I went to an interesting presentation by Thomas Homer-Dixon about his new book, “The Upside of Down.” The theory he invokes with his title is the idea of ‘catagenesis,’ that real opportunity arises from creativity let loose in crisis (catastrophy). His topic is similar to that of Jared Diamond, but he distinguishes himself by portraying Diamond as a proponent of binary outcomes – collapse vs survival of complex societies – whereas he sees a spectrum of possible outcomes between the two extremes.

He sees five ‘tectonic stresses’ undermining modern society:

• Demography – overpopulation, especially around Europe which currently has the same population as the 25 countries surrounding it (north Africa and west Asia), but will soon have only a third of their population.
  
• Energy scarcity – peak oil in roughly 15 years
  
• Environmental damage in third world countries – 50% of the global population relies on local resources.
  
• Climate change – many recent publications since the last IPCC report paint a far grimmer picture, with positive feedback loops leading to a ‘point of no return’ in 10 to 15 years.
  
• Wealth gap – there is no global middle class, with roughly 20% of the world averaging $35000 in annual income and the other 80% on $1500. This sort of wealth gap has historically been associated with revolution – a fact that lead Europe’s ‘elite’ to share their wealth rather than horde it.
  

He also sees two ‘multipliers’ that will make those problems and their outcomes worse:

• Coupling – interconnection of global systems and flow of information, leading to cascading failures – eg collapse of entire electricity grids due to one small failure.
  
• Power shift – technology is giving more and more power to small groups, allowing them to kill large numbers of people.
  

Historically, the collapse of societies has been caused by a combination of multiple simultaneous stresses. All of the above problems require cheap high quality energy to solve, but we are running out.

He also described the ‘growth imperative’ of modern capitalism in a way that made sense. Increased efficiency leads to laid of workers, which puts strain on a society. This problem has historically been dealt with by expanding the economy at a rate which absorbs the extra labour. However, the growth in the economy has meant that consumption of natural resources has outpaced improvements in efficiency.

We are comfortable with the idea of constrained breakdown in economic systems – a company profits, grows, becomes more complex, leading to rigidity, leading to vulnerability to a changing environment, leading to collapse. It’s employees and resources then get disbanded and absorbed into the economy which recombines them in a more useful way.

However, we are not comfortable with constrained breakdown in our social and political systems. This could lead to catastrophic breakdown if we hold on to unsuitable institutions and systems for too long.

A time of constrained breakdown is a time when society is vulnerable to the influence of extremists. These tend to be well organised and networked so they can take advantage of a power vacuum.

He proposed to solutions to these problems:

• Increasing the resilience of our institutions, societies and systems. For example, increase the modularity and autonomy of some, especially our energy, water and food supplies. Electricity grids, gas pipelines, large dams etc are very vulnerable. We should get 20 to 40% of our energy, food and water locally. We can get the energy part from solar cells on rooftops. Even though it is more expensive, it is more resilient. We need to avoid a narrow focus on efficiency and consider the robustness as well. The modularity idea may not apply to information flow (eg the internet).
  
• Plan for the future – build social networks of non-extremists or ‘trust networks.’ To avoid loosing ground to extremist groups in times of crisis. eg in the Ukraine, the ‘orange group’ prepared well in advance for the overthrow of a dictator. This is very rare. The internet may enable this eg wikipedia and the open source movement. These represent a form of ‘collective intelligence’ where the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. In contrast, most of the internet is a form of collective stupidity, driven by narcissism and vindictiveness. The internet may enable the formation fo ‘parallel democratic structures’ like wikipedia and open source groups that function alongside conventional government.
  

Our current political system relies on ‘managerial’ and incrementalist approaches to solving problems, however these may prove to be to slow, especially for climate change. This will hopefully lead to constrained breakdowns and reform rather than cascading and ultimately catastrophic breakdowns.

We need to reassess our values. There are three broad types:

• utilitarian – eg what type of ice cream you prefer – this is the type of value on which economists focus and which drives the economy - hedonistic?
  
• moral – intergenerational, international, interclass fairness
  
• existential – purpose in life
  

We need to have more debate over the last two. Unfortunately there is far too little and it has been replaced with a focus on utilitarian values.

We will soon enter a stage of neutral or constricting global economic change. We need to discuss how to redistribute wealth in this situation, as the wealthiest have the most to lose and will have to give up the most. A belief among people that they are getting less than they deserve undermines a society. Unfortunately this belief does not disappear with wealth. All people will feel hard done by if the global economy shrinks, but it has to, at least in terms of energy flows and the consumption of natural resources. (I don’t necessarily agree with the energy bit, though it is probably true in the short term.)