The ECOLOGY of INDUSTRIAL

SOCIETY
MEC4063C
INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
 Society and Energy
• Territorial conflicts are attempts
to control more of the products
of solar energy conversion
– Movies usually make out that
some villain wants to take control
of an energy source in order to
rule the world
– But perhaps history shows that
villains want to rule more of the
world so that they can take control
of energy sources
Rumeli Hisari: Sultan Mehmed II – 1452
136 days
 Complexity
• A ‘civilization’ is a complex society
• Complex societies have a great number of
parts (structural differentiation) and high
levels of organization
– Social norms, beliefs, rules, regulations, laws …

– “Drilling down” Tainter and Patzek

• The very existence of the Deepwater
Horizon oil rig is the inevitable result
of this growth in complexity that
characterises human history

• But so, too, is its failure!

 Complexity requires Energy

• We pay for complexity with high-quality

energy
• Energy is the currency that ultimately matters
• Humans have rarely had surplus energy
• Complexity is a basic problem-solving tool
– Simple and inexpensive (low energy) solutions are
implemented before more complex ones
– Low hanging fruit
– Principle of least effort
 Roman Empire

• “Those who are concerned about the future of

industrial society, about its economic direction, its
ecological basis, and its political superstructure,
have an irrefutable illustration of the contention
that civilizations, even powerful ones, are
vulnerable.”
– Tainter (1998)
 History
• Rome began as a small city state (on the Tiber)
• With a small area of farmland
• Romans were perpetually at war with
neighbours
• Success brought new challenges
• They conquered challengers; good at war
• Turned enemies into allies
• Who assisted Rome
 After Carthage
• Rome’s wars became really profitable
• Societies powered by subsistence agriculture
(solar power) couldn’t store solar energy
except by making something durable – metal,
art, people (!)
• Rome seized the products of centuries of solar
energy from around the Mediterranean
• Rome grew by stealing stores of energy that
they had not created themselves
 Problems with Empire
• You run out of profitable conquests
• Diminishing returns because of distance
• Remember 90% of the economy was farming
• The Roman Empire was like a ‘third world’
economy of today
• Very few people were wealthy and powerful
• The end of conquest meant the budget was
financed from yearly solar energy
• The emperor had to finance activities from his
purse (which came from conquering Egypt)
 Close to crisis
• Many foreign and civil conflicts
• Increase size and complexity of government and double
the size of the army
• More organized: subdivided provinces and separated
civil from military leadership – made it difficult to rebel
• But added complexity!
• Tax citizens more; conscript their labour; regulate their
lives; dictate their occupations
• Made empire more secure and efficient – but taxes
doubled
 More energy?
• Complexity needed energy but the ‘budget’ was ‘flat’
• Dependent on [fixed] solar energy
• Reliant on peasantry – supplying food
• Taxed too high, the peasants left the land
• Slowly the empire began to ‘fall’
 Reflection
• Initially, energy strategy (past solar energy from
conquered lands) gave high benefit-to-cost ratios
• In human societies, high-gain phases do not seem to
last long – the resource seems inexhaustible so
people expand their consumption
• Expanding consumption crashes into a finite supply!
• Shift to low-gain resources
 The ECOLOGY of
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
MEC4063C
INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
• Farming and industrial agriculture
Industrial Society
 Resources

• Economists assume that any future shortage of

resources, including energy, will be solved by
innovations that improve technical efficiency, or we
will develop new resources
– As Robert Bryce says: “The world runs on oil, period. No
other substance can compete when it comes to energy
density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation.
If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.” !
– http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/oil/9867659/Why-the-world-isnt-running-out-of-oil.html

• Economists again: resources are never scarce, just

priced wrong – as a resource becomes harder to
obtain, prices will rise and markets will signal that
there are rewards to innovation
 Innovation
• The ‘productivity’ of innovation is declining
(per capita)
• We assume that technical innovation will solve
our energy problems
– E.g. hybrid or electric vehicles
• This is unlikely
 The ECOLOGY
of INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
MEC4063C
INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
 Energy – complexity

• If there is ‘unused’ energy in a natural system, some

species will emerge to use it (take advantage of the
surplus)
• In human society, if we have extra inexpensive energy we
will not leave it unused for long
• The conditions of inexpensive energy we have are highly
unusual – an aberration of history
• Complexity is a response to excess energy or to problems;
– problems require energy;
– energy enables complexity;
– complexity creates problems
 2nd Law
• It would take more energy and environmental
resources to regenerate a chunk of coal that
was just burned to CO2 and heat, than the
amount of heat we originally obtained from
that chunk
– What can we say about the work we can get from
the heat, relative to the heat?
 Energy now: a glimpse
• The rate at which we use fossil energy, makes
replacing it by biomass impossible
• Colonizing all available land on the earth will
be insufficient
• If we really want to switch to solar cells,
biofuels, wind, etc., we will have to shrink our
energy use by a factor of 10
• The energy it would take to restore the
environment damaged by the corn and ethanol
production processes exceeds several fold the
amount of combustion heat we get from burning
the ethanol in our cars
•
• “Canada is on the verge of destroying civilization”
– Noam Chomsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h63ss1VF7jc
 Energy + complexity
• Considerable energy flows are required to
maintain complex structures (bodies, cities)
• Unfortunately this tends to create a mess in
the environment that surrounds us.
• The more complex a society, the more energy
is needed to maintain organization
– far-from-equilibrium
• 12.5 % of energy generated in USA is used to
power the Internet!
– 4 times more electricity than is generated by ALL
renewable sources!
• The use of fossil fuel power has no ‘parallel’ in
human history and will be a short-lived
phenomenon by even historical measures
• Petroleum permeates almost all manufactured
products and is at the core of our energy-
intensive civilization
• 4.5 billion people (everyone
born after 1940) owe their
existence to the industrial
Haber-Bosch ammonia
process (chemical engineers)
that produces nitrogen
fertilizers from fossil fuel (+
vaccines + antibiotics)
 As in Rome
• We have been subsidized by stored solar energy in
the form of fossil fuels (for which there has been
conquest of other parts of the world)
• We perceive fossil fuels as ‘infinite’ and expand our
societies accordingly (after all, they are cheap)
• Will our future depend on low-gain renewables or
perhaps some other source of high-gain energy?
• Rome funded the complexity needed for problem
solving with more extraction (taxes – from farming);
eventually leading to collapse
 Solar radiation
• reaches earth’s upper atmosphere (TOA) at a rate of
1360 W/m2. (perpendicular – only 340 average)
• 31% is reflected or scattered in the atmosphere; 23%
is absorbed in the troposphere; 46% reaches ground
• 43% of this is reflected back; 32% heats land and
water; 23% drives the water cycle; 1% drives wind
and ocean currents
• Of the original 1360, 0.023% is available for
photosynthesis; less than this becomes food
• That was our budget for early ‘development’
 Food chain
• At each link of the chain about 90% energy is lost
(only 10% is available for the ‘higher’ levels)
• Top carnivores are rare.
• The top runs on 1/1000 of the energy that enters the
system
• Compared to what we are used to with fossil fuels,
solar energy is not a very productive basis for a
society
• However we can capture more than what is achieved
through photosynthesis alone
 Metabolism

• the rate at which energy is

– exchanged between an organism and its
environment;
– transformed within an organism;
– and allocated to
• maintenance,
• growth, and
• Reproduction
• “The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet”
– Yadvinder Malhi in “Is the planet full?” I. Goldin
 Socio-metabolism
• The rate at which energy is exchanged between a
human society and its environment, and transformed
within a society.
• Biological metabolism is fuelled almost solely by light
capture by plants,
– then by consumption by other organisms of the chemical free
energy embodied in plant biomass.
• Socio-metabolism incorporates biomass resource
consumption for food or fuel, but also energy generation
and consumption from other sources, including
– fossil fuels,
– nuclear,
– solar, and wind power
• The total global (terrestrial and marine) photosynthetic
metabolism of the biosphere is 265 TW, of which 150 TW (60
per cent) is through the land biosphere, and 115 TW (40 per
cent) through the marine biosphere.
• This total biosphere metabolism represents 0.2 % of total
surface solar energy. This is the total photosynthetic flux.
• 50 – 70 % used by plants and phytoplankton for own
metabolisms (autotrophic respiration)
• 30–50 % used to produce plant / phytoplankton biomass (net
primary production NPP), which is eventually consumed and
metabolized by herbivores, detritivores, bacteria, and fungi