This global collapse is seen as the result of the sub-prime financial fiasco. It is often overlooked that the incredibly high prices of energy, driven by the peaking in global production of oil, forced up, among others, food prices, and caused eventually the destruction of demand for energy, i.e. a departure from economic growth as we knew it. Current fluctuations in oil and gas prices are random, and are related to the uncertainty in the reconstruction of the global economies.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, for the All Party Parliamentary Group of the UK Parliament on Peak Oil (APPGOPO), addressed the evolving complexity of our contemporary world which he characterised as: Multiple stresses, macro perturbations of natural systems, impending energy transition from fossil fuels, increasing connectivity and complexity of our systems.

The major problem is the growing stresses in our society and its ability to cope. If the latter fails then systems can overload, governance collapses.

The integrated stresses are population growth, environmental damage, climate change, crime, economic instability and inequality. The butterfly phenomenon with respect to the weather shows society’s non-linear impact on nature, i.e. small actions can trigger inordinately large reactions in nature which are out of proportion to these actions.

Hence the world is not operating with individual and disconnected systems, such that one can be ’fixed’ without reference to the others. We are living in a world of complex and integrated systems, with often unpredictable behaviours.

According to Homer-Dixon we are moving from a world where risk was the major problem to one in which uncertainty is the underlying characteristic. Therefore, it is insufficient to manage the individual parts (the solution to crime is not circumscribed by the criminal process).

We have to develop schemes that allow us to adapt to their interconnectivity and complexity, an approach endorsed by Prof Linsky of the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Reconstructing our economy is non-deterministic, i.e. shrouded in uncertainty, with national experimentation key to creating our future. We have to develop an Experimentally Organised Economy, an adaptive instrument that adjusts to this uncertainty. This challenge our society faces is not being addressed by our leaders.

The destructive forces of climate change are accelerating and in the Arctic the changes are occurring faster than predicted. Hensen et al (APPGOPO) tell us that recent greenhouse gas emissions place the earth perilously close to dramatic climate change that can spiral out of our control.

We are witnessing the positive feedback effect in the Arctic in which some warming melts ice, causing, with no other interference by greenhouse gases, reduced white surface that reflects less heat into space. More ice melts and the process escalates.

Solomon et al tell us that the climate change today is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. We have done this unprecedented damage in just over a century by burning fossil fuels. He further sees that the monsoons will lose their speed and certain parts of China could become dust bowls, unable to produce food. China needs some 450 million tons of grain a year. World trade for grain is 200 million tons. If because of this climate change China were to import even 10 per cent of its needs, world food prices would soar.

We are near peak oil production. Though world gas production may not peak for another 60 years, its use to supplement declining oil means that the production peak in petroleum is 2015-17. If economies continue to depend on petroleum then prices will rise, repeating, possibly less spectacularly, the current economic downturn.

Consider the Energy Return on Investment, i.e. the amount of energy obtained by putting one unit of energy into its production. For crude oil this is 20; for gasolene, 10; for oil shale, 4; coal liquefaction 2; ethanol, 1 and coal 80! While the use of raw coal is diminishing in the US and EU it is virtually the only fuel used for power generation in China, the highest bulk polluter in the world.

The complex interactions among energy use and shortage, food production, climate change and economic growth will not allow problems of these systems to be isolated. The old global economy cannot return. The way forward is uncertain, and we are on our own to try something.

Our economy has to be restructured, not simply towards more petroleum exports, but in increasing the resilience of our people, institutions and societies such that we can stand shocks, possibly unknown, without catastrophic failure (Homer-Dixon).

Hence the balance of economic and social investments should shift away from efficiency, economic (GDP) growth at all costs, towards developing resilience, sustainability and security. Our leaders need to grasp the magnitude of the paradigm shift ahead.

maryking@tstt.net.tt