Energy and Society : A Systems View
THE UNIVERSAL CURMUDGEON Number 1.5
by David B. Sutton, Ph.D.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
This is the first in a series of columns on the manufactured California “energy crisis.” There is so much mis-information, media manipulation, blatant collusion, self-interest and out right lies surrounding this outlandish farce it will take 3 or 4 probes to even begin to unwrap its many levels.
There is a very important historical perspective that is totally missing in the daily diatribes on the current energy situation in California. This is not entirely surprising for this essentially ahistorical society, where it is so very convenient to forget uncomfortable events of the past that might affect the feel good mythologies we have so carefully created. But a broad historical systems view can shed significant light on our current situation and how we arrived at this point.
Energy in Natural and Social Systems
Natural and social systems operate under the same principles of energy management. Growth, stability or decline is determined by the interdependent relationship between energy and structure. Two events of unparalleled importance stand out in the long course of human history: the introduction of agriculture, and industrialization. They were profound energy and social revolutions: energy revolutions in that each vastly increased energy availability over the former period; social revolutions in that each increased the scale of society and rearranged the social order around new technologies, institutions and values.
Recurring themes throughout history suggest a reciprocal effect of energy and social structure: First, dependence on foreign resources is the first serious sign of a nation reaching its physical and social limits to growth: physical, because it can not sustain its population and standard of living on its own resource base; social because it cedes an important measure of control over its internal affairs to uncontrollable outside forces.
Second, the fall of empires is the not the end of life in a region. Collapse is usually the breakdown of a hierarchical structure whose organizational complexity is so energy expensive that smaller units can favorably compete with it. Institutions often have difficulty adapting to other conditions than those which gave rise to them.
Third, the purpose of social organization is to serve human needs, outer and inner, to make life secure and enduring. Just as a critical point is reached with dependence on foreign resources, a critical point in social management is reached when institutional needs take precedence over human needs and it becomes time to make a change.
Role of Energy in U. S. History
The history of the United States from an energy perspective can be seen as such a social discontinuity. With the initial introduction of fossil fuels the institutions, customs and values of early, solar-based America were changed to meet the needs of the developing energy delivery system. A stable set of new institutions, customs and values were never really able to replace the old because constantly increasing energy production and consumption endlessly rearranged the social fabric.
The thermodynamic superiority of fossil fuels — their concentrated nature– had the effect of organizing American life in a more concentrated physical and social structure. Larger production units necessitated gathering larger quantities of the factors of production — labor, materials, machinery and services–into a relatively small area around factories. This resulted in the growth of urban centers, and people left the site of the former energy source, rural America, for the economic advantages of the centers where the fuels were used, the city. Social concentration grew out of physical concentration in the form of crowding in cities, the accumulation of wealth in large organizations, and the greater political power these organizations exercised in national affairs.
The small integrated communities of early America lost their geographical and functional unity through dependence on the products and wages of the national economy. The influences on neighborhood life, local values and activities were increasingly determined by distant corporate headquarters and government agencies than by local institutions. Large institutional technologies like the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, television and computers changed the concepts of time and space, the scale of markets, the variety of products, worker skills and human relations. The control and reward systems of the nation steadily moved to the large institutions of the new culture.
Growth through consumption made the United States richer because more energy could be consumed, made the individual more dependent on large institutions for basic needs, and ultimately left the country dependent on large energy corporations and foreign resources.
The Promotion of Consumption
With increased energy and production capacity, consumption tended to become the constraint to growth. Enormous amounts of the operating budgets of the energy suppliers were employed to convince the public that human needs are fulfilled through material consumption. The conspicuous and wasteful practices that only the upper class could afford spread to the middle and working classes. As more and more of the work/input to the economy is provided by fossil fuels, the role of the individual in serving the economy shifts from that of producer to consumer.
New Values replace the Old
The social values of rural America were not compatible with fossil fuel America. Little by little, new values were rewarded to accommodate the operational needs of the new system.
Early America believed in limits because inherent limits are readily perceivable in small scale decentralized integrated physical and social settings. The individual’s personal energy limits were felt as a constraining factor to his own production and consumption. The belief in limits fostered attitudes about the wisdom of self-restraint and tended to keep the gap between reality and expectations at a manageable level, both for the individual and the society.
In a fossil fuel society, the separation of production from consumption and rapid growth tended to erode the belief in personal and social limits as the places from which things came and went were beyond the individual’s view or sometimes their comprehension. With increasing abundance and personal income, “more” became a permanent part of social values, and expectations were fixed to expanding possibilities provided by large institutions. The operational belief in “more” was a necessary element for the continuous expansion of the production/consumption system.
To summarize, from an energy systems perspective, it can be seen that the major directions of social changes in America were not the result of explicit political intent. The vision of the founding fathers for the new nation, perhaps best expressed in the political philosophy of Jefferson, was to establish a society based on individual freedom, the sanctity of the family, the strength of local institutions and a healthy fear of oppressive, big government and corporate control. The debate between Hamiltonianism and Jeffersonianism which formed the political boundaries of the 19th century America was not settled at the level of political ideology. It was determined little by little as fossil fuels replaced solar energy, constantly increasing the energy budget and moving the social structure in the direction of larger institutions and greater physical and social concentration. The United States experienced the inevitable trade-off that has been repeated over and over again in the history of nations; constantly increasing the energy budget concentrates control and wealth in the hands of the few and in the process destroys traditional institutions, customs and values.
In other words, continued growth of large scale centralized energy delivery systems has thwarted the political and social goals on which the country was founded by making the needs of large institutions the focal point of American life. The past century failed to achieve the social scale of human control designed by the founding fathers because the influence of energy on society was not understood.
Hard and Soft Energy Paths
Since the work of Amory Lovins, among others, in the early 70’s there is no longer any excuse for a continuing lack of understanding. In his classic, Soft Energy Paths ( Cambridge, Ballinger,1977), Lovins very precisely characterized two fundamentally different ways, or “paths” to supply our energy needs. The “hard path” involves large scale, highly technological approaches that rely on centralized electrical production. This strategy implies large capital investments in plants and distribution networks, increasingly costly technologies to locate, extract, transport, and convert the raw fuels, and a centralized bureaucracy of managers and technicians to organize and maintain the system. In contrast, the “soft path” involves small scale, elegantly simple approaches that rely on a mix of different local sources of energy tailored to specific needs. The implied structure of these different paths provide a good tool for measuring the social implications and economic costs of different energy technologies.
It is now possible to understand this critical connection very well. The strongest proponents of the hard path are those who stand to benefit by the further concentration of wealth and control and have large vested interests in maintaining what Lovins has called the, “Strength through Exhaustion” policy that they have put in place. This clearly includes their front men, Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush.
For others, this understanding motivates their pleas for more decentralized distributed systems and the rapid deployment of renewable energy resources, conservation and increased efficiency standards — for the soft path.
To most others, unfortunately, this connection is still unknown.
Where do we go from here.
As fossil fuels, the energy source of industrialization, are depleted, the world enters into a third most important energy and social revolution in the development of civilization. Today’s energy decisions are the most influential determinants of what our future world is to be. Depending on the choice of energy systems, the future holds a version of Orwell’s 1984 with a continuation of the hard path with its large-scale, centrally controlled society striving to maintain growth at all cost for the benefit of the few or a sustainable, human-scale society meeting all of our energy needs. Which will we choose ?
The coming decades offer the opportunity to realize a more sustainable energy future, not because it is traditional or American, but because its scale is human, focuses on local communities where the life of the individual and the family are, of necessity, rooted.
We have heard the initial salvos from an administration apparently still in the Dark Ages. I’ll have at least two columns coming to take on many elements of their insanity and greed. At this point, we can readily see its broader systems implications.
The Costs of Continued Hard Path Electrification
Since electrification there has been a battle between two very different opposing forces. Below the surface, essentially removed from public view, a hundred year secret war has been raging between communities and corporate monopolies. This battle is NOT about electricity, it’s about wealth and which way it flows.
Energy is about making people’s lives comfortable, their businesses profitable, and their communities capable of handling their needs. It is the energy providers duty to meet these needs.
In the community (soft) path, the goal is to meet crucial energy needs while keeping as much money in the community and in the pockets of individuals as possible.
Corporate, investor-owned providers, on the other hand, set their goals in the opposite direction — extract as much money as you can from the community and give it to the company’s shareholders– money flows from the many to the few, it doesn’t stay in the community, it flows out of the community. “Providing energy” may be on their shingle, but that is not what they are about.
It has been shown, over and over again, that electricity and other essentials of life such as basic items of sustenance ( i.e. a minimum input of food calories) can not be treated like other dispensable commodities provided by a market economy.
We can’t trust unregulated markets to offer reliable and affordable electricity. We know that. We learned that lesson the hard way 70 years ago. A look back to the 1920’s and 30s reveals that electricity was more expensive then than it is now. Profit-hungry corporations had the public by the throat. All the golden promises of electricity were beyond most people’s means.
Sixty some years ago, we were in the middle of the same problem–monopolies holding people up. Few people bought electric appliances because running them was too expensive.
Fed up with the situation President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration, the spring board for rural electric cooperatives, as well as five federal power marketing administrations such as Bonneville Power Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
By 1938 the first initiative to authorize public utility districts in the Legislature was presented. When the Legislature ducked the issue, the initiative went to the voters, who approved it.
Once the public was in control of its power, rates went down. And it didn’t take long for washing machines, refrigerators and stoves to begin rolling into communities. We’ve been through these high electricity rates before, this time it’s only being called deregulation.
California’s current fiasco clearly shows which path best provides for energy needs. Before deregulation, electricity companies built plants as needed because they had a guaranteed rate of return. They also had an obligation to serve, to meet need (build new plants OR encourage more efficient use–which, while maybe counter-intuitive, really has always been the cheapest way of fulfilling their obligation– unless your motive was only to make money as opposed to meeting need).
After deregulation, investor owned utilities reliant for their power on large-for-profit wholesale suppliers are teetering on bankruptcy. Yet consumer-owned public utilities and municipalities are doing well.
What most people don’t realize is that the huge for-profit power marketers control most of the electricity supply. They’ve purchased plants owned by electric companies and built their own. Many times, these marketers own the companies that distribute power. For example, Edison, the parent company of Southern California Edison, sells power to Southern California Edison, which then distributes it to homes and businesses. While Edison is making billions in profits, Southern California Edison is going bankrupt and wants a state bailout.
Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric, the two giants in California have lost nearly $13 billion to soaring wholesale prices. Much of the money is going to their parent companies.
It is very dangerous to let for-profit companies control the electricity industry. The “blackout/bailout ransom” strategy by the private companies is their device to keep pressure on politicians until they get billions they want.
Large players such as Texas-based Enron and North Carolina-based Duke Energy, some of Bush’s largest supporters, are examples of energy marketers making billions during the energy crisis. This is a classic case of self-dealing.
The message that needs to be pounded into people’s minds is that community ownership and control makes the difference. Most people still don’t get what the root problem is. There’s a fundamental difference if you have non-profit consumer-owned entities delivering power to communities or if you have unregulated monopolies that focus strictly on profits. This is not a matter of “freezing in the dark” it is a question of when do communities start running their own lives.
We know what the oil boys want, there spokesmen have just issued their National Energy Plan. So ridiculous on its face, the mind revolts to comment. It is a plan out of the 50’s, this time with the arrogance, vindictiveness and transparent greed of those who think they have won –who would believe themselves to be in absolute control. If this plan is enacted they may very well become the anointed rulers they think they are.
Growth in Living Systems
If there is anything to be learned from this systems view of energy and society it is the fact that physical growth can not continue forever in a living system.
A system’s success depends not so much on how much energy it controls as on how it manages its energy to operate at a surplus. A system’s energy surplus, or net energy, is the energy gained by its operations. The growth, stability or decline of a system is determined by the relationship between energy it controls and the energy costs of maintaining its structure. When the energy surplus is greater than what is needed to replace, repair and maintain it, is generally invested in growth. When the surplus is equal to replacement costs, the system is in equilibrium or stability. Decline occurs through deficit energy operations.
Decline can occur when the energy budget is reduced through loss of an energy source. Decline can also occur through growth when increases to the energy budget are less than the energy costs of maintaining the expanding structure of specialization and control that growth requires. In such a case, the system’s energy surplus diminishes because of the costs of complexity and size. When the ratio of energy controlled to energy converted declines, control mechanisms will either shift from the goal of growth to stability, i.e., an equilibrium point between energy, size and complexity, or else the system will decline. Stability is not a static state. Within a stable energy budget, change occurs through replacement of worn-out parts, or by the development of more efficient parts.
As living systems mature, more and more of its energy budget is devoted to elaborating and maintaining its physical structure. Full maturity is accompanied by a cessation of additional growth with virtually all of its energy input going toward maintaining, refining and increasing quality (increasing information content and process efficiency) of the resultant living structure.
We need to start looking at viable social systems as a living systems. They can not physically grow forever. A mature and stable society will be marked when it is seen deploying its energy resources towards increasing the quality and efficiency of its operation as opposed to ever-increasing material output and profligate waste.
Natural and social systems operate under the same principles of energy management. Growth, stability or decline is determined by the interdependent relationship between energy and structure. Increasing the energy budget increases the system’s size and complexity, which in turn increases the amount of energy needed for survival. When the energy costs of increasing size and complexity becomes greater the energy gained through growth, the future alternatives are either stability or decline. Which alternative will prevail is determined by the goal-setting control mechanism of the system. This is the role of government.
A Role for Government
If any institution in the nation is the long term guardian of public good it is the government, because it embodies the most influential control mechanisms in the socio-economic system. High energy consumption is currently built into the very fabric of corporate capitalism — built into the tax structure, production practices and the habits of everyday life. The technical, economic and regulatory incentive that have favored growth for more than a century should be gradually withdrawn as government’s role in seeking long-term social and economic stability. An increasingly high tax should be placed on fossil fuels reflecting the value of their depletion to society. All forms of subsidies for the development of future energy systems should also be withdrawn. This will tend to bring about an equilibrium between energy sources, technologies, and social structure that can otherwise be skewed by the political power of dominant institutions that place their self-interest before that of the society at large.
Just to whet your whistle on the last comment, you should know that THERE WOULD BE NO NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY AT ALL, if it wasn’t for over One Trillion Dollars of public subsidies over the past 50 years (and it is daily growing to include more “stranded costs,” “decommissioning costs,” not to mention the totally unresolved costs of the totally unresolved issue of safe waste disposal). This most telling example will be detailed in subsequent columns of the Universal Curmudgeon on the continuing energy con, but shouldn’t divert us from the case in point.
Energy systems are influential determinants of social structure. Energy decisions are in effect long-term social choices. They set the floor and the ceiling within which future social and political decisions are exercised. A vote for large scale energy systems is a vote for increased social complexity, control and decline through growth. Dependence on a soft energy path can create a future that is harmonious with the institutions, traditions and values befitting a representative democracy.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
I hereby disclose that I profit daily from the blessings of a living Earth. I take stock in the life-supporting systems of Nature that sustain us. I am heavily vested in the preservation of this Natural Capital. I have a strong self-interest in the common good and believe that rights come with responsibilities. I support those who speak truth to power. I am loyal to those who authentically lead the way to equity, justice, personal integrity, human dignity and compassion. I realize that this represents a significant conflict of interest with the free-market fundamentalism and technological determinism that dominates thought and action today.
These vested interests of mine do not permit my silent compliant acceptance of unfounded beliefs in the market and man and the mindless destruction in pursuit of profit and privilege.