Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
movements or marginal industries, but what may become the signal economic and social trend for
the remainder of the 21st century—a trend that is currently ignored and resisted by governmental,
economic, and media elites who can't imagine an alternative beyond the dichotomies of free enter-
prise versus planned economy, or Keynesian stimulus versus austerity.
The decentralized provision of basic necessities is not likely to flow from a utopian vision of
a perfect or even improved society (as have some social movements of the past). It will emerge
instead from iterative human responses to a daunting and worsening set of environmental and eco-
nomic problems, and it will in many instances be impeded and opposed by politicians, bankers, and
industrialists.
It is this contest between traditional power elites and growing masses of disenfranchised poor
and formerly middle-class people attempting to provide the necessities of life for themselves in the
context of a shrinking economy that is shaping up to be the fight of the century.
When Civilizations Decline
plained the rise and demise of civilizations in terms of complexity. He used the word
complexity
to
refer to “the size of a society, the number and distinctiveness of its parts, the variety of specialized
social roles that it incorporates, the number of distinct social personalities present, and the variety
of mechanisms for organizing these into a coherent, functioning whole.”
2
Civilizations are complex societies organized around cities; they obtain their food from agricul-
ture (field crops), use writing and mathematics, and maintain full-time division of labor. They are
centralized, with people and resources constantly flowing from the hinterlands toward urban hubs.
Thousands of cultures have flourished throughout the human past, but there have only been about
24 civilizations. And all—except our current global industrial civilization (so far)—have ultimately
collapsed.
Tainter describes the growth of civilization as a process of investing societal resources in the
development of ever-greater complexity in order to solve problems. For example, in village-based
tribal societies an arms race between tribes can erupt, requiring each village to become more cent-
ralized and complexly organized in order to fend off attacks. But complexity costs energy. As Taint-
er puts it, “More complex societies are costlier to maintain than simpler ones and require high-
er support levels per capita.” Since available energy and resources are limited, a point therefore
comes when increasing investments become too costly and yield declining marginal returns. Even
the maintenance of existing levels of complexity costs too much (citizens may experience this as
onerous levels of taxation), and a general simplification and decentralization of society ensues—a
process colloquially referred to as
collapse
.
During such times societies typically see sharply declining population levels, and the survivors
experience severe hardship. Elites lose their grip on power. Domestic revolutions and foreign wars
erupt. People flee cities and establish new, smaller communities in the hinterlands. Governments
fall and new sets of power relations emerge.
It is frightening to think about what collapse would mean for our current global civilization.
Nevertheless, as we are about to see, there are good reasons for concluding that our civilization is
reaching the limits of centralization and complexity, that marginal returns on investments in com-
plexity are declining, and that simplification and decentralization are inevitable.
