Energy—The Critical Resource - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 22

of oil?), the knowledge and insight gained by examining the larger system
can have a calming, enlightening, and focusing effect for those responsible
for an “even” flow of energy for public use. There is always a larger system—
almost certainly involving solar radiation—whereby a search for new avail-
able sources of energy can be productive.
The second law of thermodynamics , or the law of entropy, states that the
amount of energy in forms available to do useful work can only diminish
over time. The loss of available energy to perform certain tasks thus repre-
sents a diminishing capacity to maintain order with a certain configuration
of materials (say a tree), and so increases disorder or entropy. This disorder
ultimately represents the continuum of change and novelty—the manifes-
tation of a different, simpler configuration or order, such as the remaining
ashes from the tree when it is burned. At first glance, it appears as though the
ability to do work in that subsystem is done. In the bigger picture, however,
the injection of solar energy over time (from a larger system—a star) can
restore the ability of the subsystem (the forest within which the tree existed)
to do more work. In turn, the ashes offer a reinvestment of biological capital
in the form of nutrients to the soil and thus to the forest.
Finally, the law of maximum entropy production says that, “a system will select
the path or assemblage of paths out of all available paths that minimizes the
potential or maximizes the entropy at the fastest rate given the existing con-
straints.” 1 The essence of the maximum entropy law simply means that when
any kind of constraint is removed, the flow of energy from a complex form to
a simpler form speeds up to the maximum allowed by the relaxed constraint. 2
A hot cup of coffee left sitting in a room will evolve to room temperature
in a fairly short time period. If, however, the coffee is in an insulated cup (a
constraint), it will take a little longer, but it will still cool. Clearly, we are all
familiar with the fact that our body loses heat in cold weather, but our sense
of heat lost increases exponentially when windchill is factored into the equa-
tion because our clothing has ceased to be as effective a barrier to the cold, or
constraint to the loss of heat, as it was before the wind became an issue. (Of
course, in the long run, an innovative solution would be to generate energy
from the wind, and, in effect, tap into the larger system.) Moreover, the stron-
ger and colder the wind, the faster our body loses its heat—the maximum
entropy of our body's energy whereby we stay warm. If the loss of body heat
to the windchill is not constrained, hypothermia and death ensue, along with
the beginnings of bodily decomposition—reorganization from the complex
structure and function toward a simpler structure and function. To avoid
these dire consequences, we must remove ourselves to another system (go
inside) or provide additional constraints (dress even more warmly).
The laws of thermodynamics are, in a sense, analogous to the Constitution
of the United States, a central covenant that informs the subservient courts
of each state about the acceptability of its governing biophysical principles.
In turn, the biophysical principles represent the state's constitution, which
instructs the citizens as to what acceptable behavior is within the state. In this