Memorial Day Break--No post this week

I am taking a holiday break and expect to post again on Sunday, June 5.

Contamination: The totalitarian strategy of the GMO crop industry

Certainly, many of us know people who say (wrongly) that nowadays everything causes cancer. This view becomes a justification for making no effort to avoid carcinogens, especially in food. It is a case of learned helplessness that becomes a major public relations weapon for creating and maintaining docile populations. Make people feel powerless. Then, even if they disagree with you, they won't oppose you.

This appears to be the strategy of the genetically modified organism (GMO) crop industry. The mode of attack is the contamination of non-GMO crops through the spread of pollen and the inadvertent mixing of GMO and non-GMO seeds. Large agribusiness giants such as Monsanto claim to recognize "coexistence" with conventional and organic growers as a desirable state. But, the industry acknowledges that contamination is inevitable. In fact, the complete segregation of GMO and non-GMO crops was never on the table. Several high-profile cases of mixing have already demonstrated this. Starlink corn comes to mind as well as the virtual elimination of organic canola growing in Canada because of GMO contamination (with no effective redress in the courts available). And, what we now know about the spread of genes via pollen from GMO to non-GMO plants makes it all but certain no regulatory regime, no matter how comprehensive and severe, could prevent contamination.

This fact has not stopped aggressive enforcement of the GMO industry's intellectual property rights which involves threats and lawsuits designed to intimidate not just those supposedly in violation of crop patents, but the entire farming community even when the cases involve contamination by adjacent farms and passing vehicles containing GMO seeds. Here's the message: To avoid lawsuits that threaten to take away your farming livelihood, you might as well sign up to buy our seeds because contamination by us or our farmer customers will be no defense in court.

In fact, Canadian courts found that contamination is not a permissible legal defense! Lest you think that I am making this up, here is the relevant portion of a trial court finding which was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in Monsanto Canada Inc. and Monsanto Company vs Percy Schmeiser and Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd.:

Thus a farmer whose field contains seed or plants originating from seed spilled into them, or blown as seed, in swaths from a neighbour's land or even growing from germination by pollen carried into his field from elsewhere by insects, birds, or by the wind, may own the seed or plants on his land even if he did not set about to plant them. He does not, however, own the right to the use of the patented gene, or of the seed or plant containing the patented gene or cell.

This precedent and the aggressive enforcement behavior by the industry has led organic growers and seed distributors to file a pre-emptive lawsuit to protect themselves from the industry's legal tactics which are designed to force farmers to pay the company penalties even when the farmer is organic and must avoid all genetic contamination to market his or her crops. (Organic standards prohibit genetically engineered crops.)

I am reminded of King Henry's conversation with his counterpart King Philip of France in the play Lion in Winter. Philip is insisting that his sister, Alais, be wedded to Henry's son, as previously agreed by Henry and Philip's father, the now deceased King Louis. It's that or the return of the Vexin, a key county north of Paris given to England in exchange for the betrothal.

Philip: It's their wedding or the Vexin back. Those are the terms you made with Louis.

Henry: True, but academic, lad. The Vexin's mine.

Philip: By what authority?

Henry: It's got my troops all over it. That makes it mine.

Just substitute "crops" for "troops," and you'll see an age-old strategy at work. I am also reminded of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland and the Anschluss, his occupation of Austria. Once his troops were on the ground, nobody wanted to challenge him.

The contamination strategy solves two perceived problems for the industry. First, the industry attempted to include GMO plants as acceptable in the original National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the outcry was so great from activists that GMOs were taken out of the standards. One way, however, to overcome this resistance is through contamination. By forcing food regulators to accept GMO contamination in organic food as inevitable, the GMO industry is paving the way for eventual capitulation by the organic community and conventional growers as well. The industry wants to propagate the attitude that nothing can be done to stop it.

Second, although Europe has long had labeling requirements for GMO foods, in the United States the industry has so far been able to prevent enactment of any such requirement. The response from food activists has been to launch a campaign for voluntary labeling of non-GMO foods and that now has the GMO industry on the defensive. But, what better way to undermine such an effort than to contaminate conventional and organic crops?

What would change the calculus of the GMO industry? Perhaps it would change if some of the contamination suits (mostly outside the United States) were to result in huge verdicts, ones large enough to be financially ruinous to the industry. Nothing like that, however, is on the horizon. In the meantime, we can all look forward to the involuntary consumption of genetically modified food ingredients against our will. The GMO industry tells us that they want consumers to have a choice, that GMO foods should "coexist" with conventional and organic foods. Yet, they oppose labeling.

Meanwhile, the equivalent of the GMO industry's panzer corps is moving into our farm fields and from there into our kitchens. We may soon regret this creeping annexation of our dinner tables. Once the invasion of GMO genes around the world is complete, we may find it harder to roll back than Hitler's armies.

Would vested interests starve the world?

In his latest book entitled Bottleneck sociologist and ecologist William Catton Jr. explains in detail why he believes human society is destined for a major dieoff, a "bottleneck" from which few survivors will emerge.

One cause, he says, is an array of vested interests who manipulate the media and the power structure, oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Many would say that this is business-as-usual. After all, what do we expect when governments are thoroughly dominated by the industries they are supposed to regulate? As a result, we may say, a few more people will be maimed or killed or maybe just ripped off than would otherwise be the case. But, would such interests be so crazy as to persist in their manipulations when faced with compelling evidence that suggests their actions could result in widespread starvation?

Apparently the answer is yes. Two examples illustrate this possibility. Many readers may be familiar with the rapid decline in honeybee populations worldwide due to what is now called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). CCD has been attributed to various causes including mite infestations, climate change, cell phones and pesticides. New evidence and observations suggest that the main culprit is a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids--which you might rightly guess are related to nicotine. These pesticides are neurotoxins designed to disorient and paralyze insects. They are not only sprayed, but also applied to seeds and therefore become lodged in the fibers and nectars of plants, killing insects who suck nutrients from such plants. (One of the reasons these pesticides are so popular is that their toxicity to mammals is low.)

France, Germany, Italy, and Slovenia have severely restricted or banned this class of pesticides. Ironically, Germany is home to Bayer, one of the largest manufacturers of neonicotinoids, a company which continues to profit from hefty sales abroad. In the aftermath of the bans and restrictions, bee populations have quickly recovered. Naturally, this is not absolute proof that the bans generated the revival. But as the evidence continued to mount that neonicotinoids are strongly implicated in CCD, these European countries applied the so-called precautionary principle. Better to be safe than sorry when it comes to something as critical as food, and honeybees are pollinators for as much as a third of the world's food supply.

Other nations have been slow to act because of pressure from the agricultural chemicals industry. The industry's hue and cry is that there is no definitive proof that neonicotinoids are a central cause of CCD. But, of course, the industry has the burden of proof backwards. If the industry is going to put one-third of the world's food supply at risk, then it ought to prove that its products are harmless. That would cost money, lots of money, and it would mean that many new chemicals with expensive development costs might never be approved. Naturally, the industry wants the burden of proof to fall on government and university scientists spending public money to prove a pesticide is dangerous. Nice arrangement! For the industry, that is.

A more recent revelation is that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, may be setting us up for a major crop failure worldwide. Sold primarily under the trade name Roundup, the herbicide has been central to chemical and seed giant Monsanto's strategy to lock-in alfalfa, corn, cotton, canola, soybean, and sugar beet growers who must buy the company's genetically engineered and patent-protected seeds every year from Monsanto if they want to reseed their fields with herbicide-proof crops.

Now a leaked private letter from an agricultural researcher to the secretary of agriculture seeking funds to research possible connections between the herbicide and increased levels of plant and animal disease has called into question the safety of this herbicide. Apparently, glyphosate promotes what is now being called Sudden Death Syndrome in plants by making them more susceptible to soil-borne diseases.

This might not be so urgent an issue if it were relegated to crops that were of minor importance in the food supply or if the size of the genetically engineered crop were small. But neither is the case. Keep in mind that some 80 percent of all calories consumed by humans originate as grains or oilseeds. (A significant portion of these, of course, is used as feed for dairy and meat production.) In 2010 in the United States, the world's major grain and oilseed exporter, 90 percent of the soybean crop was Roundup Ready (i.e. glyphosate-resistant) as was 70 percent of the corn. For the world the numbers were lower but considerable: 77 percent for soybeans and 26 percent for corn. A major decline in yields of these crops could certainly result in sky-high food prices and therefore hunger and starvation for many of the poorest in the world.

One would think that authorities would be rushing to determine whether such dangers exist and how severe they are. But while many agricultural governmental agencies are aware of the concerns, little is being done. Perhaps it will take a major harvest catastrophe to convince policymakers that the dangers are real. By then, of course, it will be too late for many. But, at least the agricultural chemical interests will be pleased that their political and financial muscle extended profits right up to the moment when it became clear to everyone why the harvest failed.

Max Keiser interviews Kurt Cobb on global oil supplies, his novel Prelude and more

In lieu of my weekly piece I'm posting this interview with Max Keiser, host of the financial talk show On the Edge. The interview aired May 6th and is available in two parts from YouTube below.

Can dictators solve our problems?

Recently in my state under the auspices of a new law, a small, financially troubled city was the first to be completely taken over by a so-called emergency financial manager appointed by the governor. The extraordinary powers given to this manager under the law allowed him to strip all governing powers from elected officials and the boards appointed by them. This manager is now the de facto dictator of Benton Harbor, Michigan.

Benton Harbor has a long history of problems which are fairly easy to discover with a few Internet searches. Still, I am reminded of Winston Churchill's saying that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried." How many managers will the governor eventually appoint to run various school districts and cities? Some 300 trainees were admitted to a recent training session for such managers. One person I know who attended said the only qualification for receiving the training was providing a credit card number to which the seminar organizers could charge the $175 registration fee, a modest amount for a chance to become a well-paid dictator. (The legislature defeated an amendment that would have capped salaries paid to emergency financial managers at the level currently paid to the governor which is $159,300 annually. The emergency manager salaries are to be paid by the unit of government that is taken over, not by the state.)

This event is not, however, the beginning of a trend toward greater centralization of political, economic and social control. We are, in fact, well along that path which is a response to the inscrutable problems that our complex society faces--a society so complex that no one really knows how to govern it. As Joseph Tainter, author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, explains, complex societies at first find that complexity solves problems such as food storage, transport, border security, and the maintenance of social order. But as those societies become ever more complex, the returns on increased complexity diminish and then finally turn negative.

Many thinkers have noticed that our society may have already passed the point of diminishing returns and that we are now experiencing negative returns on complexity. Economist Herman Daly says we long ago reached the point of "uneconomic growth." (PDF) The costs of growth now exceed the benefits. William Catton Jr. said much the same thing in his ecological classic entitled Overshoot. Human society now consumes resources at a rate far beyond the Earth's long-term carrying capacity.

A recent dramatic example of the impenetrable complexity we live with was the financial crash of 2008, an event that policymakers seemed helpless to halt. Their response was to ask for extraordinary powers to inject money into the banking system, to take over large enterprises, and to run huge fiscal deficits to boost the world's economy. Central banks engaged in what some people believe is illegal activity to shore up flagging financial firms. Give us dictatorial powers, government officials said, or everything will fall apart. When there wasn't time to get authorization, those government officials simply did what they thought was necessary to stop the financial haemorrhaging.

I don't want to rehash the wisdom of these acts of financial desperation. What I'm interested in is the notion the world has become too complex and fast-moving for democratic governance. Tainter explains that increased complexity calls for increasingly complex systems of people and machines to manage that complexity.

The United States and its allies have given a highly complex and powerful military the task of winning the so-called "War on Terror." Setting aside the fact that terror is a tactic, not a defined enemy, consider whether that military has made progress in that multi-front conflict in the decade since it was announced by President George W. Bush. Today, Afghanistan remains a lawless and corrupt state. Pakistan has become a haven for those who oppose American power. Iraq--which was never a haven for terrorists--has now become one, full of rebels who are largely an indigenous religious minority dissatisfied with the outcome of the war. And, the persistent request from George Bush and now his successor, Barack Obama, more less amounts to this: "Give me extraordinary powers to detain people and fight wars. Too much interference from elected officials will hamper our efforts. Basic constitutional protections against search and seizure and against imprisonment without trial need to be overridden."

But the so-called "War on Terror" is really many conflicts involving local grievances in countries which have strategic importance to the United States and its allies for resource or geopolitical reasons. Lax oversight by elected officials and concentration of power in the hands of generals and civilian managers has not resolved these conflicts.

When the usual processes of democracy fail often enough to resolve perceived difficulties, people sometimes choose to relinquish their voice in society's decisions in exchange for order and stability. We may, however, be approaching an era where no such tradeoff exists. A dictator running an ungovernable system may be no better at achieving stability than a democratically elected body with all its messy procedures.

There is an alternative. Simplify the systems we live under. That, of course, means challenging the existing power structure. Energy constraints may soon do the challenging for us and force us to simplify systems that will have trouble surviving declines in energy inputs such as multi-national corporations and large centralized states.

I saw Tainter in person not too long ago at a conference. He was asked if any complex society has ever voluntarily reduced its complexity, meaning before events forced it to. He couldn't think of any. That tells me we can look forward to more governments claiming the need for additional extraordinary powers to deal with seemingly intractable problems that, in all likelihood, cannot be solved by continuing with the hypercomplex arrangements that now govern our world.

As our difficulties increase, a new crop of dictators or quasi-dictators in various realms of our society will emerge, offering to solve our problems. Increasingly, I think we will let them try.

Exclusive: Plants and animals join forces with climate change deniers

A recent investigation reveals that the world's plants and animals have adopted a bold but risky strategy to save themselves from the ravages of global climate change. They have joined forces with the world's climate change deniers.

This reversal has curious origins and follows decades of diplomatic signals from the plant and animal kingdoms to the world's scientific community that climate change must be halted or there will be "serious consequences." The reversal of strategy began when domestic cats and dogs watched the Life After People series on The History Channel along with their putative owners. The cats and dogs then described scenes from the show to their wild counterparts. From there word swept through the animal kingdom and was overheard by many plants as well.

Life After People seemed like a utopian fantasy until some enterprising house plants realized that they might be able to set in motion events which would end the dangers that humans pose. The plants would make humans unwitting accomplices in their own extinction. It was a dangerous plan and one that would require considerable sacrifice among those in both the plant and animal kingdoms. When word of the plan spread far and wide, both kingdoms embraced it as the only path to survival for at least some species. Many realized they were doomed already; but if they could halt or even just reduce the extent of the Sixth Great Extinction, their actions would not be in vain.

Plants in elite greenhouses were recruited by dogs brought there by their putative owners. These greenhouses are ones that serve corporate clients in major cities, but especially the coal, oil, and natural gas industries. Once these plants arrived at various corporate headquarters, they began to send messages to the corporate executives using frequencies barely inside the audible range and at such a low volume as to be subliminal. The messages were broad-ranging and included the following:

1. We plants love carbon dioxide.


2. Warmer weather is fun. (This was used primarily on those in colder climates.)


3. Climate change is natural.


4. People will adapt.

Perhaps the most pernicious (and therefore effective) message on the list above was the last. But, representatives of the plant and animal kingdoms were at loggerheads over it for days as they deliberated in the coordinating council which eventually approved the plan. The animals argued that there should be no message concerning adaptation since bringing up this issue would only worry humans. The plants argued that most humans were stupid enough to believe they could overcome anything through their technology. Using the adaptation message would encourage humans to ignore even the most alarming evidence of climate change. The plants carried the day when they proposed to the animals that the plan focus on fossil fuel executives, thought to be the most gullible humans on Earth and some of the most powerful. The plants argued that these executives would hire many people to propagate the messages across the globe to other humans.

And, so like suicide bombers, knowing that many would be sacrificed in the mission to eliminate humans from the globe, the plants gradually populated major office buildings owned by the fossil fuel companies. They transmitted their messages from starting time in the morning until late at night to executives working long hours in their offices.

To the surprise and delight of both the plant and animal kingdoms, the plan worked exceedingly well. They began to see their messages in various forms everywhere in human society. The humans were so ingenious that they had disguised and enhanced the basic messages in ways not even conceived of by either the plants or the animals. The consensus that up to that point had been building to halt climate change--a consensus due in large part to the information both kingdoms had previously sent to scientists--was now being destroyed.

There was jubilation in the encampment of the coordinating council (though the sacrifices ahead tempered their celebration somewhat). Both kingdoms felt they had already accomplished their objective: the eventual extinction of human beings. The two kingdoms had demonstrated self-sacrifice and cooperation in ways that they were sure humans would never be capable of. They believed that humanity's fate was sealed.

But, will the discovery of and reporting on this diabolical plan now endanger its success? I asked a leading plant who wished not to be identified because he feared for his own safety. "Your reporting won't matter," he said. "All the climate change deniers we've been able to recruit in human society will drown out your story. And, they will, of course, argue that the whole report is nonsense because first of all, plants can't talk, and second of all, the plants told them that plants love carbon dioxide."

"But won't such statements seem a bit contradictory?" I inquired.

The plant just shook his flowering top. "You don't even understand human nature as well as we plants do."

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P.S. If you are a climate change denier, before you comment on this post, read my Comments Policy. You may decide it's not worth your time to comment here.

Do the world's contemplative religious traditions demonstrate a path to sustainability?

Within nearly all the great religions of history we find contemplative traditions which espouse the curious principle that foregoing excessive wealth and consumption (and therefore energy use) will actually make one happier. As a general rule these traditions advocate eating only what one needs to be healthy; exercising to maintain physical vigor (but not excessive strength); studying to attune oneself to the subtleties of nature and of the mind; and shielding oneself from the distractions of daily life. All this, they claim, will result in a fuller, more joyful existence.

How is this possible when, evolutionarily speaking, humans are relentless energy-gathering machines? If we didn't take in more energy than we expend, we couldn't have survived. In prehistoric societies finely balanced between enough and too little, it made sense to gather as much energy as one could and store it. The calories from gorging on a beast felled in the hunt were stored as fat. (Fat was good in those days!) As techniques for preserving food such as smoking and salting arose, these became ways to store calories outside the body. And, with the advent of agriculture, surplus grain became a very efficient way to store calories needed to make it through the winter.

We are beings attuned to a world of scarcity, or at least, periodic scarcity. Now comes industrial society with its industrialized agriculture that produces so much food that it can now support 7 billion people and perhaps as many domesticated animals. In fact, the amount of food is so great and predictably available that a human population genetically designed for scarcity has become obese by the hundreds of millions in wealthy countries. It is our natural instinct to gorge when extra food is around--in case there isn't any later on. But, at least in wealthy countries, there always is.

And yet, the contemplative religious traditions live on. Some people point to the best lived examples of those traditions as "the next step in human evolution." They might mean the Christian saints. Or the Sufis in Islam. Or the Zen monks in Buddhism. But clearly members of these contemplative orders are not "the next step" because such people have been with us for a very long time. In evolution-speak, they have been selected for. My question is, What purpose do they serve in society from an evolutionary point of view?

It seems as if they are almost a separate branch of the human evolutionary tree. Yet, given that many of these traditions foreswear family life, how can they be considered more "fit" than others outside such traditions? And, still they reappear with every generation, as if humankind carries some recessive gene for the contemplative life that shows up again and again.

Some will certainly argue that contemplative religious traditions are strictly cultural phenomena. But every cultural phenomenon is at its base a genetic and therefore evolutionary one. Non-adaptive behaviors disappear after a few generations. Behaviors exhibited by adherents to these traditions must somehow be adaptive.

And, that's why I ask if we have anything to learn from these traditions about a possible path to sustainability. Certainly, they have much to say about the current frazzled spiritual state of humankind, a state engendered at least in part by excessive energy consumption. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think the great mass of people is going to adopt the disciplined life of the monk. But I see the monk's life as a sort of model of energy conservation. And, it's one that celebrates the result of self-restraint rather than lamenting it. Such a path finds that life is made more vibrant through restraint rather than excess.

This path, however, is not necessarily just associated with religious traditions. The materialist philosophers of ancient Greece known as Epicureans demonstrate a non-religious path to a life of self-restraint. Today, we wrongly identify the Epicureans with excess, when this view of life's aims actually comes from the Cyrenaics who were, to our way of thinking, pure hedonists. They believed that life should be devoted to pleasure derived from sensation. They did not deny that pleasure could come from mental activity. But such activity was secondary.

The Epicureans also believed that maximizing pleasure is the goal of life. But this goal should be pursued through self-restraint in mind and body. Excessive eating only leads to discomfort and disease later. Preoccupation with sexual gratification only leads to disappointment and frustration. Epicureanism--contrary to popular conceptions--was actually a sort of asceticism. But it was not based on devotion to a deity, but rather a frank evaluation of the human condition, particularly its material aspects without reference to religion per se.

Is there is a message in all this for those who will live in an energy-constrained world? Any such message does seem like it would be a hard sell. But, perhaps no selling will be necessary as energy constraints bear down on us and force us into simpler lives. Still, there are ways to live simply and badly, and there are ways to live simply and well. Some make fun of a sustainability movement that tells people that a simpler life is actually better in many ways. Perhaps that message merely reflects cultural traditions that have been with us since the beginning of history. Or perhaps it represents an evolutionary pathway that is ready to reassert itself when the right conditions arise.

The Road to Fukushima: The Nuclear Industry's Wrong Turn

My latest column on Scitizen entitled "The Road to Fukushima: The Nuclear Industry's Wrong Turn" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

Nuclear researchers knew long ago that reactor designs now in wide use had already been bested in safety by another design. Why did the industry turn its back on that design? Read more.

The coolest book I've ever read on energy

It may seem a bit over the top to say that a book entitled Into the Cool is the coolest book I've ever read on energy. But energy junkies should take note of its two compelling theses: First, the eventual heat death of the universe--a supposed consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics--has, to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, been greatly exaggerated. Second, life--in all its forms--is NOT an anomaly made improbable by the aforesaid Second Law, but rather a direct and likely inevitable consequence of it.

Both statements had me on the edge of my seat as I made my way through the book which is written more in the vein of a scientific detective novel than a dry look at the science behind those suppositions. Not much time is spent defending the first thesis until the very end of the book. And, so as not to ruin the plot, I'll let you discover the reasoning behind this view from authors Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan yourself. But the bulk of the book is devoted to a little-known field called nonequilibrium thermodynamics, or NET for short. Because the idea that humans are NET creatures in open systems provides explanations for so much of our evolutionary history and our current behavior, readers will likely find themselves having "aha" moments every chapter as I did.

But what does it mean to be an NET creature? First, let's remember that, thermodynamically speaking, to be at equilibrium means that there is no movement of energy across the specified system. In other words, if you were at equilibrium, you'd be dead. But just as we are taught that nature abhors a vacuum, so too, it seems, it also abhors an energy gradient--which is lucky for us!

And, here is the first "aha" moment in the book. Life--humans included--is particularly adept at reducing energy gradients. And, the biggest energy gradient in our neck of the universe is the one involving the sun and outer space where temperatures step down from 5,800 degrees K to just 2.7 degrees K, that is 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. Of course, the Earth is part of a planetary system that is part of that energy gradient. And, researchers have verified that living systems are particularly adept and efficient at diverting the solar energy which falls on the Earth to their own purposes. The cycling of energy and materials through the biosphere may have seemed miraculous to the ancients. But to NET researchers this cycling is simply made possible by the configuration of the solar system.

A second "aha" moment comes when Schneider and Sagan explain why Darwinian evolution alone can explain neither the origin of life nor its diversity and complexity. For that we need to add an energy gradient which creates self-sustaining cycles on the inanimate, primordial Earth--chemical and energetic cycles which seem like precursors to life to the NET researcher's eye. Once life arises, the same gradient steers evolution toward those organisms that cycle energy and materials most efficiently over time. And, as it turns out, complex climax ecosystems are masters at this task. NET drives evolution toward higher complexity because that complexity is capable in the long run of reducing energy gradients more thoroughly than simpler living systems or inanimate ones.

Life is what NET calls a metastable system. It is stable so long as it is receiving the requisite energy and material inputs. It does have a range of acceptable inputs and so can adjust to changing seasons and circumstances.

And, the "aha" moments keep piling up from here. (Don't worry. There are so many of them I won't ruin the fun for those who decide to read the book.) Sexual reproduction, as it turns out, is a way to maintain continuity for any living gradient-reducing system over time, long after the first living members die due to the wear and tear of hanging around an energy gradient for an entire lifetime. Try not to think about that next time you make love to your significant other!

One of the reasons that living systems are better at dissipating energy than inanimate ones is that they persist far longer than, say, whirlpools or tornados. But even so, it behooves those systems not to move too fast. Of late humans have--since the discovery of fossil fuels--become more like a pioneer species than a mature member of an ecosystem. We have greatly increased our cycling of matter and energy through the use of the concentrated ancient sunlight that fossil fuels represent. But while pioneer species multiply quickly, they eventually find their numbers trimmed back considerably as ecological succession proceeds. The authors recommend that we quickly wean ourselves off depleting supplies of oil and other fossil fuels and use the more sustainable, but less concentrated gradient-reducing wind turbines and solar panels. The move would reflect the age-old successful strategy of long persistent living systems which forgo "short-term maximal expansion for stability and the consequent opportunity to expand in the future."

Echoing the ideas of historian Joseph Tainter, the authors remind us that "[w]hen the energy available for the formation of complex systems is taken away, these systems revert to a more primitive level of function." Human society is an example of a gradient-reducing system that requires continuous inputs of energy to maintain itself. Tainter suggests and NET research confirms that a diminution of that energy spells reversion to simpler and therefore less energy-intensive means of organizing daily business. The path can be gradual or it can be sudden, leading to a collapse of the population.

Schneider and Sagan suggest a reformulation of Descartes in thermodynamic terms to explain the existence of life in the universe. Instead of "I think, therefore I am," they propose "I am because I dissipate." This view implies that life may be far more widespread in the universe than is commonly believed. The elements necessary to life are found in comets and meteors, suggesting they are available elsewhere far beyond our solar system.

It may seem a little depressing to think that one's purpose in the universe is simply to provide efficient paths for energy to degrade. But then again, think about how much better you feel now knowing that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is really your friend and not your enemy as so many mistaken 19th century scientists tried to convince us long ago.

Taking a break -- no regular post

I'm taking a short break and expect to make a regular post again on Sunday, April 10.