy. To a large extent, it cannot be denied than the access to cheap credit made possible by the fractional reserve banking system has been a determining factor in creating an environment where investments into innovation have been feasible. This, coupled with public policies of investments into infrastructure, education and healthcare, has during the last 200 years led to an unprecedented increase in the world’s gross product per capita, despite the population growing more than seven-fold since the beginning of the 19th century, and with the exception of a few Sub-Saharan African countries nearly every country on Earth is wealthier today than it was in the year 1818.

This is of course, to a large degree, one of the main reasons why all the health indicators in generally are higher today than in the early 19th century, though it should be stated that even in medium-income countries like Russia, Mexico and Turkey, the average worker today is living a life with better health indicators than most aristocrats did as late as the 18th century, due to better medical technology. That is undeniable.

What, sadly however, also is undeniable, is that economic growth nearly always is following the Pareto principle – that 80% of the new growth is generally tilted towards the one fifth of the population which already is the most economically privileged. This rule is not only prevalent in countries with significant problems of corruption, but in nearly all countries, including most of the large, developed countries. There might be multiple reasons for this, but in general people who have more capital will be more well-connected and have greater options to invest and greater time to judge their options. Wealthier people also in general suffer less stressors which might decrease their performance rate in the economy.

Usually, the political conflict which has dominated the discourse in most democratic states for the last century, has been one between market-oriented liberals and conservatives, who want to grow the economy by free trade and low taxes, and socialists and social liberals on the other side, who want to redistribute wealth from the economically more privileged to the low-income segments of society.

However, the main problem with our current situation from our perspective is more focusing on some key ecological ramifications, which mostly are attributable to how 4100% in global economic growth during only the last century has affected some key ecological ramifications. We will however revisit that.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that according to economic orthodoxy, human needs are perceived as seen through consumption power, which is dependent on a person’s income and savings. All needs are also seen as subjective – so from a purely orthodox viewpoint a Malian woman needing water and rice to survive a month and the “need” of a European male to own a farting clock or a mechanic fish that sings are seen as equal.

The political aspect

Politically, there has since the 1980’s largely been a consensus centred around the market liberal position, that states should ensure that countries open their borders as much as possible for trade, that tariffs must be scrapped and that public companies are inherently less profitable and efficient than private companies exposed to fierce competition. Underlying this has been the presupposition that states must attract and compete for investments, and thus should make their markets as attractive as possible for investors, either through good infrastructure, a well-educated work force or laxer regulations than other countries. The goal is to maximise growth and prevent stagnation, which is a necessity when the monetary systems are built on fiat, and thus are debt based.

The basis for these policies were laid already during the 19th century, with the discovery of Ricardian comparative advantages, and proponents often state that these policies will serve to maximise economic growth and also create a convergence in prosperity between countries.

A lot of the contemporary free trades treaties are doing more than removing trade barriers and deregulating. To a large degree, they are actually restricting the national sovereignty of states by introducing new regulations which often are intended to benefit multinational corporations, with for example increased severity on real and perceived copyright infringements, the so-called ISDS mechanisms (recently declared violating the foundations for European law by the European Court), which means that companies could sue governments for legislation which can harm the profitability of said companies, as well as supranational arbitration courts often very heavily biased towards multinational companies.

Often, this free trade regime incentivises environmental destruction at local and regional levels, and human rights abuses such as sweatshops, child labour, debt slavery amongst rural workers and that natural resources – even vital ones such as fresh water – are owned by foreign companies.

On the other hand, countries like China, India and Brazil have become economic powerhouses thanks to increased investments and mobilization of their resources thanks to foreign capital and the utilisation of their comparative advantages.

Courtesy, Lonely Planet

While Shanghai, Mumbai and Lagos have benefitted from increased trade, traditional industrial centres in the western world, such as Ruhr, the Rust Belt, Detroit and Liverpool have declined. These free trade policies have accentuated the effects of creative destruction, which have led to increasing inequality within every country involved, giving rise to reactions in the form of left- and right-wing populism. The awareness of this political challenge has prompted the World Economic Forum to recently focus more on social issues, but that focus should be seen as an icing on a cake, or more appropriately said a balm to protect the status quo.

Normatively, these policies are founded both on ideology and on necessity. The necessity is of course the fact that debt is growing faster than the global economy and that the structural imbalances revealed by the 2007-2009 economic crisis still are existing in the economy – coupled with the deeper, inherent self-contradictions of a fiat-based system.

The inherent problem with growth, investments and debt

Most western economies have on general seen their growth rates decrease when the gross domestic product per capita increases. Some countries, such as Japan, seem to already have plateaued, while others are still growing at a modest rate, especially countries with strong markets in real estate and finance. This is not the entire image however, for while a country like Germany may experience a year with 0,5% growth and a country like Ethiopia might experience 5% growth, the 0,5% growth represents – in absolute numbers – far more new economic activity on the side of the developed country. Yet, investments in high-risk high-growth markets yield a higher return for investors, which – together with the comparative benefits of a higher labour pool and often, sadly, less environmental and social regulations, a market attractive for investments.

The reason why larger, developed economies have a lower growth is because investments represent a much smaller share of the entire pie, and also because people stop increasing their consumption exponentially when they reach a certain level of per capita income (which may differ between countries due to differences in cultural preferences).

While the growth in the developed world remains at a modest rate and is slowing down in developing countries such as China, the amount of debt have grown far more during the 2010’s than during the preceding decade. This also accentuates the need for continued growth, because the economies have a desperate need to generate the wealth to pay the interest rates – the inherent problem of a fiat-based global economy (also increasingly challenged by crypto-currencies, though that is a different subject).

In short, even if there were no ecological limitations on our usage of the planet which could impede growth in the future, it is unlikely that growth could go on indefinitely on an infinite planet, except for driven by population growth (which will plateau as well when a country reaches a certain level of development). As infinite planets do not exist (at least not in our Universe) that is just a thought game to entertain.

Courtesy, USA Today

The Sixth Mass Extinction Event

It is impossible to deny that species are disappearing at an alarming rate, that increased urbanisation is a driver for industrial monocultures which today cover more than a third of the Earth’s land surface, that trawling is devastating to oceanic eco-systems, that the climate is affected by our continued reliance on fossil fuels and fossil-based fertilisers, that insect populations are collapsing and that the amount of forests on the planet are shrinking.

A lot of environmental problems are based on the reliance of certain chemicals and substances which can relatively easily be banned. For example the addition of hormones from medicines and contraceptives into water, the utilisation of neonicotinids (if they are proven without a doubt to be dangerous) and dangerous mine sludge poisoning water reserves can be seen as qualitative problems which can be attributed to practices which can (and often have) been changed by simple political interventions through specific regulations which can be implemented without rocking the foundations of the current system.

You can however not regulate everything and expect to keep the current pro-growth consensus within international bodies. A study by the United Nations show that if we introduced fully compensatory regulations globally, the hundred most profitable industries of today would go bankrupt, and this would run counter to all the ideological values and political judgements by the entire establishment.

The EOS is arguing that the need to transform vibrant ecosystems into high-yield linear mono-cultural production systems is driven by the economic orthodoxy in general and by the foundation of fractional reserve banking in particular, which is based on credit, debt and interest and expects new value to be created. It is also largely a myth that information technology and miniaturization has decreased our resource usage, rather it is still increasing (albeit at a slower rate, but that can equally well be attributable to the fact that growth tends to plateau). Our usage of the world’s surface and resources have also in general increased with growth.

The EOS is also arguing that the destruction of the world’s forests, oceanic habitats, food soils and freshwater reservoirs is increasingly putting humanity before a “global Easter Island scenario”, one where the biosphere is increasingly devastated, creating a convergence of crises and a domino effect where vulnerable regions are turned into collapsed states, and neighbouring countries are increasingly destabilised until billions of human beings are affected. This could, if not amended by Transitionary policies, lead to a new dark age for humanity, with an uncontrolled reduction of living standards, health, democracy and all the values we have learnt to cherish.

According to studies by renowned ecological institutes and universities, we are currently using far more resources than the Earth can renew every year, creating an overshoot and an ecological deficit. Orthodox economists of the neoliberal and libertarian varieties tend to appreciate the ideas of financial budget ceilings. Maybe a global ecological budget ceiling wouldn’t be a bad idea at this point?


Courtesy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The mainstream debate

Though the debate has generally improved and somewhat sobered up following the increasing awareness of how serious our current situation is, the issue of exponential growth and the global biosphere of Earth are still largely treated as mutually independent factors in discourse – politicians can still learn that if we don’t change our relationship with the planet and try to become more sustainable, we will create a collapse, and yet the same evening learn that if we deregulate and globalise further everyone and their mother will be a millionaire by the 2050’s.

These two worldviews are – from any reality-based perspective – incompatible. You have to believe either that growth is decoupled from conversion of environmental areas into linear production areas, that our usage rate of the planet’s surface and of its soil and water has no adverse effects, or that a global environmental collapse would have little impact on our standards of living.

Another popular argument championed by the proponents of the status quo is usually – as my predecessor used to say – “the technology fairy”. The idea in its most inane form is that new technologies will emerge which will solve all the problems, usually by utilising energy more effectively. Jevons’ Paradox, discovered already during the 19th century, shows that the introduction of more energy effective practices often rather can exacerbate resource usage by making it more effective and thus make new and vaster areas accessible for exploitation and assimilation (just look at fracking for example).

Another appeal, in its most crude form is that critics “hate the poor” and do not wish to see increased living standards in the developing world. In its more eloquent, refined form, this critique states that countries need to reach a certain level before the population can start to care about the environment by developing a satisfied and content middle class which cares about conservation. This argument also claims that by focusing on growth, we will have a cheaper and less intrusive transition twenty or thirty years ahead, when new technologies which can clean the air and provide us with virtually free fusion energy can transform the Earth into a green paradise.

Thing is, these claims were made already twenty to thirty years ago, often by the very same proponents of the status quo.

The main problem with that argument is however that the environment is not some kind of staple in a computer game which you can increase and decrease at whim, as if the biosphere was an aspect of human society. It is not just a policy area, such as healthcare, education and infrastructure, where you can cram it into our economy. Rather, our economy is embedded into a roughly speaking 65 million year old natural ecological economy, and is both dependent on it and destroying it.

You cannot near-completely ravage complex, million-year old systems, and then expect to restore everything when you feel sufficiently wealthy to do so. Not unless you live in a world where all environmental systems are just dependent on chemicals, hormones, gasses and pollution – which in reality are not the main problem (excluding our addition of fossil-based carbon).

The socialist alternative

The Alt-globalization movement of the 1990’s had a higher degree of awareness of many of these environmental problems, often coupled with critique regarding the injustices inherent in rising inequality, unemployment and sweatshops. It gathered broad and diverse elements from the entire world who felt threatened by the disruptive effects on both the environment and on the social safety nets.

This movement has lost a lot of its cohesion and steam for the last decades, partially due to what can be labelled “glaring self-contradictions” and the lack of a coherent vision.

  • The interests of first world labour laid off from various rust belts are generally not compatible with third world labour which wants to either migrate to the first world to compete for work or export their goods and services to the more capital-rich first world. The Alt-globalization movement tried to unite these disparate interests, but eventually large segments of the unemployed first world proletariat instead moved to the nationalist camp because these were perceived as more exclusively beneficial to their interests.
  • While aware of the ecological implications, the Alt-globalization movement selectively chose to ignore these facts when it came to envisioning policies. For example the statement “the current food production of the world can feed x times more billion people than are living on the world today, yet one billion is starving” may be true, but ignores the fact that a significant amount of our current food production is unsustainable.
  • Equally, when it came to industry, the Alt-globalization movement simultaneously protested the closure of old factories in the western countries, while condemning pollution caused by factories. They condemned consumerism while vocally defending the right of labour to have professions which were dependent on consumerism for their sustenance.

These self-contradictions were based upon two facts, namely that 1) this “movement” was really an umbrella structure of numerous movements and groups which different and sometimes even conflicting group-egoistical competing interests and 2) that many within the “intelligentsia” of said movement tried to use every conceivable argument they could in the service of ideological (and sometimes emotional) anti-capitalism, ignoring whether the arguments taken together were compatible or even sensible, and maximising the support both amongst workers and environmentalists. This (largely failed) populist strategy could mobilise hundreds of thousands of protesters, but was unable to formulate a coherent alternative.

The EOS critique on globalization

We should, as a movement always strive for the truth.

And the truth is, globalization has brought benefits to billions of human beings worldwide, creating innovation, increasing income, making available the resources for education, healthcare, infrastructure and safety. Neither is globalization a new concept, it began even before the industrial revolution, arguably already during the Ancient era with the establishment of the Silk Road.

As a movement, our Ideology is based on helping Life thrive – and human life and dignity is the central aspect of that. We want every human being to be able to reach their highest potential on a sustainable Earth. We desire for every person on this planet to live their lives knowing they will not become homeless, that they should always be able to go to bed without an empty belly, that their health should be cared for, that they should live without the fear of being oppressed, beaten or exploited and that they should have access to the knowledge and tools they need to realise themselves.

In this regard, we are opposed to inequality when inequality is so stark that it creates a sub-class of excluded or exploited people whose conditions are so damnable that they are threatening to their physical and mental health. In this regard, we should be opposed to all conditions where human beings are deprived of access to what they need to sustain their very lives. Sweatshops and child labour, as well as situations where workers are exposed to dangerous substances, should not exist in the future.

The truth, in today’s world, however, is that the choice for a Chinese factory worker is not between a 12 hour day’s work at Gloxconn and an eight-hour with double the wage and full health benefits, but between Gloxconn and starving unemployment and foreclosure on the countryside.

Before industrialisation, poverty was near universal. And despite the fact that roughly speaking 80% of the growth has gone to the 20% who already have the most decent lives, one cannot deny that life in the beginning of the 19th century was brutish and short, and ridden with toothlessness and early aging for most human beings. That most were illiterate and oppressed farmers who were taught that their only solace lied in death – if they obeyed the spiritual and feudal powers of the elites.

However, the fact that industrialization and globalization clearly have had positive effects, do not mean that we are morally obliged to continue these policies, or that these policies can continue uninterruptedly in the same pace as for the last two centuries.

In fact, our organisation argues that:

  • We are transforming the surface of the Earth so much that we are threatening to cause a Sixth Mass Extinction and living beyond our means.
  • The reason for that is because we have a fiat-based economic system dependent on debt-on-credit, which forces us to try to increase exponential growth at no matter what cost.
  • That exponential growth will always lead to an increase in areas converted into monocultures and linear systems for primarily human usage.
  • That the SXE will lead to a global loss of complexity for human societies, driving us down into a new dark age, a Pandora’s box of unforeseeable consequences.

We argue that this is a reality-based assessment of our current situation, and is the single most important issue Humanity has ever faced. The greatest political challenge is to try to establish a balance between our species and the rest of the biosphere it must be a part of if it wants to inhabit this Earth and have a socially, economically and ecologically sound future.

We argue that this can only be accomplished through three criteria.

  • A global ecological budget ceiling.
  • A global circular blue economy.
  • A global covenant of Humanity, that each human being has a right to life and to access for the necessities of life – freedom, housing, food, water, education and healthcare.

In short, the EOS argues that the only way to preserve and create a sustainable basis for our long-term prosperity and happiness as human beings is to make these three criteria the basis of our future civilization.

In my opinion, what logically follows from this outlook is the following positions regarding the three aspects of globalization we talked about in this article.

  • Technological progress – we are definitely sympathetic towards technological progress.
  • Economic growth – we are not against economic growth, we are against the continued conversion of the Earth’s surface into areas intended to support linear production flows.
  • Political globalization – this aspect is problematic, because policies intended to maximise growth and investments are bringing us further away from a genuine Transition. In order to have a necessary Transition, we need a different set of policies with other aims. Our primarily goal should be that the cost of all products should be determined according to their environmental footprint. Policies to increase economic growth in western countries today make little sense, as the populations are stagnating (meaning in the long run that costs on infrastructure maintenance will diminish) and increased incomes have little effect on a population’s happiness when prosperity is growing beyond a certain income level – especially as further increases most likely will mean a heavier weight on the planet and therefore a steeper and much more radical Transition in the long run. There is one aspect of political globalization we should embrace, and that is when we strive towards deeper political integration of regions, and theoretically we should be willing to support the political unification of the entire Northern Hemisphere within maybe a generation.

In short, we are sympathetic to the emergent and organic aspects of globalization, we are critical to our overshoot above the planetary carrying capacity and therefore policies which will increase that impact, albeit unintended. Instead we need a conscious Transition shaped around the fulfilment of the Three Criteria.

Having written that, we should avoid the sloppy broadside critique represented by for example elements of the old Alt-Globalization movement, where globalization is defined wholly by its most repugnant characteristics, the criticism is both progressive and conservative simultaneously and thus irreconcilable with itself and the main ethos seems to be anti-capitalism beyond everything.

Our movement should be defined by love for Life and Humanity, expressed by the aforementioned Three Criteria. As long as we are sustainably capable of reaching the Three Criteria, the exact forms of governance should be determined by their ability to reach the goals, rather than any emotional or aesthetic-optical considerations.

For Life, Love and Light!

Continue reading

An Ecological Future After Capitalism

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in News. No Comments on An Ecological Future After Capitalism

Earth Day 2025

Written by ENRIQUE LESCURE

Earth Day 2025, we (the Earth Organisation for Sustainability) held a talk at Folkuniversitetet, Umeå, to discuss what our alternative to the current unsustainable system is, and how we can start growing it here in Umeå, and how you can be a part of it.

An Ecological Future After Capitalism.

Thank you to all those that joined, and happy Earth Day!

Continue reading

Sustainability

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Engineering. No Comments on Sustainability

Sustainability

Written by

Abstract

To aid understanding of the concept of Sustainability, this article presents a series of diagrams, theoretical background, examples and engineering guidelines. Sustainability as the scientific approach to production, which understands the variables of it’s environment rather than simply exploiting it. Offers a fresh perspective on the design of systems of production, which are better able to serve their purpose and are more economical on the long run. Sustainability is a necessity as well as a logical next step.

Introduction

Though Sustainability is a relatively well accepted concept[1], it is often understood as simply spending more on recycling or reducing demand until the criteria are met. As such it is not difficult to understand why many people do not find it a particularly exciting prospect[2]. Yet we, Technocrats find it not only necessary but also inspirational. In this article I will try to explain why this is so. To us, Sustainability is more than simply criteria to be met. Sustainability is a philosophy[3], a way of designing whole systems of production, a system with powerful advantages[4], with primarily only design costs.

Part 1 – Concept diagrams

First let’s quickly overview the past to help us understand the terms. The idea is to deliver energy to the end users. This energy (lightning icons) may take the form of foods and fuels, as well as tools and other general usefulness. Typically energy cannot be used in it’s original form and has to be converted by packaging it in something. These packages (closed packet icons plus lightning icons) are the products we use and using them spends the energy contained within them, leaving the package used to deliver it behind (open packet icons). This simplified explanation describes a system that is both essential and characteristic of many forms of life, though in the case of humans it is also present in the technological production and consumption system. It’s purpose is letting us survive in a varied environment.

For example, in order to keep fed we require energy that originally comes from the sun. Plants package this energy into complex organic molecules[5], which we eat releasing the energy, but also producing waste[6]. This works in another scenario as well, for example if we require hammers. Energy goes into the production of hammers, which we then use until they are rendered useless in effect spending some of the energy put into constructing them, at this point they become waste.

Unsustainable systems

Here is a schematic of an old capitalist system of production:

The process is divided into simpler tasks, done by different groups of people. The “FACTORY” in this case takes energy from a source, and produces the required packages[7], while the “USER” is the end user that opens the packages, uses the energy. The old capitalist system of production does not take care of recycling, hence the empty containers of energy and piled up on garbage dumps[8]. This is a textbook example of an unsustainable system, but is still widely used for most products.

Unsustainable systems with recycling

However, as people slowly ran out of places to put the garbage, the idea of recycling has become more popular. Hence the modern capitalist system of production:

Some of the energy from the environment is not packaged and is instead used to recycle some of the used containers. However this is seen as reducing the amount of energy available to the end user and is hence unpopular in systems with high demand for energy. A limit is typically maintained on the amount of energy spend for recycling, which keeps the system unsustainable.[9]

Sustainable systems

What we need is a fresh start. Here is a diagram of a technocratic system of production:

Here the train of thought changes. We no longer have a linear progression of energy –> FACTORY –>package –> USER –> waste, instead we have a cycle where all we do is deliver the energy to the end user (“USER” ) and have our factory take care of it’s delivery. The “FACTORY” has changed roles from an energy converting service into an energy delivery service. The significance of the new view is in the design of such systems. In order to be able to construct a working “FACTORY” we must ensure that it’s inputs are available and that it’s outputs are usable. In a capitalistic system of production, we could easily design a factory that is not sustainable, so long as an energy source and end user was available. In the technocratic view this is however no longer possible as the “FACTORY’s” main function is now also to reuse the empty containers, the cycle must be complete for such a factory to be able to exist.

Part 2 – Understanding the diagrams

The significance of the new model is in the different way of thinking involved in it.

To better understand the difference between them, it is important to appreciate the thought process involved in working with each of them in reality.

Unsustainable systems

In implementation, the old capitalist system of production is typically broken down in this way:

These separate frames are typically designed and managed by different people and may therefore grow or shrink independently of each other, despite being tied together. In a world where the consumption frame has grown dramatically[10], while the production frame has been keeping up with relatively good success, the waste management has been lagging behind unable to handle the increasing amounts of waste[11]. It has become an undesired element of discussion when considering the potentials for economic growth; is often considered to be the limiting factor and is therefore often being neglected or ignored. The problem in this view is that all it takes to create an imbalance which results in the ecological problems we face today, is to be ignorant of other people’s problems, and this is simply too easy.

Sustainable systems

What we need is a fresh start. Here is a diagram of a technocratic system of
production:

Here the train of thought changes. We no longer have a linear progression of energy –> FACTORY –>package –> USER –> waste, instead we have a cycle where all we do is deliver the energy to the end user (“USER” ) and have our factory take care of its delivery. The “FACTORY” has changed role from an energy converting service into an energy delivery service. The significance of the new view is in the design of such systems. In order to be able to construct a working “FACTORY” we must ensure that it’s inputs are available and that it’s outputs are usable. In a capitalistic system of production, we could easily design a factory that is not sustainable, so long as an energy source and end user was available. In the technocratic view this is however no longer possible as the “FACTORY’s” main function is now also to reuse the empty containers, the cycle must be complete for such a factory to be able to exist.

Part 2 – Understanding the diagrams

The significance of the new model is in the different way of thinking involved in it.

To better understand the difference between them, it is important to appreciate the thought process involved in working with each of them in reality.

Unsustainable systems

In implementation, the old capitalist system of production is typically broken down in the above diagram.

These separate frames are typically designed and managed by different people and may therefore grow or shrink independently of each other, despite being tied together. In a world where the consumption frame has grown dramatically[10], while the production frame has been keeping up with relatively good success, the waste management has been lagging behind unable to handle the increasing amounts of waste[11]. It has become an undesired element of discussion when considering the potentials for economic growth; is often considered to be the limiting factor and is therefore often being neglected or ignored. The problem in this view is that all it takes to create an imbalance which results in the ecological problems we face today, is to be ignorant of other people’s problems, and this is simply too easy.

Sustainable systems

Take a look how with a different perspective, things begin to change:

Here the roles have changed somewhat. To the consumer little has changed, but it is now part of the design of the production environment to take care of supplying the consumer with content, and simply cycle the products that contain it. Like in the old approach, the energy requirements of the consumers are satisfied and held back by the capacity of the production environment, but since now the task of the production is no longer to simply stack consumers up with products, but instead to cycle the containers using which the production delivers energy, food, usefulness, entertainment (etc) to the consumers, the growth of the production no longer corresponds with ecological and sustainability problems. In fact, so long as the production is properly designed according to this way of thinking, this is never a problem.

Part 3 – Examples

Fossil fuels

One of the most obvious examples of the difference between sustainability and unsustainability is the energy development industry. This is what we most commonly understand under the word “Sustainability”, we tend to think of solar cells and wind turbines as technologies for sustainable energy development and fossil fuel technologies as examples of unsustainable ones. However this is not entirely true, for with proper system design, fossil fuel technologies may also be used for sustainable energy development! Let us take a look at some examples how.

In a typical approach, fossil fuel technology relies on there being fossil fuels in the ground, which were produced by a chemical conversion[12] of buried plant life[13] tens of thousands of years ago. They thus proceed by extracting these fossil fuels from the ground as a form of production, which are then burned with atmospheric oxygen within our vehicles and power plants as a form of consumption, resulting in waste carbon dioxide and water in the form of vapor released into the atmosphere[14]. Fossil fuel technologies are widely popular for the high energy density of the products accessible (5,139.5 kJ/mol for gasoline)[15] to the consumers and ease of use.

This is obviously an unsustainable design as eventually, we will run out of fossil fuels[16] and atmospheric oxygen, and saturate our atmosphere with too much waste carbon dioxide[14] for us to survive in. Yet the advantages of fossil fuels are there for all to see and fossil fuels at the moment are still the preferred fuel to be used in mobile energy users.

Understanding this, we have instead designed a sustainable system to replace it. Our designs suggest growing algae and using the resulting biomass in a biogas generator. This process produces biogas and the growing algae release oxygen into the atmosphere. The biogas can then be burned in vehicles and power plants as fuel using atmospheric oxygen as usual, releasing carbon dioxide and water in the form of vapour into the atmosphere.

This is a sustainable design. The generator provides a constant stream (in the long run) of biogas, the oxygen used up in burning it is replaced by the growing algae and the released carbon dioxide is actually required for growing algae[5]. Because none of these processes make or destroy matter, all the quantities add up to equal amounts, meaning that burning biogas produced in this manner does not produce any waste or require any fuels that are not already part of this system and constantly cycle, maintaining each other. Biogas also has the relatively high energy density (890 kJ/mol)[17] and is very simple to use like fossil fuels, by burning. If this were to be in widespread use, minimal alterations would have to be made to the vehicles currently in use[18].

Our designs were made with sustainability in mind. This system isn’t simply another technology, it’s the same technology used differently. Biogas generators have been in use for years in different areas of fossil fuel use and waste recycling[19]. What is different about our design is that the original intention was not how to produce more fuels or recycle more wastes, it was how do we deliver the same advantages of fossil fuels to the consumer without a catch. And this is also the point of the Sustainable philosophy, you do not provide products, you provide advantages.

Record industry

Similar improvements could be apparent in other industries, resulting from the different way of thinking during the design of their systems of production. Take the record industry for example, currently this is an industry challenged with technology of the day, where their main area is stacking up their costumers with optical media (CDs and DVDs) which are now obsolete and provide their costumers with no obvious advantage, given other technology of the day. If the record industry had planned with Sustainability in mind their purpose would instead be delivering multimedia content to the consumers, rather than discs. If this were the case one would assume they would have come up with the idea of using a communications network for the purpose a long time ago.

Serving drinks

For a most down to earth example of the differences in thinking, let’s look at the area of serving drinks automatically. The vending machines in use for this purpose today offer your drink in a colourfully printed single-use can or single-use thin plastic cup, convincing you to drink it with large advertisements. This is because from the provider’s point of view, the point is in selling as many as possible and all comfort and ecological concerns are secondary to that. In a Sustainable design, the industry’s focus would be on supplying the consumers with drinks, rather than selling them as many cans as possible. In this approach attention could shift to providing better drinks and comfort of use (drinks could be served in comfortable reusable mugs rather than single use cups), advantages good for the consumer, rather than colourful cans and advertising, which offer no advantage for the consumer. The reasons for this are: Firstly, the provider will be encouraged to look for cheaper ways to deliver drinks with minimal overhead, secondly the provider littering the consumer’s living space will not seem acceptable to the consumer, thirdly the consumer’s right to interact with the provider will not abruptly end on purchasing a product as the sold will be a service rather than an individual product.

It is noteworthy that Sustainability in this case also has clear advantages for the provider. The drop of of sales here is an illusion, as it is realistically very unlikely the consumers will ever buy more drinks than they desire simply due to being tricked into it. Sustainability ensures more permanent and reliable consumer relationships, which provide a dependable stream of income.

Part 4 – Sustainable design

Ultimately the place where the change in way of thinking makes the biggest difference is in the mind of the engineer responsible for designing these systems of production. Here are some recommendations:

  • Always keep up to date with newer technologies and obtain general understanding of the natural processes that can complement your production process to make it sustainable. Detailed understanding is not required for the educated guess expected of you, yet basic understanding will allow you to see solutions to systemic problems you may have thought unsolvable (e.g. How to provide a sustainable option for a reliable source of electricity).
  • When doing feasibility studies, always consider and emphasize the sustainable option. Your costumer is relying on your expertise to provide solutions that are best for them and sustainability is excellent for all of us.
  • Sustainable solutions guarantee investment return. Be sure to mention that. Unsustainable solutions may seem cheaper on the short term, but will always have poorer investment return than sustainable solutions. An unsustainable solution has limited lifetime and often maintenance costs that depend on the market situation (cost of oil, electricity), while a sustainable solution is capable of generating a constant stream of return forever and maintain itself by design.
  • It is always possible to obtain a sufficient loan, to cover your initial investment. Sustainability is the smart option. It will pay out on the long run.

Conclusion

By properly understanding what Sustainability really means, we have moved the term away from being an expensive buzzword of the modern world. We have shown that Sustainability is in fact something that makes sense both in the engineering and economical sense. It is something that is good both for the industry as for the consumers. We have shown that Sustainability is not another nonsensical drain on your money that you are forced into by the ecologists, instead by taking it into account early enough into the design of the facilities of production, you can use it to increase your long term returns and lower the risks involved.

Eventually, all of our systems will have to be Sustainable if we want to survive. However, it is important that we start now. Sustainable solutions may not remove the environmental damage we have already caused, but they will begin to remove the cause, before the effects become too taxing. By starting to design systems with Sustainability in mind now, we allow us the chance of a smooth transition from exploiting our environment, to using it intelligently. There is nothing to loose.

References

  1. ↑ U.S. Department of Commerce. Carbon Cycle Science. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.
  2. ↑ Macy, J. & Young Brown, M. 1998. Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconect Our Lives, Our World. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island. ISBN 0-86571-391-X
  3. ↑ Sustainability is an attitude, says new coordinator
  4. ↑ Sustainability and Society by Dr. Andrew Wallace PhD, Network of European Technocrats article archive
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 D.A. Bryant & N.-U. Frigaard, Prokaryotic photosynthesis and phototrophy illuminated
  6. ↑ Glossary of Terms Used in Bioinorganic Chemistry: Catabolism
  7. ↑ Moffatt, Mike. (2008) About.com Meta-production function] Economics Glossary – Terms Beginning with M. Accessed June 19, 2008.
  8. ↑ Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962)
  9. ↑ The Garbage Primer by The League of Women Voters (1993), ISBN: 1558218507
  10. ↑ Deaton, Angus (1992). Understanding Consumption. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198288247.
  11. ↑ Green Ontario: Solid Waste
  12. ↑ Fossil fuel
  13. ↑ Canada’s Fossil Fuel Dependency
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 US EPA.2000. Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-1998, Rep. EPA 236-R-00-01. US EPA, Washington, DC, http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming
  15. ↑ Bond energies by Larry Chamusco (1997)
  16. ↑ M. King Hubbert on Peak Oil (1976)
  17. ↑ Schaum’s Outline Series, Organic Chemistry
  18. ↑ Ammonia NH3 pdf, NH3_bus_1945_JInstPetrol31_Pg213, Ammonia_as_H2_carrier1, ris-r-1504.pdf, Claverton Energy Group
  19. ↑ An introduction to anaerobic digestion, www.anaerobic-digestion.com, retrieved 17.08.07

Continue reading

The EOS Biodome is Emerging

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Engineering. No Comments on The EOS Biodome is Emerging

THE EOS BIODOME IS EMERGING

Working on a volunteer basis is more complicated than with a construction company. Firstly, our budget is more limited and irregular, especially as the EOS is a small and fledgling but therefore also creative organisation. The early experiences of the Biodome Project have improved both the team spirit and especially our ability to predict irregularities, to not speak of the huge improvement of our logistics. The biodome is now emerging as a beautiful landmark on Alidhem in Umeå, not thanks to anything else but the combined will and the emerging culture growing within and around our movement.

Each segment of the construction has been different from the one immediately prior, and thus each step has seen the acquisition of new skills. The construction teams have ranged from large to small depending both on interest, weather and the labour intensity needed to accomplish the goals. Numerous hardships have been endured, the most hilarious and yet potentially wrecking the incident when the dome blew off due to high winds, before the opaque panels on the northern side were put in place. This incident, on June 2018, saw the windows turn into sails, and the dome ascended and crashed on the ground, half-way dislodged from its bed of reutilised tires. Yet, a hastily assembled group of six volunteers led by the team leaders managed not only to restructure the dome on its place, but also to anchor it on the tires, using ropes and screws.

The essential aspects of having a working holon tasked with constructing such a complex building, and have this holon composed of a mixture between EOS members, members from other associations, students and refugees, are:

  • Ensure to not have a spiked schedule, but to only plan the date for one event in advance.
  • Ensure that all the tools are available and secured on the working site before the volunteers arrive.
  • Ensure that the volunteers have water and food. For longer working events, the organisation should also ensure that the volunteers have dinner.
  • If the group turns larger than five, there should be two working teams tasked with different operations, ideally they should both be under the coordination of a team leader.
  • If participants for one reason or another are feeling unwell, be kind with them and ask them what troubles them, let them observe.
  • A good spirit is necessary for a functioning volunteer environment.

The dome itself has under every stage almost grown organically, a beautiful shape unlike anything else in the neighbourhood, and unlike every other greenhouse in Umea. The dome combines the sleek modernism of geodesic domes with traditional architecture and aspects from passive housing, creating a hybrid which has unified the technological with the organic. Against the backdrop of the Alidhem area, this is a striking structure which stands out.

Of course, it will also help the urban gardeners to extend their season. As a student city located in the sub-arctic region, Umea has a short growing season which only partially overlaps with the period that students are present in the city. Alidhem is a low-income area where many students live, and most students are not from Umea itself. A challenge for the urban farmers is the difficulty in thus keeping the students they attract, since the period they can be active (during the semesters, when they aren’t working or having vacation in their hometowns or home countries).

Thus, extending the length of the growing season will strengthen the urban gardeners and also turn Umea into a seed-spreading city, since students from throughout the world will return to their home countries with a knowledge and love of urban gardening in their hearts, and thus can sow seeds, some which may even grow into EOS holons.

The dome is here to stay, but it is but the beginning.

We also would like to extend our thanks to Umeå Energi and Grön Ungdom for their support!

Continue reading

The current ecological crisis

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Ecology, Sustainability. No Comments on The current ecological crisis

The current ecological crisis

Life on Earth is not just an assembly of all living things, but also an intricate, diverse and complex self-regulating system striving towards a state known as a dynamic equilibrium. This means that when minor disturbances occur within the eco-systems, or because of outside disturbances, the eco-systems react in a manner that restores balance.

Of course, over longer periods of time, species will go extinct or evolve into new species, and environments will change. The system itself, however, tend to favor increased levels of complexity.

On the global level, we can talk about a biosphere, which in itself affects the atmosphere and other systems which it depends on. The biosphere is simply all the life on Earth, excluding isolated eco-systems (like the deep ocean gas vent eco-systems, the eco-systems in Antarctic lakes or those in closed caves like the Movile system near the Black Sea).

Minor disturbances occur on a frequent basis, are natural and serve as an important impetus for the evolutionary process. Even most large disturbances can be absorbed by the system, and hundreds of such events have happened during the existence of this biosphere.

However, some large disturbances have off-set the balance so much that the biosphere itself has collapsed. The biosphere that we human beings currently are a part of is actually the sixth biosphere in the Earth’s history. It is characterized by land-based eco-systems dominated by mammals and avian (bird) dominance of the skies.

These characteristics have existed for 65 million years, following the end of the Mesozoic biosphere, which was dominated by dinosaurs and sea reptiles, an era mostly characterized by a warm climate and more and smaller continents than today. What brought the end of the Mesozoic had been debated since the latter half of the 19th century – most scholars today are agreeing that the Chicxulub asteroid impact hypothesis is the most believable cause for a mass extinction which wiped out around three quarters of life on Earth.

Today, scientists are estimating that we are losing species at a thousand to ten thousand times the normal background rate. This corresponds to the rate experienced by the biospheres during the previous mass extinction events. Moreover, the characteristics of the systems which are affected by and affecting the eco-systems are rapidly changing. These three systems are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the lithosphere – which can be called air, water and earth respectively.

Image courtesy of astro.hopkinsschools.org

The Climate

For the last millions of years, Earth’s climate has been characterized by a flow between warm periods and ice ages when large parts of the northern hemisphere have been covered by large glaciers. The main regulating atmospheric gas which has governed these seasonal climate shifts have been carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas which heats the Earth by blocking the reflection of sunrays out from the atmosphere, thus trapping heat.

Carbon dioxide is also one of the gasses that is “breathed” by and stored by vegetation – and then especially trees. The relationship between the forests and the atmosphere have until recently determined the shift between warm periods and ice ages.

During ice ages, forests consume and bind carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere – and thus the climate is becoming colder. This leads to glaciers spreading out throughout the northern hemisphere, which are replacing forests and also binding water, creating a more desert-like and drier climate throughout the Earth.

Such a drier climate leads to forest fires, the spreading of grasslands and deserts and the replacement of boreal forests with tundra. All of these processes serve to liberate carbon dioxide, which heats the Earth. When the Earth is warming, glaciers are melting, creating more water that can be released into the hydrological system, increasing annual rainfall, thus allowing forests to spread out and bind carbon – thus the process repeats itself.

From the 13th century, the Earth was actually starting to enter yet another Ice Age, and the world became regressively colder until the 1860’s, when the climate suddenly first began to stagnate, and then to shift towards an increase in average temperatures.

The reason for this is that the Industrial Revolution has relied on the usage of energy stored in coal and oil, which releases additional carbon when burnt. This means that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continuously has increased due to human intervention, and the climate is currently increasing at the greatest rate since we first started to measure it back in the 19th century.

Right now, it is estimated that the average temperature of the planet’s surface will increase by more than two degrees this century, which will present an enormous challenge, especially as it will affect global rainfall and drought patterns, transforming the conditions of agriculture and human inhabitation in the most populated regions of Earth. Additionally, it can lead to the partial or complete collapse of the Greenland ice shelf, the largest inland glacier system on the northern hemisphere – and the subsequent rise of sea levels.

Most of the large cities world-wide are coastal, and the situation could produce hundreds of millions of refugees at the end of this century.

The Oceans

Covering two thirds of the Earth’s surface, the Oceans and Seas are extremely important – especially as they play an important role regulating the planet’s weather and climate. Apart from that, the first advanced eco-systems on Earth were oceanic eco-systems. When the surface of continents were nothing but inhospitable deserts, the seas thrived with coral reefs and a complex biosphere containing tens of thousands of species.

The oceans today are still the home of beautiful and diverse eco-systems – home for beings ancient like the jellyfish, or intelligent like whales. Despite their abundance of life, the oceans are very sensitive however, as much of the diversity is bound to just small parts of it.

The coral reefs, the lungs of the oceans, are far more susceptible to pollution damage than previously thought, and many reefs have either collapsed or are in a state of slow dying.

Overfishing has taken its toll on nearly two thirds of assessed fish stocks worldwide, and while demand is creeping up, the reduction of oceanic biomass has made ocean wildlife a shadow of what it was just forty years ago.

The oceanic eco-systems are some of the most sensitive on the planet, and their collapse may happen well in advance of other collapses which we may see occur at a later date.

The Soils

The soils – once nutrient-rich and deep – are the result of millions of years and tens of thousands of generations of beings that have lived, eaten and died on land, as well as the outcome of the grinding, flooding forces of nature that have nagged down rock into grains and freed minerals. Plants and trees have bound the soil and served to create firm ground, and are in their turn dependent on soil for their survival. The lithosphere – the global soil layer – is what makes life on land possible.

That is why soil degradation is a global environmental problem on the same level as climate change. Reduction of organic matter, erosion, structural deterioration and the effects of changed rainfall patterns all contribute to a decline in the quality of soils on a global level.

To a large extent, this is caused by the expansion of pastures and of high-intensity mono-cultures. In traditional eco-systems, hundreds of species of plants co-exist with one another and return nutrients to the earth when they die. In high-intensity industrial agriculture, the goal is to get the produce to the markets as quick as possible, without any regard to the needs of the soil. If the soils are unable to cope, then you can simply use artificial fertilizers to increase the yields.

For the last 150 years, half of the topsoil of the planet has been lost, and a third of the arable land has become unproductive, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Freshwater Reserves

Only 2,5% of the water on Earth consists of freshwater – which is distributed in lakes, rivers, brooks and aquifers throughout the world. Freshwater is absolutely paramount for the well-being of the world’s eco-systems. Throughout millions of years, rainwater has been stored in the soil through root systems which later decay.

This has built up large aquifers of freshwater underground, that can sustain both eco-systems and human activities. The amount of freshwater has been near constant since the days of the Dinosaurs. That is… until now.

Sadly, water scarcity is on the rise globally, as cities, water-intense industrial and agricultural practices and other forms of activities are leading to us using up more freshwater than rainfall can renew. Moreover, climate change is causing a melting of glaciers which can turn large swathes of the most populous nations on Earth into desert-like regions.

This crisis has today affected one third of Earth’s freshwater systems, and by 2025, two thirds of the global population may face water shortages.

The sixth mass extinction

Currently, species are disappearing at a rate thousands of time exceeding what has been normal for the last 65 million years. Not only large animals are vanishing, but also small animals, plants and insects. Moreover, more and more species are becoming threatened by extinction, as their gene pools collapse and they are isolated into remote pockets – unable to migrate and have access to their living space.

There are many causes, from climate change and regional environmental crises, to poaching, poisons and destruction of habitats. One of the main reasons can be said to be out-crowding. Monocultures, highways, infrastructure projects, urban sprawls and other activities are now more surrounding nature than nature is surrounding it.

That means that eco-systems are physically being pushed aside, and that species are split in isolated pockets that lead to inbreeding and stagnation. Even if species such as the various tigers survive due to conservation, they are today living at the mercy of human intervention, and will do so for a foreseeable future.

Not even seed banks, zoological gardens or genetic samples can salvage threatened species – because a species is not only a collection of individuals, but a product of their particular environment. When that environment is destroyed, there’s often no room for specialized animals to survive.

By mid-century, it is estimated that a third to half of all species on Earth may face extinction, which will make the events which are to unfold the worst disaster for life on Earth for 65 million years.

Continue reading

Energy Accounting For Beginners

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Economy, Energy, Sustainability. 1 Comment on Energy Accounting For Beginners

Energy Accounting for beginners

INTRODUCTION

The goal of the Earth Organisation for Sustainability follows from our understanding of the world’s problems today at the start of the third millennium. We argue that the human civilization currently is 1) utilizing resources and surface in a manner which disturbs climate, soils, freshwater reservoirs and ecosystems, 2) that this disturbance will cause a “loss of social complexity” and threaten the welfare of billions of human beings and 3) that the process which is causing these life-threatening environmental problems are caused by the current socio-economic system.

From this follows that any type of long-term solution to the current conundrum would have to entail the phasing out of our current global socio-economic system and its replacement with a new global socio-economic system.

The E.O.S has developed a blue-print for this new sustainable socio-economic system, and our goal remains to test it.

The purpose of this introductory article is to outline the broad characteristics of our socio-economic model, Energy Accounting, and why we primarily want to run field tests.

THE THREE CRITERIA

The E.O.S has defined three criteria for sustainability which a new socio-economic system must conform to.

  1. The system must utilize equal or less resources than the Earth can renew.
  2. The system must utilize as much of the available energy and utility of the resources used as sustainably possible.
  3. The system must ensure a dignified level of life where access to food, housing, heating/cooling, clothes, education and healthcare is ensured for every human being on Earth.

These are the three poles within which a socio-economic system must find itself for it to be deemed sufficiently sustainable, according to us.

Main article on the Three Criteria.

ENERGY ACCOUNTING – A BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Energy Accounting as envisioned by the thinkers and engineers associated with the E.O.S is built on the idea that money as a means of exchange should be replaced by Energy Credits, which would represent units of production capacity. The system is resting on three pillars, the Energy Survey, the Technate and the aforementioned Energy Credits.

The Energy Survey

The first step of the economic calculation process under Energy Accounting would be the initiation of a global Energy Survey, where resources and ecosystems are continuously monitored by several thousands of institutions, communities and millions of individuals, and the data input would determine the global ecological budget of the planetary civilization.

The Technate

The Technate is envisioned as a supranational institution responsible for validating the Energy Survey and the creation and distribution of the Energy Credits. It would play a role reminiscent of a central bank under a monetary market economy.

The Energy Credits

The global ecological budget is divided into a specific number of Energy Credits, which are issued by the technate and distributed out to the users, which will be both holons (institutions/organisations/networks) and citizens, with which we mean individual human beings.

When used, the Energy Credits cease to exist, and are transformed into information that the user has allocated a share of their Energy Credits to a process of labour with the purpose of realising an item, a service or a process. In short, the Energy Credits represents how much physical energy is utilized in a production process, from the extraction of raw materials through the assembly towards the users and finishing with the energy cost for environmental compensation. This in order to ensure that the economy does not use more energy and resources than the global ecological budget ceiling allows.

New Energy Credits are created and distributed at regular intervals. When that is happening, all existent Energy Credits from the prior period are deleted.

The Holonic Social Model

Due to the development of information technologies such as the Cloud, hierarchical and rigid institutional systems will gradually be phased out and replaced with horizontal and fluid holons. A holon (meaning part-whole, a part which can be considered a whole in its own right) will be an autonomous, horizontal project group centred on fulfilling a function – often defined by its members. Given that capital as we know it has been abolished, factories, production centres and idle machinery may be utilized by numerous holons on a running schedule locally determined. The holons form their own networks to fulfil specific social, environmental and individual needs, and are empowered to conduct production from the allocations determined by the users.

Thus, we are talking about a radically de-centralized future, directed towards resilience and autonomy. People would in general experience a higher degree of freedom in terms of how they want to utilize their time, but also in terms of democratic participation.

Benefits – for the environment

  • It will not be possible to utilize more resources than the planet can renew.
  • Production processes which demand more efficient use of energy will become more affordable than processes with a high environmental footprint, incentivizing green technologies.
  • Things will only be produced when the users are actively asking for them, reducing overall production.
  • Users will know the environmental footprint in the prices of goods and services and will consciously strive to reduce their footprint.

Benefits – for society

  • Abolition of debt.
  • Abolition of the boom-bust cycle.
  • Abolition of life-threatening poverty.
  • Abolition of inflation and deflation.
  • Reduction of artificial scarcity-based bottlenecks.
  • We will no longer be forced to destroy the environment by the need for exponential growth.
  • Reduced inequality between the Global North and Global South.
  • Increased transparency.

Benefits – for the individual

  • A guaranteed minimum income.
  • Guaranteed housing.
  • Guaranteed education.
  • Guaranteed healthcare.
  • Shorter work hours due to reduced need for production.
  • More time to develop family life and personal interests.
  • Higher resiliency and personal/communal autonomy.
  • A higher degree of personal freedom.

OUR GOAL: TO TEST (ASPECTS OF) ENERGY ACCOUNTING

Here comes the aspect of the E.O.S which people often find the hardest to wrap their minds around. Our goal is not to – in a political or revolutionary manner – replace Capitalism with Energy Accounting. Our goal is to test aspects of Energy Accounting to learn how it would operate in the real world.

Specifically, we want to learn the following things:

  • Are there any aspects of Energy Accounting which do not work?
  • Are there any aspects of Energy Accounting which can be improved?
  • How will the introduction of Energy Accounting alter human behaviour?

And, most important of all:

  • Is Energy Accounting capable of fulfilling the Three Criteria.

That is the only thing we are asking for – the opportunity to run field tests on an alternative system. If the current socio-economic system employed by a majority of the regions on Earth may be unsustainable, then it would be a positive to have alternatives available. There is a possibility that we are wrong, and that the current system actually is possible to combine with sustainability (which we believe it isn’t). But there also is a possibility that we are right.

Even if you disagree with our hypothesis, it is wise and prudent to keep the door open for alternatives.

WHY THE EOS AND NOT ANY LARGER GREEN PRO-SUSTAINABILITY ORGANISATION?

Most green organisations are operating under the assumption that the main problem is the symptoms. They are doing a laudable work and if you feel they better correspond to your interpretation of the current situation, then they are better served by your help.

The E.O.S wants to find a realistic and achievable model which can replace the current socio-economic system and fulfil the Three Criteria. This is our primary focus. We are not primarily an activist group or a political party.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The E.O.S is a small organization and in need of manpower and resources to fulfil its operational goals. In short, we are in need of financial support to conduct our projects, like the ERCS developed by E.O.S Cascadia.

  • We are gratefully and duly accepting grants and donations from institutions and members of the public, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the budget is utilized in a transparent manner and in accordance with the designated projects it’s earmarked for.

We love to have new members and volunteers. From September 2020, membership fees will go to the local E.O.S associations.

  • As an E.O.S member, you have the power to propose projects and amendments to our internal decrees, as well as to petition to form holons.

Do you have a project you care about and which you believe can be of aid in assisting us towards achieving the Three Criteria? Please talk with us, and we will see if we can find ways to assist you.

  • We are interested in learning of and connecting with projects aiming to fulfil the Three Criteria, and which operate on local, regional or global levels.

This planet is your planet, and right now our current socio-economic system has caused a series of unintended, emergent phenomena which may cause a new dark age for humanity. We have never before as a species faced a situation like this, and we urgently need to develop alternative ways of resource management if we are going to achieve a sustainable transition.

If you want to join us, please go here: https://eosprojects.com/join-us

Continue reading

The Three Criteria for a Sustainable Earth

Written by enrique.lescure on . Posted in Sustainability. No Comments on The Three Criteria for a Sustainable Earth

THE THREE CRITERIA FOR A SUSTAINABLE EARTH

As five critical life-supporting systems on our planet are under threat of collapsing, this is not the time to dream about alternate Utopias – instead it is the time to transcend the mental limits of our current socio-economic system.

The central aspect is not how the socio-economic system for the future should operate in every detail, but that it achieves three very simple criteria, which together will create the basis for a steady-state economy, a dynamic equilibrium and human well-being on Earth.

THE EARTH SURVEY

We need to know how many resources that are available on Earth, where they are currently used, and how the usage could be optimized. With today’s technology and world population, and the dire situation with the environment, such an on-going Earth Survey is a necessary aspect. 

Today, our civilization is using far more than 100% of the biomass that the Earth can regenerate every year, meaning that we are running an ecological deficit. In the future, we must always ensure that we globally and regionally are below 100% of our “Earth allowance”. 

Thus, instead of a currency system based on debt, we want to measure the wealth of the people of Earth by the state of the world’s ecology.

A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

In a circular economy, resource flows, product cycles and product usage are tracked, and all products are produced with the goal of optimizing durability, recycling and storage, allowing us humans to minimize our impact on our planet.

The aspects entail recycling, upcycling, miniaturization, modularization, localization and durability. Through our Design, we have envisioned a society where the cost of a product becomes lower when the product achieves more sustainability – which is basically the opposite of how things are working out today.

The costs of products must reflect their environmental impact, which incentivizes the consumption of more ecologically sustainable products and their development.

 A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

 All human beings deserve the right to life, freedom, safety, nutrition, education and healthcare. For a civilization to be socially sustainable, conditions where people are dying or living lives of fear and uncertainty should be reduced. Every human life is precious, and every human should be able to devote their life to more than just existence and survival. 

 Therefore, we intend for every human being of Earth to own their own individual shares of the planet’s annual renewal capacity. Everyone would be entitled to an income floor on which they can stand and reach for the stars. 

Ultimately, we need to achieve a sustainable global civilization on Earth, and the Earth Organisation for Sustainability is aiming to take a role in this transition towards a better tomorrow.

Continue reading