Failure to integrate real-world dynamics

Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present: Review of a report to the Club of Rome (Part #6)

Neglected consideration of uptake: Curiously, and yet only too appropriately, the existential wasteland of that despair mirrors only too well the wasteland being engendered by a "limited-to-growth" perspective -- well-noted in both the 2052 Report and the Royal Society report. The wreckage to the planet is being echoed in a degree of wreckage to the individual and collective psyche -- a strange echo of Newtonian "action and reaction". This is tragically evident in the wreckage to US society engendered by soldiers returning from the wreckage they have engendered in Afghanistan and Iraq -- having been effectively "trained" for terrorism within the Homeland, as Osama bin Laden would have wished.

As noted, the Club of Rome is explicitly choosing to base its future strategy on Limits to Growth. As remarked above, it remains curious that the systemic thinking, underlying that approach and that of the 2052 Report, has been totally unable to factor in the lack of uptake of its insights. What in hindsight was then inherently inadequate in the Limits to Growth modelling -- in the failure to take account of that process of uptake, as is notably a preoccupation with any technological innovation? Was there some kind of expectation that, like Moses coming down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments of the Abrahamic traditions, that popular acceptance would be automatic?

The Biblical record of the reception of those commandments (Exodus 32:19) would seem to be in accord with the fate of any such "recommendations" at this time. This failure is liable to be perpetuated in the fate of the 2052 Report. The key figure in the 1972 report (as with Moses) has recently made it clear that he considers that it is too late to take reasonable account of its insights -- and presumably, by implication, those of the 2052 Report. Dennis Meadows recently declared:

In 1972, and for some time after that, I was very optimistic. I was naively optimistic. I honestly believed in what I called the "doorstep model of implementation." That is to say, you do a piece of work. You learn the "truth." You lay it on the decision maker's doorstep, and when he comes out in the morning, he finds it and changes his behavior. (Megan Gambino, Is it Too Late for Sustainable Development? Dennis Meadows thinks so, Smithsonian.com, 16 March 2012).

However, as a scientist, he could change his mind again -- as with James Lovelock (Ian Johnstone, 'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change, World News/msnbc.com, 23 April 2012). The timing of both declarations is strange just prior to the launch of the 2052 Report by Jorgen Randers. Perhaps a feature of the irresolutique? What then of the future strategy of the Club of Rome? Given that proselytizing religions have considerable experience of doorstep interaction, was nothing to be learned from the resultant uptake of their insight?

Engagement with disagreement: As noted above, Limits to Growth evoked considerable controversy. The 2052 Report notes:

For the critics, and they were in the majority, LTG was seen as misinformed and even dangerous hackwork predicting immediate collapse to the current social order because of resource depletion. During the first twenty-five years after its publication, no one seemed to pick up the real message of the study, which is that overshoot is a likely consequence of slow societal decision making, and that once in overshoot, there is only one way out, namely, decline back down into sustainable territory. (p. 307)

In a sense it is only recently that People and the Planet and the 2052 Report have dared to engage again with the consequences of population increase -- but both of them in a more circumspect manner than in 1972. What is curious, as discussed in the review of the Royal Society report, is the inability to take account of "disagreement" as a factor necessarily central to the presentation of any new recommendations. In a global society, influenced to a high degree by faith-based governance and "disagreement" with its "commandments", the capacity to deal scientifically with "disagreement" regarding scientific pronouncements would seem to be no greater than at the time of Moses. The naive assumption is that "right" is might, and that since the science is necessarily "right", its conclusions must necessarily take precedence. This continues to be the assumption of many religions.

The inability to reframe systemically the disagreements evoked within the climate change debate makes questionable any presentation of recommendations that fails to integrate the probability of disagreement with them. As discussed separately, no use is made of argument mapping techniques -- although related systemic depictions have been explored to clarify the strategic options and constituencies in Afghanistan, as discussed separately (Mapping the climate change context of Copenhagen, 2010). Some such requirement would appear to be an essential requisite of any report that claims to be scientific -- but clearly is not.

The lack of learning capacity in this respect can be fruitfully highlighted by reference to a meeting of "young scientists" organized by UNESCO in May 1972, at which Aurelio Peccei, as founder of the Club of Rome, was present. This offered extensive criticism of the Limits to Growth report, and perhaps most notably:

Much the heaviest criticism of the model, however, was at the political level. Through its selection of five basic parameters which are purely technical, most participants felt that the model was not one which applied to the real world. The breakdowns predicted by the model if current trends continued resulted from the interaction of these five factors whereas breakdowns in the real world which were already apparent in the developing countries and which could be predicted for the future elsewhere could be argued to depend on quite other factors. Why, it was asked, were war, arms trade, colonialism and imperialism rejected as specific factors that might, and indeed already were, causing breakdowns? Why was the unequal distribution of resources, both between nations and within them, not included in the analysis? How could a model of this type, which specifically excludes those factors which are widely believed to be the root cause of global ills, be held by its inventors to be "a-political" ? On the contrary, therewas considerable agreement that the model was elitist (as evidenced by the use made of the recently published book) and that all assumptions were conditional on an unaltered status quo in world affairs: it was a "conflict-free" model of a world which, in reality, was torn by conflict. (Young Scientists: population and the environmental crisis, UNESCO, ED-72/Conf. Young Scientists/3, June 1972).

The point to be made is that considerations were articulated contrary to the focus of that methodology -- now reaffirmed in 2012 as providing the "overarching framework for action" by the Club of Rome. Claiming naively to be "a-political", no capacity has been developed to deal scientifically with contrasting policy perceptions. As argued in the review of the Royal Society report, such capacity is limited to what amounts to "scientific gerrymandering" -- designing the focus of a report to ignore contrary perspectives.

This is charmingly exemplified through the group of "friends" selected by the author of the 2052 Report to offer their future visions:

To help me avoid tunnel vision, myopia, and the obvious limitations in my knowledge about most aspects of the world, I asked a number of my friends and colleagues -- independent thinkers and writers -- to tell me what they were absolutely certain would happen before 2052. Most accepted the challenge with enthusiasm, even when they were told to constrain their "glimpse of the future" to 1,500 words and to keep within a field they knew well. You will find nearly thirty-five of these glimpses -- in full or excerpted -- in this volume (p. 27)

Seemingly to his great surprise and satisfaction " the glimpses were surprisingly free from contradictions" (p. 7). Arguably this is an indication that the selection ensured insufficient variety to be of relevance in cybernetic terms to engagement with the dynamics of the future -- in which discord is liable to be the name of the game.

As is so evident in the climate change debate, there is no sense of presenting the variety of views as a system which constitutes the dynamic with which governance is obliged to engage. In this respect, as noted by William Nordhaus, with respect to the general tenor of the recent exchange in the debate: I have the sense of walking into a barroom brawl (Steven T. Corneliussen, Climate wars continue in the New York Review of Books, Physics Today, 18 April 2012). Given that related issues are the preoccupation of the 2052 Report, how is it that over forty years the capacity to process contrary perspectives is so limited?

If the report is not completely ignored, is its reception to be characterized as a "barroom brawl"? Is this the nature of an "overarching framework for action"? Is it simply hoped that -- having "fixed" the fight -- the "big guys" will beat up the "little guys" and thereby prove that they are "right"? Is this the science on which governance of the next forty years is to be based?

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Failure to integrate real-world dynamics