Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective

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Abstract

The common view of history assumes that complexity and resource consumption have emerged through innovation facilitated by surplus energy. This view leads to the supposition that complexity and consumption are voluntary, and that we can therefore achieve a sustainable future through conservation. Such an assumption is substantially incorrect. History suggests that complexity most commonly increases to solve problems, and compels increase in resource use. This process is illustrated by the history of the Roman Empire and its collapse. Problems are inevitable, requiring increasing complexity, and conservation is therefore insufficient to produce sustainability. Future sustainability will require continued high levels of energy consumption to address converging problems.

Section snippets

Resources and complexity

Few questions of history and philosophy have been more enduring than how today's complex societies evolved from the foraging bands of our ancestors. While this has been mainly of academic interest, it has important implications for anticipating our future. Our understanding of sustainability depends to a significant degree on our understanding of the human past. My purposes are to show that conventional understandings of cultural evolution are untenable, as are assumptions about sustainability

Case study: the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire collapsed in the mid 5th century A.D., but its last 200 years of existence had been a reprieve. It had nearly been destroyed in the 3rd century. In the half-century from 235 to 284 the empire was repeatedly breached by invasions of Germanic peoples from the north and the Persians from the east. When these invaders were not being repelled, Roman armies were fighting with each other in the service of would-be emperors. Many cities were sacked and productive lands devastated.

Implications for sustainability transitions

The Roman Empire is a single case study in complexity and problem solving, but it is an important and representative one. It illustrates the basic process by which societies increase in complexity. Societies adopt increasing complexity to solve problems, becoming at the same time more costly. In the normal course of economic evolution, this process at some point will produce diminishing returns. Once diminishing returns set in, a problem-solving society must either find new resources to

Alternatives

Many advocates of sustainability will find it disturbing that long-term conservation is neither effective nor possible. Naturally we must ask: Are there alternatives to this process? Regrettably, no simple solutions are evident. Consider some of the approaches commonly advocated:

  • 1.

    Voluntarily reduce resource consumption. This strategy is constrained by the fact that societies increase in complexity to solve problems. Resource production must grow to fund the increased complexity. To implement

Conclusion

Sustainability is not a passive consequence of having fewer humans who consume more limited resources. One must work at being sustainable. The challenges that any society might confront are, for practical purposes, endless in number and infinite in variety. That being so, sustainability is a matter of solving problems.

In the progressivist view, complexity follows energy. If so, then we should be able to forego complexity voluntarily and reduce our consumption of the resources that it requires.

Acknowledgements

I am pleased to express my appreciation to Jeroen van den Bergh for the invitation to prepare this paper and for helpful comments, to two anonymous reviewers, and to Stephen Balogh for Fig. 1.

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