Sustainability and the Cosmic Soup

Image by fdecomite via Flickr
By Randhir Hurburun

Introduction

Whether or not the world's climate is changing, and whether or not that change is man-made, our development is governed by the fundamental laws of science; we will not really run out of scarce resources, but given our present-day consumption trends they will eventually become diluted and transformed into forms that aren't economically viable to exploit. In other words, we will find it increasingly difficult to discover and harness natural resources which may be present in either in hard-to-find places or ever-diluted forms, while at the same time in the process of consumption we convert most of these into economically un-useful byproducts.

Most modern societies endeavor continuously to develop their economies and to improve living standards of its habitants, and if this advancement is driven by a pure profit motive, problems of sustainability will become more prominent.

But being the most advanced form of life on this planet, we are smarter than to allow ourselves to decay into a cosmic soup of uselessness with symptoms of unbearable pollution, environmental destruction, and fighting over scarce resources. This paper presents an outline of a high-level sustainable development paradigm, which will hopefully raise the level of environmental consciousness among its readers.

Entropy and why we are destined for cosmic soup

From a thermodynamics point of view, entropy is the inevitable tendency, for irreversible systems to move to a state of relative disorder over time. Energy cannot flow from an entity that has lower entropy than a higher one without external intervention. And the result is ALWAYS that when the energy does flow, the sum of the entropy changes between the two bodies is always positive - a net increase in the amount of disorder.

Applied to basic science, this is why smoke will dissipate and become diluted into the atmosphere, and CO2 molecules will not independently and spontaneously group into a certain part of the atmosphere. It is why a refrigerator needs electricity (external energy) to transfer heat from a cold environment to a warm one. And its why the universe in expanding and not spontaneously collapsing (entropy increases even for black holes - Stephen Hawking provided the mathematical proof of that).

And the consequence of increasing entropy is that it diminishes the system's ability to do useful work. In other words, after the system has reached equilibrium, every subsequent endeavor will incur a disproportionate amount of effort extract the same amount of useful energy/matter. That's a scientific fact, a cosmic given, and there is no way to ever reverse it.

So how does this apply to our daily lives, and what's it got to do with sustainability? Well, the principle can be applied to mankind's economic development, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries. We have made the most significant advances in mechanization and industrialization over the past century in all of known history. We have mastered the acts of extraction, refining, processing, distribution of basic goods and services to ensure the general well-being of human population, and then set about optimizing the techniques several times over to ensure higher and higher profitability. And when market penetration was saturated, we re-packaged it, invented different uses for it, sliced and diced it so we could reach more people in more ways.

But human development is not without subjugation to the laws of physical science and particularly to the phenomenon of entropy, that suggests, in an anthropological sense, that the conversion of energy and matter from one form to another must result in diminishing utility of (natural) resources. In the process we've burnt billions of tons of fossil fuels to meet the energy demands, without thinking of the speed of the natural environment's entropy changes.

When mankind 'concentrates' and transforms minerals and energy from nature to satisfy modern-day consumption trends, more often than not little consideration is given to the depletion or disposal factor (until recent times), and in the energy/material life cycle the disposal is inevitably chaotic and unordered (like fertilizer-bound phosphorous that is consumed by humans, passed through urine and ends up in the oceans, aluminum cans ending up in random garbage heaps, fossil fuel fuels being burnt and ending up as CO2 in the atmosphere). So in the name of economic development we've increased the entropy of the world in an 'unnatural' way with the result that we face the problems of sustainability of economically useful energy and matter.

With globalization accelerated by ICT in the past 3 decades alone, suddenly the whole world is in development frenzy; more extraction, more processing, and more profits. Information is ubiquitous and products are cheaper and more accessible. The world's huge and growing middle-class wants to follow a 1st world economic and developmental model, where material abundance is the objective and mass-production and hyper-selling are the means.

Generation Y are now more than ever connected in a global sense, and particularly in Third world countries, are epigones of western societies where convenience, abundance and consumption form the cornerstone of modern living. And the spiral of development continues, based on monolithic, profit-driven producers serving an environmentally-unconscious society.

We're smarter

All through history mankind has faced social and economic degradation, through economic recessions, epidemics, warfare and natural disasters. Being the most intelligent life form on the planet we have repeatedly survived and prospered, conquering all obstacles and then thriving, learning from our mistakes and moving ahead in leaps and bounds with renewed enthusiasm to take on the next challenge.

The danger of the environmental problems we face however, is that it's a slow boil process - it hasn't slapped us in the face, it's happening at a rate whose effect can only be seen over decades. Hopefully, we're smarter than to wait for a slap in the face in order to act. Momentum is gaining in the world to develop renewable energy sources, conserve biodiversity and to plan urban development with minimal environmental impact.

The development of modern economies based on Nash's equilibrium, that sustainable non-zero sum games leading to win-win situations for all economic stakeholders, customers and suppliers, competitors and allies alike, must now be extended to include the sustenance and prosperity of the environment. To that extent, sustainable development is based on three tenets: (a) conservation, (b) developing and engineering smarter business models, (c) ensuring that Father Profit always checks first with Mother Nature. This is the ethos for the new millennium and perfectly suited opportunity post-recession.

a. Conservation

We are constantly reminded of the simple dogmas pertaining to conservation - re-use, recycling, changing to fluorescent light, reduction of meat consumption etc, and these messages really haven't changed much in the last decade, except for its seriousness and sense of urgency following the recognition of unnatural global warming and its impact on the natural environment. And while there are many prescriptions on what can be done to reduce consumption both of energy and manufactured goods, it would serve well to understand better why it makes common sense from an entropy perspective.

Secondly, we should learn from natural systems that consume and dispose at rates that ensure internal balance and synergistic hand-offs between elements; that natural selection, adaptation and periodic re-generation ensures not only sustainability but constant improvement on its predecessor.

From an economics point of view, for scarce resources the supply and demand balance will drive the substitution effect, while technological advances will result in smarter ways to extract minerals and fossil fuels profitably at progressively lower concentrations. Not to mention the possibility of disruptive technologies/industries that may completely obliterate dependence on some of these minerals altogether. This consumption, followed by 'deep engineering' and then re-invention needs to be a repetitive process. Hopefully, going forward, we are unified in purpose, smarter and more connected - that we don't have to resort to primitive behaviors of fighting over scarce resources, because that is a negative sum game - everyone will lose, eventually.

b. Smart business models

Thanks primarily to the ICT revolution, traditional business models are exposed to a whole new global playing field, and supply chain fragmentation is the current opportunity in which resources are dispersed, processing is distributed, ICT is the enabler and knowledge is the currency. Large enterprises can increasingly outsource significant portions of their business functions - not just helpdesks - even manufacturing, distribution and marketing - to a number of smaller independents that are geographically dispersed and with a smaller operating scale.

This has the benefits of:

• Less concentration of activity and possibility of complementing energy demand with local production, leading to lower operating and distribution costs;
• Lower scale operations centers that are more reactive and are more energy and resource efficient;
• Possibility of customization of products to address modern-day needs for individuality and to more accurately address specific cultural/regional requirements;

This concept is perfectly suited to renewable energy business environment, given the constraint that production capacity is fairly limited by the currently available commercial technologies; i.e. most facilities are relatively small producers in the energy supply chain. Commercialization is rapidly gaining momentum for renewable energy production (solar/wind etc), consumption (electric cars, heat pumps etc), in recent times storage (NaS batteries), and also transportation and distribution (e.g. Hydrogen, pressurized water).

But in order for it to revolutionize the energy industry (the same way ICT transformed traditional business models in the past 2 decades) then it's also in the "stringing together" of the fragmented supply chain that will create value for all stakeholders and will ensure mainstream adoption of these technologies.

c. Measuring Profitability

In an ideal world that took serious action about sustainability and environmental preservation, orthodox measures of viability and profitability are measured in terms of 'Envirodollars' - traditional dollars multiplied by a sustainability factor. That would be a true measure of a company's past performance and potential future earnings, of value creation for the economy and the natural world that it operates in. This isn't about how much the company has donated to a charitable organization involved in sustainability - it is a measure of the company's direct performance in financial and environmental terms.

However, in the short to medium term the paradigm is unlikely to change and dollar-cent bottom line measures are what make or break companies and entire economies. There is even sufficient doubt in the business and academic community about whether or not climate change is man-made, giving the public enough reason to remain skeptical about whether any change is necessary and polluters enough grounds to continue tongue-in-cheek.

What we can do however is learn through educating our employees and families is that environmental consciousness has the multiple benefits of improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring long-term viability of the organizations. Post the latest economic recession and with ICT enablement, the next opportunity for companies will be those that develop distinct competencies in harnessing renewable energy and utilizing natural resources, and reflect performance in a truly triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit).

Conclusion

In order to achieve true sustainability while at the same time developing better living standards for all, we need to live smarter, cleaner and reduce our impact on the natural environment, and become conscious of the three principles (a) conservation of energy and resources (b) working and living smartly (c) measuring profitability in terms of economic and environmental impact. Ultimately we can achieve sustainability by protecting and propagating our natural environment - the only force that is capable of absorbing 'random' mineral and energy and spontaneously creating something beautiful, life-giving and eternal.

Randhir Hurburun
BScEng (Chem), BCom, MBL (Cum Laude)
mail@hurburun.net

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