1. Entropy, evolution, and the way-
down
Ernest Garcia (Universitat de València)
De-growth Conference
Barcelona, March 26-28, 2010

2. Limits to growth revisited
“Once the limits to growth were far in the
future. Now they are widely in evidence.
Once the concept of collapse was
unthinkable. Now it has begun to enter
into the public discourse –though still as
a remote, hypothetical, and academic
concept. We think it will take another
decade before the consequences of
overshoot are clearly observable and two
decades before the fact of overshoot is
generally acknowledged” (Meadows et al.,
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update,
2004)

3. Global Status of Ecosystem Services. 1: Provisioning Services
Service Subcategory Status
Food Crops
Livestock
Capture fisheries
Aquaculture
Wild foods
Fiber Timber +/-
Cotton, hemp, silk +/-
Wood fuel
Genetic resources
Biochemicals, natural medicines,
pharmaceuticals
Water Fresh water
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Synthesis Report

4. Global Status of Ecosystem Services. 2. Regulating and Cultural Services
Service Subcategory Status
Air quality regulation
Climate regulation Global
Regional and local
Water regulation +/-
Erosion regulation
Water purification and waste treatment
Disease regulation +/-
Pest regulation
Pollination
Natural hazard regulation
Spiritual and religious values
Aesthetic values
Recreation and ecotourism +/-
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Synthesis Report

5. World ecological footprint
2
1,21
1
World
ecological
footprint
0,49 (number of
planets)
0
1961
1965
1969
1973
1977
1981
1985
1989
1993
1997
2001
Source: WWF, Living Planet Report 2004.

6. Source: ASPO Newsletter, August 2005.

9. Apparently, both ways, sustainable development and degrowth could lead
to a steady-state situation: the line of population and resource use under
carrying capacity, which is similar in both cases.
But….
Pre-analytical visions:
- Nothing grows forever (ecology of populations,
Boulding, Daly)
- Nothing lasts forever (entropy, bioeconomics,
Georgescu-Roegen)
-These two visions open the way to two different lines of reasoning

10. Three elements of the steady-state:
Stock: to maintain constant at a sustainable level (sufficiency)
Throughput: to minimize (efficiency)
Service: to maximize (without limit)
Daly presented the steady state as sustainable development because he
believes that service can increase indefinitely (but this is a kind of
economic growth without growth in physical scale)
The D’Arcy Thompson analogy (growth and form) is interesting…
But: There is no upper limit to service? Can too much pleasure kill?
Psychology and anthropology are, at the end, the keys to explore the final
meaning of steady state
Psychology and anthropology or, in other words, human nature.
Evolution?

11. If we are truly beyond the limits, then de-growth is not an
option, but a fatality. And the only option is:
- chaotic, catastrophic de-growth (unsustainable degrowth?)
- ordered, even prosperous de-growth (sustainable de-growth?)
Lines to explore this issue:
- Human evolution: selective pressures under conditions of
scarcity (tragedy of the commons, evolutionary psychology)
- Historical and anthropological evidence (collapses,
Pascua/Tikopia, Toynbee…)
-- Philosophy (Hobbes vs Rousseau)
-- Sociology (institutional resilience, utopies as whole society
experiments) …..

13. Governance and complexity
Sustainability begins to refer, not to a
controlled development process
(sustainable development), but to some
criteria of adaptive flexibility, often alluded
by means of ecological analogies
(resilience, co-evolution) or by means of
engineering analogies (rubustness)
.

14. Post-development and alternative local development
Three common characteristics:
Accent on the local-regional, as suitable scale
for expressing resistances and arising
alternatives
Vindication of autonomy, as much in front of the
market as in front of the state
Insistence on cultural diversity (knowledge
based on experience and adapted to the case,
rejection of universally applicable models,
plurality of spaces for a multitude of
experiments)

15. A prosperous way-down
Descent (scale-down) is now inescapable, but it
does not necessarily mean falling into chaos.
Modern societies can choose:
“Precedents from ecological systems suggest
that the global society can turn down and
descend prosperously, reducig assets,
population, and unessential baggage while
staying in balance with its environmental life-
support system. By retaining the information that
is most important, a leaner society can
reorganize itself and continue making progress”
(Odum & Odum, 2001).

16. Die-off
Scaling-down implies a catastrophic collapse,
without the possibility of choosing another way.
Laws of energy and evolution determine the
outcome:
“We are genetically driven just like any other
animal. We have no mind other than the body,
and we lack behavioral choice.
The plague cycle is a vital component of the
evolutionary process and an essential
evlolutionary escape clause in the case of a
fertile, high-impact species like Homo sapiens”
(Morrison, The Spirit in the Gene, 1999).

17. Collapse
“A complex society that has collapsed is
suddenly smaller, simpler, less stratified, and
less socially differentiated. Specialization
decreases and there is less centralized control.
The flow of information drops, people trade and
interact less, and there is overall lower
coordination among individuals and groups.
Economic activity drops to a commensurate
level…”
(Tainter, The collapse of complex societies, 1995)
Compare it with the environmentalist programme: scale
down, slow down, democratize, decentralize… Maybe
the question is not so much the outcome as the costs of
the transition.

18. Utopian revival and social theory
Empirical analysis of the relationship between
population, resources and environment leads to
conclude that natural limits have been surpassed.
Descent, then, is inevitable. The question is how
social change and social organization are going
to be shaped in that context.
As it happened at the beginnings of the industrial
society, the first years of the third millennium are
registering a sprout of utopian views.
Suitable sociological theories are still lacking.