Situation critical: All our tech, from nukes to GE, sits on some version of a quake zone

[marmar]

from NOW Toronto:



Situation critical
All our tech, from nukes to GE, sits on some version of a quake zone

By Wayne Roberts


Other disasters – tsunamis in Indonesia and Thailand, hurricanes in New Orleans and earthquakes in Haiti – caused many people to open their hearts.

But Japan’s spiralling disasters are also opening minds, particularly to the precariousness of modern technologies that put too many layers between people and nature. I’ve been tough on tech for most of my adult life, but this is the first time it’s really hit me that almost all of it since the 1940s belongs on the critical list.

Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, now facing trial before the court of world opinion, invites us to think of the inherently dangerous category of innovations described by sociologist Charles Perrow in his 1984 book, Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies. These technologies are far more pervasive than nuclear power, though they share its origin in military or space-age research (which amounts to the same thing).

Almost all of them descend from World War II and the period just after, when a sense of potential was linked to the heady belief that humans were finally capable of breaking nature’s laws. The new era was, ironically, announced by the atomic explosions that hit Japan and the development of the “peaceful atom” that followed, creating unlimited energy out of a substance incredibly uncommon in nature: uranium. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=179816

[JohnyCanuck]

1. High tech, increasing complexity and diminishing returns.

from GETTING DOWN TO EARTH: Practical Applications of Ecological Economics, Island Press, 1996; ISBN 1-55963-503-7

PROBLEM SOLVING, ENERGY, AND SUSTAINABILITY

This historical discussion gives a perspective on what it means to be practical and sustainable. A few years ago I described about two dozen societies that have collapsed (Tainter 1988). In no case is it evident or even likely that any of these societies collapsed because its members or leaders did not take practical steps to resolve its problems (Tainter 1988). The experience of the Roman Empire is again instructive. Most actions that the Roman government took in response to crises-such as debasing the currency, raising taxes, expanding the army, and conscripting labor-were practical solutions to immediate problems. It would have been unthinkable not to adopt such measures. Cumulatively, however, these practical steps made the empire ever weaker, as the capital stock (agricultural land and peasants) was depleted through taxation and conscription. Over time, devising practical solutions drove the Roman Empire into diminishing, then negative, returns to complexity. The implication is that to focus a problem-solving system, such as ecological economics, on practical applications will not automatically increase its value to society, nor enhance sustainability. The historical development of problem-solving systems needs to be understood and taken into consideration.

Most who study contemporary issues certainly would agree that solving environmental and economic problems requires both knowledge and education. A major part of our response to current problems has been to increase our level of research into environmental matters, including global change. As our knowledge increases and practical solutions emerge, governments will implement solutions and bureaucracies will enforce them. New technologies will be developed. Each of these steps will appear to be a practical solution to a specific problem. Yet cumulatively these practical steps are likely to bring increased complexity, higher costs, and diminishing returns to problem solving.' Richard Norgaard has stated the problem well: "Assuring sustainability by extending the modem agenda ... will require, by several orders of magnitude, more data collection, interpretation, planning, political decision-making, and bureaucratic control" (Norgaard 1994).

Donella Meadows and her colleagues have given excellent examples of the economic constraints of contemporary problem solving. To raise world food production from 1951-1966 by 34%, for example, required increasing expenditures on tractors of 63%, on nitrate fertilizers of 146%, and on pesticides of 300%. To remove all organic wastes from a sugar-processing plant costs 100 times more than removing 30%. To reduce sulfur dioxide in the air of a U.S. city by 9.6 times, or particulates by 3.1 times, raises the cost of pollution control by 520 times (Meadows et al. 1972). All environmental problem solving will face constraints of this kind.

Bureaucratic regulation itself generates further complexity and costs. As regulations are issued and taxes established, those who are regulated or taxed seek loopholes and lawmakers strive to close these. A competitive spiral of loophole discovery and closure unfolds, with complexity continuously increasing (Olson 1982). In these days when the cost of government lacks political support, such a strategy is unsustainable. It is often suggested that environmentally benign behavior should be elicited through taxation incentives rather than through regulations. While this approach has some advantages, it does not address the problem of complexity, and may not reduce overall regulatory costs as much as is thought. Those costs may only be shifted to the taxation authorities, and to the society as a whole.

http://dieoff.org/page134.htm