A summary of the excellent works of Allan, Tainter and Hoekstra on Thermodynamics, Sociology, Sustainability, Ecology and Management! I note SlideShare doesn’t do a very good job of the PowerPoint animations which makes some of the slides more comprehendible - so suggest you download it. Also allows you to see the speakers notes on many of the slides. Allen, T. F. H., Tainter, J. A., & Hoekstra, T. W. (1999). Supply-side sustainability. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 16(5), 403. Allen, T. F. H. (2003). In Hoekstra T. W., Tainter J. A. (Eds.), Supply-side sustainability. New York: Columbia University Press.

1. Supply Side Sustainability
An Overview of the works of Allen, Tainter and
Hoekstra*
Nov 21, 2011
Antony Upward
* see Bibliography for full citation
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2. What’s New Here?
• A first attempt to provide a complete descriptive, explanatory and (to
some extent) predictive framework for society which is premised our
understanding of the natural sciences based on systems and
complexity thinking
– i.e. it’s a forward looking “systems age” view not a backward looking
“machine age” view‡
– Compare this to much social science in which ideas that may be
incongruent or incompatible with the natural sciences are proposed all the
time*
• Attempt to promote the view that
– Applied Ecologists are Managers
– (Compare to applied Physicists / Chemists / Biologists are Engineers)
• I find this attempt at “completeness” intellectually very seductive
* Perhaps this is simply due to lack of knowledge where propositions of social sciences are never tested against natural science laws:
this position is advanced in Barkow, J. H. (2006). Introduction. In J. H. Barkow (Ed.), Missing the revolution: Darwinism for social
scientists (pp. 3-59). New York: Oxford University Press.
‡ See lecture by noted systems thinker Russell Ackoff which explains these terms:
http://www.organizationaldynamics.upenn.edu/ackoffvideos view “Navy-tape-01.mp4”
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3. A Fundamentally Inter-disciplinary
Perspective
• Multi-disciplinary team of authors have been working
together for an extended period
• Knowledge / experience covers the following disciplines:
– Biologist
– Ecologist
– Sociologist / Historian
• Result:
– Authors consistently attempt to recognize and overcome the
constraints / boundaries / biases of their disciplinary
backgrounds
– Sociological explanations and theorizing is compatible with
known laws of natural science
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4. Summary of their Theory
• A systems based theory for all the biophysical
and social phenomena we might observe
– Its big!
The bio-physical and the social independently and
together are far-from-equilibrium complex
systems driven by generative processes based
on available energy and constrained by
numerous evaluative processes
… lets unpack this…
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5. Theory Detail
The earth is a semi-open system…
1. To which…the Laws of Thermo-dynamics apply
2. Hence…energy gradients exist between the earth and space
3. These drive the generative processes from which emerge energy
dissipative structures and organizations of increasing levels of
complicatedness and complexity…
4. Which are subject to evaluative processes that determine the fitness of
those structures and organizations within their containing environment…
5. That with sufficient energy the systems† these processes create, lead, over
time, in all environments*, to the elaboration of structure and organization
6. Hence all bio-physical and socially constructed states and behaviours that
we can choose to observe, at any level of discreteness and scale, emerge
from this system of processes
† i.e. these are SOHO systems, after Kay. J. 2000. "Ecosystems as Self-organizing Holarchic Open Systems (SOHOs): Narratives and
the Second Law of Thermodynamics" in Sven Erik Jorgensen, Felix Muller (eds), Handbook of Ecosystems Theories and
Management, CRC Press - Lewis Publishers. pp 135–160
* As in the FES definition of this term – environment as context for everything and anything: Morley, D. (1997, 2010). Thinking,
Learning and Acting Environmentally. Unpublished manuscript presented by the author in ES/ENVS5100 in Fall 2010.
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6. Examples
1. Society (including culture) is an 3. Together the dualist view of
inevitable emergent property of the thermodynamics and evolution
biophysical given sufficient energy is gives an explanatory framework for
available human “development”
– i.e The emergence of culture is just
the continuation of evolution
– e.g. Bio-physical distribution of plants
and animals suitable for
domestication affected patterns of
global social development† (i.e. increase
effectiveness of
energy capture)
2. But its not a one way street: society
impacts on the bio-physical (i.e. increase efficiency
of energy capture)
– e.g. Changes in bacteria as we use
antibiotics
– e.g. Changes in climate as we use
stored solar energy (fossil fuels)
† See these works evidence to support this claim: Diamond, J. M.
(1999). Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies. New
York: W.W. Norton & Co. and Diamond, J. M. (2005). Collapse:
how societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Penguin.
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7. Provides context for human choices and
behaviours which might lead to sustainability
• Humans, as an integral part of all eco-systems, are intimately and
increasingly involved in both the generative and evaluative processes from
which eco-system states and behaviours emerge
– Our “purposeful” nature means our behaviour impacts both:
• The initial conditions of the generative process and
• The outcomes the evaluative process
– As our social structures and organizations have become more elaborate the
scale of our impact grows
• The scale of the machine age’s use of stored solar energy is the driver for the material
change in our impact
• Therefore…how we implicitly or explicitly prioritize and choose to solve
problems (aka “management”) makes a difference
• BTW: it always has!
– Our chosen purposes (aka “management objectives”) are driven by our individual
and collective values
• Result: We are the first generation of human managers to both sufficiently
understand our context and to have the systems based scientific, social and
historical knowledge to attempt to be proactively sustainable through our
ability to:
– Systemic problem solving
– Predict the (previously unforeseen) consequences of our solutions
– Monitor the impact on eco-systems of the actions we take
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8. Only 5 Problem Solving Approaches
are Available to Managers
1. Accept and pay costs
2. Shift or defer costs
3. Find subsidies to pay costs
4. Reconnect costs and benefits
5. Don’t solve the problem
* From Tainter’s 2010 presentation at International Conference on Sustainability (see ~minute 7 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NhTKirUZiWQ) based on his 1998 book Tainter, J. A. (1988). The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge, United Kingdom,
Cambridge University Press.
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9. Implications…for Achieving Sustainability…
It is Very “Simple”!
• When members of a society believe social costs exceed benefits, societies
collapse
– Management that leads only to increased structure / complication will create this
condition…
– But “inventing complicated solutions is easy, inventing simplicity is hard” (p359)
• Therefore to sustain a society and avoid collapse requires ability to
– Recognize in our value systems the short and long term implications of the laws
of thermodynamics* and the importance of eco-systems
– Understand the eco-systems† upon whose outputs society depends
– Problem-solve with the primary objective of eco-systems productivity
• Context provided by the authors leave only three “simple” avenues (and
combinations) available for management action (p391):
1. Simplify to level commensurate with available energy
2. Find more energy to subsidize increasing elaboration
3. Use energy supplies as efficiently and effectively as possible
* Allen, Tainter and Hoekstra’s work tends to focus on the “in the moment” impact of these laws; for a treatment of the longer term
impacts see this 1975 paper by Ecological Economist Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen: Energy and Economic Myths. Southern Economic
Journal, 41(3), pp. 347-381.
† Ecosystems include by definition a “systems age” approach requiring analysis and synthesis in observation, prediction and problem
solving and the inclusion of the bio-physical, including humans and hence human society, within the problem space
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10. Recommendations for Managers to
Increase Likelihood of Sustainability
Within three avenues for action always choose to:
1. Manage for productive systems rather than for their
outputs
2. Manage systems by managing their contexts
3. Identify what dysfunctional systems lack and supply
only that
4. Deploy ecological processes to subsidize management
efforts rather than conversely
5. Understand the problem of diminishing returns to
problem solving
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11. Sustainability as Reflexive* Process
(aka as a Continuously Unfolding Series of Paradoxes)
1. Sustainability is :
• An active condition requiring choice, not a passive consequence of doing less (p12)
• “The interplay between a continuously evolving state of nature and a continuously changing state of
mind”, not “a (static) ecological condition” (p23, P381 – see notes)
• Only assessable historically (p199)
2. The definition of sustainability must come from the values of the observer, it can’t come from
the “material world”; sustainability is not a “natural law” (p167)
• “The things we want to sustain have only the values we assign to them, which are (hence) transient,
variable and mutable” (p25)
• “What we might choose to attempt to sustain are (thermodynamically) unlikely configuration’ (i.e. far
from equilibrium states) and hence there will always be a cost of critical inputs that hold the systems
dynamically away from the (thermodynamically) dead state” (p335) Only we can judge whether the
cost of those inputs is warranted.
3. Any definition of sustainability needs to answer “of what, for whom, for how long and at what
cost” (p26)
• Sustainability is the process which “maintains or fosters the system contexts that produce the goods,
services and amenities that people need or value at an acceptable cost” (p26)
4. “Unsustainable practices can sometimes improve people’s well-being. (see notes for
example)”
• “This is part of the dilemma of sustainability. Intelligent and well-meaning people can review
indicators of sustainable and reach quite opposite conclusions about our future. Moreover, they
could all be correct.” (p81)
* Loosely based on ideas from Beck, U., Bonss, W., & Lau, C. (2003). The Theory of Reflexive Modernization. Theory, Culture &
Society, 20(2), 1-33. doi:10.1177/0263276403020002001
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12. Sustainability as Reflexive* Process
(aka as a Continuously Unfolding Series of Paradoxes)
5. “Our urgent need is to produce knowledge (of what constitutes sustainability) more rapidly
than the growth of unsustainable complexity” (p161)
6. “To be sustainable is clearly a delicate business. Furthermore, although none of the
elements of sustainability (monitoring, predicting and problem solving) can be left out, even
undertaking them all does not guarantee success” (p161)
7. “While social justice is part of sustainability, and that democratic systems appear to be the
best way of achieving that, it is irresponsible to allow populist demands to destroy the means
of production (i.e. the eco-systems within the biosphere)” (p413)
• Cost of additional complexity in solutions (e.g. as a result of increased public participation required
by democratic processes) may not lead to solutions which are better enough to justify the
incremental costs (p162)
5. Definition of sustainability of a community depends of discreteness of observation (p275-276)
• If community is between organism and landscape then “the difficulty (in defining the community) is in
the deep intangibility of community structure and the richness of the dynamics associated with that
structure”
• If community is between population and biome then the difficulty in defining the community is in
resolving the tension between the environmentally deterministic biome and the bio-feedback
processes which define population
* Loosely based on ideas from Beck, U., Bonss, W., & Lau, C. (2003). The Theory of Reflexive Modernization. Theory, Culture &
Society, 20(2), 1-33. doi:10.1177/0263276403020002001
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13. Bibliography
• Allen, T. F. H., Tainter, J. A., & Hoekstra,
T. W. (1999). Supply-side sustainability.
Systems Research and Behavioral
Science, 16(5), 403.
• Allen, T. F. H. (2003). In Hoekstra T. W.,
Tainter J. A. (Eds.), Supply-side
sustainability. New York: Columbia
University Press.
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14. Implications for Observation, Hence for
Prediction and Problem Solving
It is critical to understand the impact of observers choice of:
• Type of discreetness of observation
– aka determining significance of foreground vs. background (p168)
– Compare:
• Organism, Landscape, Population, Biome: all exist in the bio-physcial world at multiple
scales as defined by the observer
• Community: exists the bio-physical world at intersections of organism, landscape,
population and biome selected by the observer (p278)
• Biosphere: only exists in the bio-physical world at one scale
• Eco-system: Intangible, “bounded by the spatiotemporal extent of the cyclical pathways
of materials that flow around them” (p323) and hence can only be represented as
models
• Scale of observation
– Scope / extent – upside
– Fineness of distinction / grain – downside
• Example:
– As humans some types of discreteness and scales of observation are easier for
us comprehend – e.g. landscape at the scale we can walk through
• This reality will bias what we come to know, how we come to know it, and hence our
ability to predict and problem solve
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