Is Sustainability Governable? Definitely No

Bruno Caudana	e-mail: b.caudana@ieee.org
Softech 	e-mail: softech@tin.it

(This paper was accepted, at abstract level, and then rejected, at draft level, as ideological stuff by the European Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy at ECEEE 1995 Summer Study: "Sustainability and the Reinvention of Government".   Reviewer's notes and author's replies are reported in appendix.)

1. SYNOPSIS

Darwinian evolution, characterising any Sustainable biological environment, challenges the Plan idea of any Government notion.   These perspectives seem antinomic.   Local rationality often contrasts Global rationality.

2. ABSTRACT

Common figures depict a rich North (20% population, 80% resources) against a poor South (80% population, 20% resources).  A physical principle says: if there are potential differences, flows and resistances arise to search system equilibrium.   If we limit our analysis to this two-pole system bound by limited resources in some way, three cardinal equilibrating scenarios emerge: (a) Northern Lifestyle Extension to Everyone [multiply by 4 current environment load]; (b) Equal Resource Share [multiply by 4 current population load of Northern countries without expanding resource use]; (c) Conversion Efficiency Increase [perform 4 times better than now with an expensive complete inexperienced theoretical renewal of resource conversion technology].   All this if, optimistically, today's world population won't increase.   None of these equilibrium points seems achievable without explosive conflicts.   Current trend is clearly towards (a) direction.   Furthermore, humans, as every bio‑organism undergoing natural selection, tend to over‑reproduce, invade every ecological niche and differentiate, as Darwin pointed out.   Biological struggle for life and offspring random variation (notions hopefully on the fingertips of ecosystem speaking people) are the basis of evolution and production of biodiversity.   This biological evidence challenges any Plan idea embedded in the notion of Government.   This antinomy produces contradictions that reflect on actions taken.   Thus, for instance, maintaining high regional differences may generate unsustainable tensions; but migrations of humans, or migration of employment chances in the opposite direction, may generate unsustainable tensions as well, from a Good Government point of view.   What seems rational from a global point of view becomes impracticable from the local one, and vice versa.   Conflicts anywhere seem unavoidable.   A fundamental rethinking of universalised ethics notions like Common Good, Rights, Democracy, Sustainable Development, Directed Ecology, etc. seems mandatory too.   Misunderstandings at this level may produce inconsistent illusions and unexpected results.

3. INTRODUCTION

This contribution is not aimed at giving answers.   For this I apologise.   I have no answers.   Rather, here I try to raise some general (may be generic and not pertinent) questions about Sustainability and its government.

The term Sustainability is quite ambiguous, in my opinion.   Possibly, it could be formulated as the problem of finding a stable way to avoid penury for humanity without destroying the survival conditions.   This formulation makes some implicit assumptions that are far from being self-evident. That is:

(a) Humanity is a species, and the most important one.   Any care must be devoted to preserve it.
(b) Humanity is somehow separable from the environment.   The environment is made to guarantee its existence.   So, environment must be preserved for its benefit.
(c) Humanity, as a species, should not vary or extinguish.
(d) Humanity has Rights.
(e) Conflicts are avoidable in principle and evil in nature.
(f) There are good and bad environments.   Nature is mother and we are here to preserve or regain some sort of Eden garden. 
(g) There is a way to establish the Common Good.   
(h) Ethics exists independently of individuals' behaviours.   There are things that should and things that should not be done independently of circumstances.
(i) There is a Finality in what surrounds us.

These assumptions, far from being global truths, should better be considered as local desires.
Other statements may tell another story and fit better with both natural history and typical behaviours.   That is:

(a) Humans are multicellular beings like many others.   No species and no rank of importance are needed for evolution to take place.
(b) The environment is the place where human interactions occur and the result of those interactions.  The environment is indifferent to the existence of humanity as it is indifferent to anything.
(c) Humanity is an abstract term denoting contingent similarities among organisms.   These human organisms may or may not differentiate, diverge and extinguish in the future as their ancestors did in the past. 
(d) Rights are something like an optical illusion of the nervous system of some organisms.   They are of the same nature of  desires.   { 1 }
(e) Conflicts are the normal interaction activity and are unavoidable.   They can only be redirected to different targets as a function of  local value hierarchies.   Value hierarchies of different interacting actors may be not compatible.
(f) There is no good or bad environment in abstract.   Environment may be suitable to someone sometimes and may be hostile to others.   Predator-Prey dynamic can describe actors' interactions.
(g) Only relative local notions of Good are definable.   That is Local Preferences.   Any empty space tends to be occupied regardless of any global notion of Good or Evil.
(h) Ethics is only an abstraction of concrete historical behaviours of individuals moved by desires.   There are not things that should be or should not be done beyond Local Preferences, if a decision may be taken: that is if the system, where behaviours take place, has physical degrees of freedom.
(i) There is no Finality in what surrounds us.

As everyone can see, Sustainability is an abstract notion implying a global point of view.   Unfortunately, actors that interact in any environment always have only a local point of view and behave accordingly.   The switch from a local point of view to a global one is far from being plain and self evident, especially when local rational interests collide with supposed global ones.   But global points of view always have to be consistent with local ones to translate into actions.   This is precisely the problem of the Common Good definition.   History shows that agreement has never been reached on that subject.

Common figures depict a rich North (20% population, 80% resources) against a poor South (80% population, 20% resources).   Some figures seem to confirm these common assumptions.  USA GNP per capita is 65 times higher than China's, 72 times than India's.   USA energy consumption per capita is 32 times higher than India's, 12 times than China's.   These figures are averages of large numbers.   Hence they are affected by large inertias and they smooth even higher differences.

Obviously, North and South should not be taken in a strict geographical sense.   Rather, they mean different resource accessibility at any given time, for whatever historical reason.   Even within the same geographical area.   More and more, they are becoming a metaphor of Rich and Poor.

This dichotomy may be represented as a potential difference field.   Like in any potential difference field, flows tend to establish from higher potential areas towards lower potential areas.   Since this sketch is mostly a qualitative representation of complex facts, flows and resistances may be of many kinds.   For instance migrations may be viewed as flows that reduce potential differences.   Intolerance may be viewed as a resistance somehow function of the flow intensity.   Job migration towards lower labor-cost areas may be an other kind of flow.   Protectionist policies, inherited local legal-social constraints or fear of unemployment, may be an other kind of resistance.   The landscape is further complicated by subjective sensations and lack or distortion of information.   Thus these interactions are not as easily representable as a simple physical model.   Since actors moving on the scene have their own distorted (local) visions of facts and move accordingly, predictions  always are quite uncertain and the result of planned actions often unexpected.

Anyway, a general statement may be drawn from this representation: if potential differences reduce, then flows reduce accordingly and their effects may be less disruptive.   In a word, the system may become more stable, and, in a sense, more Sustainable.   In the next topic I will briefly discuss some scenarios for potential difference reduction.

4.   THREE CARDINAL SCENARIOS

The image that depicts a rich North (representing a 20% of the world's population and using an 80% of global resources) against a poor South (representing an 80% of the world's population and using a 20% of global resources) is only an arbitrary over-simplified bipartition of far more complex situations.   Obviously, it is only a qualitative indication and not to be taken too literally.   Anyway, it gives an agreed representation of the order of magnitude of the average differences existing between two paradigmatic situations of large amounts of population.   The potential difference field image given above is a qualitative sketch too, but it can be useful to give some ideas of the dynamics.

If, by hypothesis, we consider a steady population, three equilibrating cardinal scenarios may be drawn, acting on the following aspects of the resource use problem:

(a) Resource use expansion 
(b) Resource use share 
(c) Resource-to-need-satisfaction conversion efficiency 

4.1 - (a) Northern Lifestyle Extension to Everyone 

This scenario considers an extension of Northern lifestyle to every inhabitant of the world.   That would mean to increase the environment load by a factor 4.   Notably: fossil fuel use rate 4 times higher, current human‑produced pollutants 4 times higher, etc.   That would produce an environment load equivalent to the load of a population of 22 billions having lifestyles proportional to current mix.   If current resource use shows noticeable effects on resource stock and on Earth ecosystem in the direction of instability, then an increase in resource use is unlikely to produce more stability.   More probably it would increase oscillations.

4.2 - (b) Equal Resource Share 

This scenario considers a hypothetical resource redistribution, so that each inhabitant of the world could have access to an equal resource fragment.   The overall resource use remains constant.   That would mean to multiply by 4 the population load of  Northern countries without expanding their resource use.   For instance, a country like Italy should expect 3 immigrants per Italian, without expanding the building stock, with the same hospitals, schools, etc.   Frictions emerge almost every day now, with  only 2 million immigrants against 58 million Italians (approximately 0.034 immigrant per Italian).   Everyone can imagine probable reactions.

4.3 - (c) Conversion Efficiency Increase 

This scenario considers a consistent enhancement in resource conversion technology so that the same needs and living standards considered appropriated for a developed country would be ensured by only a fraction of current resource use.   That would mean to be able to do 4 times better than with current conversion technology, on average.    That, in turn, would mean, for instance, to obtain 4 times as much industrial production as now per input factors, etc.   In a word, it would be necessary an expensive complete inexperienced theoretical renewal of resource conversion technology.   And nobody might guarantee that it could work.

Let's make a historical consideration that should give an idea of the economic-engineering complexity of such a thing.   Since first oil shock in 1973 (approximately 20 years), USA energy consumption per capita has decreased from 10.8 [TCE/hab year] to 9.7 [TCE/hab year] [TCE is Tons Coal Equivalent] (La Découverte 1994).   That is: if  we adopt the variation of energy quantity necessary to maintain a USA lifestyle as a measure of resource‑to‑need‑satisfaction conversion efficiency variation, then we find a 10% conversion efficiency increase during last 20 years in USA.   We should obtain a 75% increase from our hypothetical technological revolution to reach the target.   During the same period all other countries have even reduced their conversion efficiency or have increased their needs.

Table 1.  Comparison of Per Capita Energy Consumption in some countries 
(data from: L'état du monde 1994, La Découverte)

Country	TCE per capita  year '70	TCE per capita  year '90	Trend to reduce (‑ sign) or increase energy consumption compared to 20 years before	
USA	10.81	9.73	-10.0%	
Canada	8.86	9.93	12.0%	
UK	4.88	4.97	1.8%	
France	3.83	3.89	1.7%	
Japan	3.79	4.11	8.6%	
Italy	2.64	3.63	37.6%	
Brazil	0.44	0.75	71.7%	
China	0.35	0.78	123.6%	
India	0.14	0.30	118.8%	

The fact that those who used less energy 20 years ago tend to increment their energy use, is a clear indication that a consistent increase in resource conversion efficiency at global anthropic level is quite difficult.   I remember that these figures are averages of large numbers.   Hence they represent large complex phenomena and strong tendencies, very hard to modify.   { 2 }

Another hypothetical example.   Let's suppose that Electronic Highways might completely cancel any transportation need.   Such revolution in transportation would roughly increase global energy conversion efficiency by a factor of 1.5 or 2 in not less than 20-30 years.   A more realistic estimate speaks of a 20%‑30% reduction of transportation demand, equivalent approximately to an increase factor of 1.1 in conversion efficiency.   Quite far from a factor 4.   But from another point of view, it might induce such unpredictable effects on our lifestyles (employment/unemployment, demand/offer of goods, etc.) that any reliable forecast or planning seems unimaginable.

5.   A NOTE ON THE FINITE-INFINITE RESOURCE DEBATE

I have no conclusive arguments to affirm that resources are limited or unlimited.   Abstract considerations on convertibily of matter into energy and on invention ability or adaptation capacity of every bio-organism (and notably humans) seem to give credit to those who speak of nearly unlimited resources.   The nature of flow of our existence (we are born and we die, we eat what is born and dies) suggests that resources are inherently cyclic and should be regarded as a circular flow of transformations, whose entropy increase can be minimised in some way.   

Biological organisms, subject to Darwinian evolution by means of natural selection, seem very appropriate devices to carry on such process of minimisation.   Artificial Life research on Genetic Algorithms (GA) (Holland, 1975), which mimic Darwinian evolution, shows that these algorithms are very efficient general purpose recursive algorithms, able to optimise even very complex non linear functions, subject to very complex non linear constraints.   They can even work with varying objective functions subject to varying constraints.   Maybe it's not by chance that biological organisms are very efficient collectors of solar energy (e.g.: biomass may be regarded as a very efficient self‑reproducing solar collector with storage capacity).   All biological organisms, merged in their environment, show a very well fitted energy balance.   Through food chains they can even give the impression of locally reduce entropy (e.g.: wood grown in years can be burned in minutes; a donkey grown in years eating biomass can be used as a source of mechanical work and eaten in few days by some humans; some bacteria can concentrate or transform chemical components or catalyse reactions;  etc.).   Of course it's just an impression, since they all use solar energy, directly or indirectly, to perform their concentration processes, thus increasing entropy anyway.   

However, common sense considerations suggest that some limitations to resource use can be noticed.   For instance, the world appears to be full of bounds: the earth surface is not unlimited, the reintegration rate of fossil fuel stock is currently far slower than its use rate, food chain balances seem fragile, the solar energy flow is unalterable by our actions, etc.    These considerations suggest that saturation and penury problems may arise somewhere.   As a consequence, competition for resources may sharpen.

Maybe the finite-infinite resource question is ill posed.   Perhaps a better formulation of this question is to ask if the flow of resources (or better: the flow of the associated benefits of their transformations) can be unlimited or not; and if the variation of this flow over time can be unlimited or not.   That is to ask if the quantity of usable resources per time unit (e.g. the resource conversion capacity per time unit, the new resource invention capacity per time unit, the adaptation capacity per time unit, the socio-technological acceptance per time unit, etc.) can be unlimited without provoking destructive effects on its users.

This may be a new formulation of the old question to which rev. Malthus practically gave a negative answer (Malthus 1789,1826).   That is the question if the growth of resource availability may be compatible with the growth of population to avoid penury.

5.1 - Entropy and stock/flow resources

Now we can give a fundamentally new answer to this question, respect to those possible at Malthus' time.   The fundamental limit to the infinite availability of resources is posed by the second law of thermodynamics  associated to the irreversibility of biological processes and of other known thermodynamic processes.   

The second law of thermodynamics states that, in a closed system, no cyclic process can completely convert thermal energy into mechanical work, when looking at the system from a macroscopic point of view.   A fraction of the energy involved in the process always degrades to a lower temperature state.   Hence, a temperature difference is necessary for a thermodynamic process to take place.   In a closed system, where hot and cold sources are not of infinite capacity, this ends in a lower temperature of the hot source and in a higher temperature in the cold source, up to thermal equilibrium.   The result is a progressive irreversible degradation of differences towards a steady state, corresponding to thermal death of the system.   The measure of the degradation state of the system is called entropy.   It is low when there are high differences in concentrations, it increases as long as diffusion reduces concentration differences and it reaches a maximum when all differences are reduced to homogeneity.    In other words, at the scale of the known Universe, processes occur only in the direction of diffusing concentrations, on average.   

As a consequence, we cannot expect, for instance, to grow our gains here now without higher losses of something else somewhere else, or in the future, or at expenses of a stock accumulated in the past.   Local concentrations can be restored only by means of devices that generate a pump effect at the expense of entropy increase at global level.   This is unavoidable in a fundamental physical sense.

Breaking a glass bottle increases entropy.   Even if we collect and recycle all the glass, we must use new energy to melt that glass and obtain a bottle again.   And we must use energy and materials to maintain those who melt the glass and give form to the bottle alive.   Just a simple process as breaking a bottle is an irreversible process ending in a loss.   Even if it increases GNP.   For the same basic reasons, we cannot expect to burn the same piece of coal twice.

At a scale interesting for biological organisms (in the sense that they could not survive to the radical transformations that produced the concentrations of materials during the formation of Earth), the Earth may be considered a closed system as for the concentrations of materials, while it is open almost exclusively to the energy flow coming from Sun's thermal decay.   Hence, Earth may be considered a closed system at solar system level for all physical aspects relevant to life, as we know it.

As far as we are organisms that get their conditions of existence from these diffusion processes, it may be useful to introduce a distinction between stock resources and flow resources.   In general, if we can use resources in a time scale independent of the time scale of their concentration process, then we can speak of stock resources.   Otherwise, if their availability time scale is strictly connected to their useability time scale, then we can speak of flow resources.  Hence the flow/stock attribute of a resource is always relative to the use point of view, including any device involved in its transformations.   For instance, the solar radiation, coming from the stock dissipation of the Sun, can be considered as a flow, as far as we cannot control Sun operation.   Its current invests us with a characteristic intensity shape that is independent of our control.   However, solar energy flow can generate stock resources on Earth through concentration processes performed by some natural or artificial devices (e.g.: coal and oil formation in geological times, wood growth in a shorter time scale, etc.; but also hydroelectricity produced by adjustable water storage plants with annual or daily periodicity, etc.).   

As for materials, most of them got their origin during the process of petrogenesis.   Thus, they generally are of stock kind, with the important exception of some uses of water.   To make materials useful and available, an energy dependent process is generally needed.   Moreover, the Earth surface and atmosphere may be considered a flow material, since they cannot be concentrated and then used in a time independent way.

Another useful notion is the accessibility of an energy source.   For an energy source to be accessible, we must use, directly or indirectly, less energy than we can get from that source to make it available where it is needed.   Otherwise our effort would result in pure dissipation without any energetic benefit.

Both the accessibility notion and the distinction between stock and flow resources are of fundamental importance for the discussion on Earth resource limits.   These notions were introduced by Georgescu‑Roegen in the foundation of its bio-economy (Georgescu‑Roegen 1971, 1975).   

5.2 ‑ Some considerations on available entropy patrimony 

We must look at three main aspects connected to entropy increase that are relevant at human scale: Energy Sources, Materials' Sources and Waste Sinks.

If we simply look at the entropy patrimony represented by the flow of solar energy fraction available to the Earth from now to the expected Sun death (5 thousand million years) the problem of resource limits seems of no practical relevance for humans of 1995.   Unfortunately solar energy comes as a diffuse fine rain and not as a wide steep waterfall.

But if we look at the correlation between world's human population increase and the consistent use increase of accessible stock energy and stock materials during last 2‑3 centuries, we should ask if and how all this can be sustained.   Furthermore, since stock energy use adds to the basic flow of solar energy, we should consider that current world's population magnitude may be strictly tied by indirect, yet indissoluble, chains to the availability of that kind of stock energy use.   As basic flow of solar energy, I mean the solar energy fraction captured, transformed and accumulated by that complex and delicate mechanism embodied by the biological system of the Earth that, among other things, supported the evolution of humans.

Considering humans' attitude to increase in number and to perceive near pleasures and displeasures with more intensity than far ones in an intrinsically non‑linear way due to finite life duration, my opinion is that stock resources needed to their survival practices and metabolism will not last very long.   Anyway duration is not very important here.   It is important to notice that the duration is finite and the process irreversible.

5.3 ‑ Nuclear reactions as fundamentally new stock resources.   Their intrinsic limits

The convertibility of matter into energy is a strong point in favour of those who speak of near infinite resources.   From a theoretical point of view, energy balance of nuclear reactions is very promising.  Nuclear reactions appear to be a stock energy source of a higher order, compared to ordinary chemical reactions.   However, nuclear reactions also appear to require chains of containment devices of a higher level of complexity, compared to burners and boilers.   This may mean higher resource dissipation.   

Nuclear reactions have their intrinsic limits in the fact that their energy level is incompatible with biological organisms, and notably with operation of DNA, due to mutagenic activity of ionising radiations.    Hence the confinement necessary to make them compatible with current life may be of unavailable complexity.   I mean confinement in a broad sense, here: that is in a sense covering all aspects of a nuclear energy intensive use over long periods of time (physical, chemical, engineering, information processing, up to the socio‑economical, political and ethological level, and up to the capacity of handling catastrophic events and cumulative effects of waste storage).   These confinement needs may very early pose problems that we cannot even foresee now.   

The endless story of Chernobyl should teach.   It is exemplar of the kind of dependencies that can arise.   Chernobyl nuclear plant must go on even if it is deadly dangerous.   Simply, there are not resources to stop it.   Stopping it without substitution would mean death for many inhabitants.   Substitution is not available.   No substitution means an increasing lethal risk.   Chernobyl is just one case of a situation where the use of nuclear energy is at its very beginning (respect to the historical role it should play as a substitute of other stock sources) and now it represents only a very small fraction of the overall stock energy conversion in the world.   Chernobyl is a small scale metaphor of the strong dependency from stock resources.   

Besides, fissile fuel scarcity affects current nuclear energy production with fission technology.   Nuclear fusion for civil use is not yet available, and probably it will not be available in the next future.

Beyond that, it is unclear how a massive availability of stock energy of this confinement complexity might affect entropy increase of materials and food production.

Obviously, the debate on nuclear energy is too complex to be reduced to these few lines.   Anyway at this moment, nuclear energy doesn't seem that panacea it promises to be in theory.   In any case, it is not unconstrained.   Furthermore, nuclear reactions cannot be used to directly generate useful concentration of materials, at our scale. This fact makes us consider materials' entropy as a further independent problem.

5.4 ‑ Restoring concentrations by pump effect

Through mechanical or chemical processes, technology gives us the possibility to regain some useful concentrations of dispersed stock materials using energy.   This is the case when we recycle wastes, but also when we obtain copper plates from minerals.   From a low entropy increase perspective, the most interesting possibility is the regaining of useful concentrations of stock materials using flow energy, that is through solar energy in a more or less indirect way, since the overall energy balance of this process doesn't change the entropy increase normally due to Sun decay.   Among other techniques the most promising ones seem biological ones.   However, energy costs for extracting copper from copper minerals are far lower than those for extracting it from the sea water, for instance.

At some extent we can also restore environment degradation at the expenses of energy dissipation.

However, for the basic reason that we cannot build materials from energy in a useful way at our scale, we must take into account entropy of materials and entropy of energy sources in a distinct separate way.   In other words, reconcentration of materials cannot be carried out indefinitely, especially if we consider their useability related to human life time constraints.   Hence, dissipation of materials must be regarded as a further class of irreversible processes affecting our survival conditions.

In a first phase we can think to try to slow down the use of current stock energy: for instance with energy savings and energy cascadings.   Moreover, we can try to reach now inaccessible stock energy and materials using not otherwise usable solar energy in a more indirect form: for instance through some complex chains of biological organisms, like some hypothetical genetically manipulated bacteria able to extract and concentrate otherwise inaccessible hydrocarbons or other minerals.   This is a very exciting technological challenge.   In this way, for some time, we can hope to locally slow down the effects of entropy increase using biological statistical information processing to get useful concentrations of otherwise inaccessible stock energy and stock materials (for instance to reduce entropy of wastes).   Yet, even if possible, this is far from being a definitive solution to the limits of accessible resources.

I remember that I am now discussing the existence of a limit to resources and not dealing with engineering feasibility of different energy use strategies.

5.5 ‑ Asymptotic trend to solar energy flow

Unless new unimaginable Promethean inventions or massive use of the new type of stock energy represented by nuclear reactions in their various forms, not very resolutive because of the problems discussed above, we encounter the limit of the solar energy flow, made it available to our uses through the so called renewable sources (hydraulic, annual biomass, photovoltaic, solar heating, wind, etc.).

Considering human evolution and the consistent concentrated dissipation of stock energy (million years of fossil fuel accumulation burned in less than 2 centuries), the key point is whether humans have learned more efficient entropy increase minimisation techniques (relying on solar energy flow only) than those discovered by biological chains not affected by human use of stock resources.   

In other words, we should ask if there exist, and if we can induce, a consistent leap in global efficiency maximisation of solar energy use, compared to the maximisation performed by current biological chains not affected by human use of stock resources.   Looking at the engineering marvels of biological machines (of which we are one of the examples), compared to those produced by humans, I am not too confident in this acquired ability.   Hence, I suspect that our evolutive success is extremely ephemeral (in an evolutive time scale, of course) and our statistical survival chances strictly tied to stock energy and stock materials' use.

Without stock energy use and with a consequent progressive reduction of stock materials' use, the trend is the readaptation of human population magnitude to the usable solar energy fraction.   Considering history of evolution and entropy minimisation capability of biological organisms due to the natural selection mechanism, we cannot expect, in the long run, a human population magnitude and density very far from that of Neolithic or archaic agricultural economies, in my opinion.   Maybe with cellular phones and Virtual Reality, but not with very different numbers.

5.6 ‑ Limits to growth trends

We can use stock energy now (e.g.: fossil fuels) to perform flow operations (e.g.: to live, that is a final synthesis of flow operations), but we cannot expect not to pay it in the future, because of the entropy law.   So we can grow now as a function of stock energy use and stock materials' use,  both affected by irreversible degradation.   This is a thing that many seem to forget when they speak of expansive or even steady state economies, more or less affected by periodicity.   The first ones think it possible the perpetual motion of first kind: that is to perform against the first law of thermodynamics, corresponding to create matter or energy.   The second ones think it possible the perpetual motion of second kind: that is to perform against the second law of thermodynamics, corresponding to be able to use the same energy and matter in a cyclic way without degradation.   Both these conjectures are possible because both brain abstraction capacity and language can describe facts ignoring some constraints of physical world.   The activity of constraining these degrees of freedom to fit with facts is a main duty of the scientific thought, in my opinion.   It is scientists' art and craft.

Growing or steady state economies that use stock energy and stock materials are possible only if stock energy and stock materials continue to be available in some form and if their associated unavoidable wastes do not saturate or alter the environment more quickly than adaptation capacity of humans can track it, if the destine of humanity is a concern.   Even cleaning increases entropy.   So all environment-cleaning activities that use stock resources are a myth.   They simply move the problems from place to place, globally worsening them a little.   At some extent we can choose to use our entropy patrimony in a more or less accelerated way, but we cannot expect to support current population magnitude and its survival conditions reducing stock resource use.   

Anyway, Georgecu-Roegen's formulation and discussion of the limits of the entropy patrimony available to biological beings are conclusive (Georgecu‑Roegen 1975, 1978).   At least, as long as Physics doesn't falsify the second law of thermodynamics and its associated irreversibility at a scale compatible with biological organisms.   That is: as long as someone cannot demonstrate that the perpetual motion of second kind is physically possible and accessible to biological organisms, as we are.

5.7 ‑ Intrinsic difficulties for energy efficiency increase and dissipation slow down at anthropic level

We can try to increase efficiency at system level, but there must be strong historical reasons for the anthropic system to be as it is now.   Of course, we can see a more energy efficient economy now, from a strict abstract engineering point of view.    However, we have to achieve that greater efficiency, from our starting point.   We should do that driving an anthropic system with an immense inertia that got its current dimensions, grew its mechanisms, evolved its regulation systems and its equilibria strictly tied to stock energy and stock materials' use over a relatively long period.   Most of us probably couldn't even physically survive without that use of stock resources.   Current anthropic system itself probably couldn't survive to a significant change in efficiency.   There are new skills that must self-form under uncertain perspectives.   There are old already formed skills that would become obsolete.   There are old long evolved still working regulation systems to elude; and there are new not yet existent regulation systems that should evolve and get in charge.   This is a process that generally takes tens of years, if not centuries, at the anthropic system scale.   We should not only rethink our cities and our industrial and agricultural systems, but also rebuild them following the guidelines of an inexperienced design of the whole system.   Maybe, we should change inhabitants of the world too.   

Previously mentioned efficiency increment of a factor 4 is just the minimum to maintain current dissipation rate of stock resources, given the hypothesis of a not growing world's population with the same benefits of current Northern populations.   The design of inverting the trend and slowing down the dissipation of our entropy patrimony really looks like a Titanic enterprise.   Even greater than that of stopping a train with 1 million wagons running at 500 Km/h by blowing into the opposite direction.   Besides, those who should do that are the same people that now take a car to go to play tennis or visit a wilderness centre.   It is far more probable the extinction of humans, or at least of those who dissipate more.   But they will struggle before dying.   

A change of energy efficiency at anthropic system level is not as easy and as linear as it would be, in theory, in a small well understood engineering system.   In the past, nobody has ever governed processes of even far lower complexity.   Humans have a history of dependence from stock materials, started from Palaeolithic, other than from stock energy (mainly due to artificial thermodynamic machines).   Hence, their current evolutive success seems incompatible with energy efficiency at system level, if for energy efficiency at system level we mean a slow down of the entropy patrimony dissipation.   

5.8 ‑ The irreducible asymmetry in the "why someone should not dissipate resources now" question 

The main question to ask always is why some humans of today should not choose to dissipate here and now all the stock resources they can or wish (for instance to get survival chances here and now).   And why they should  leave them to others elsewhere in an unforeseeable future instead.   I don't speak here of cases of actual choice indifference, like to prefer paper bags instead of plastic bags, if paper bags really are less resource intensive than plastic bags.   I speak of people that should choose what is locally perceived as pure loss now, for the benefit of an abstract future that is not achievable starting from that point and does not regard them.   

Vicious circles represented by 'population growth >> environment degradation >> poverty >> further population growth' and analysed by Dasgupta (Dasgupta 1995) are an example of how a solution of this problem is not achievable within those local dynamics without some deus ex machina.   Local vital interests collide with global ones.   When resources become rarer and farther, many hands become important for everyday duties, like collecting wood or food, getting water, etc.   Hence, a family with many children is advantaged compared to a smaller one.   However, overcrowding increases pressure on the environment.   This, in turn, demands even more children, producing an endless spiral.   A detailed analysis of peasant economies explaining their inclination to produce large families may also be found in Georgescu‑Roegen (Georgescu‑Roegen 1965).

From a more general point of view, experimentation of unconventional behaviours, colonisation of new lands and the invention of artificial thermodynamic machines may be considered as a sort of deus ex machina that broke similar vicious circles in our past, allowing expansion.   But recurrent famines, pestilences, wars and other catastrophic events may be interpreted as another complementary kind of deus ex machina, somehow self‑producing independently of local wishes.

In other terms, the "why someone should not dissipate resources now" question poses the insoluble problem of achieving pure gratuitousness to a statistically significant extent without self‑destruction.   It implies the acceptance of each one's own early death.   There is no possible persuasive answer to this question.   It reflects the fundamental physical asymmetry of irreversible thermodynamic processes of which we are products.   Even Norbert Wiener, eminent philosopher and father of cybernetics, cannot invoke other than a generic civil ethical attitude against the consequences of this abyss (Wiener 1950).   Many simply remove this abyss from consciousness, relying on linear reversible representations of facts.

5.9 ‑ A synthetic picture of global limits

These considerations lead me conclude that the limits of resources cannot be disregarded easily, especially because of our current dependencies from stock energy and stock materials.   These dependencies suggest that current world's population magnitude and survival practices are a strict consequence of stock energy and stock materials' use, without which they cannot be sustained in any way.   In other words, humans occupy an ecological niche represented by the existence of accessible stock resources.   They appear to be well fit to burn in a flash long time accumulated stock resources.   The dissipation of those concentrations results for humans in a concentration of living chances in a restricted time window.   Current geographical differences in resource use, as qualitatively depicted in the introduction of this paper, can be interpreted as a typical concentration process of life chances carried out by humans as biological organisms.

So the debate turns to how long it will take for these limits to reflect on human population dynamics in a sensible way, since, generally, we are mainly concerned in humans' destine.   The question is very hard to answer, because reliable non‑linear models of such complexity cannot be built for many reasons.

Wishing to try to give some orders of magnitude of these facts, here is a little what-if game with some curiosities that may condense in a perceptual synthesis the combination of global population pressure, resource needs, resource availability, soundness of needed technological skills, and time.

If we assume, as a check point, 22 thousand million humans (4 times current population) and current annual population growth rate of 1.7%, we should expect to reach that number in 83 years.   A population  of 22 thousand million humans makes an Earth average density of 148 hab/km2, that is slightly more than current EEC average density (146 hab/km2).   For comparison, here are some current average densities: China 124 hab/km2, India 267 hab/km2, Japan 334 hab/km2, USA 27 hab/km2, Brazil 18 hab/km2, Russia 8.7 hab/km2, Earth 37 hab/km2.

It took at least 30-60 centuries for humans to learn how to cohabit with agriculture in a relatively stable 'sustainable' way.   It took 250 years to learn how to take advantage of fossil energy, and we still have a lot to learn about that.   Can we expect to learn how to deal with food needs of 22 million humans or even less, in approximately 80 years?   I'd be very curious to see which revolutionary socio-technological marvel could do an equivalent of the transformation of both the Sahara desert and the Antarctica in a rice-field, or at least in a potato-field, in approximately 80 years.    Shall it be an agriculture comparable to the EEC one extended all over the world?   Shall it be technological stuff?   Shall it be Virtual Reality stuff?   Or shall it be a dramatic stop in population growth (or even a decrease in number), due to whatever accident?   Shall it be the appearance of a new predator of humans, perhaps some new uncontrollable micro-organism?   Shall it be 'pestilence'  or famine the most advanced technological frontier?

On the other side, if 5.5 thousand million humans now survive and still increase in number, then this could mean that resources (or theirs flows) have not yet ended, and that humans don't perceive them as near to an end.   Optimism seems very diffused.   Maybe pessimists tend to reproduce less than optimists and thus tend to extinguish.

It seems that humans, like any organism in a culture medium, are damned to explore the border lines of their own extinction, rather than plan their escape from penury.

6.   A DARWINIAN PERSPECTIVE

These considerations lead to a Darwinian perspective where each organism is a sort of biological experiment that explores the space of possibilities on a search for any suitable niche (Darwin 1859).

A concise and formal statement of Darwinian evolution, as well as a comprehensive introduction to Evolutionism and to the related debate, ranging from historical and philosophical considerations to scientific relationships with molecular biology, can be found in Patterson (Patterson 1978).   Key concepts of Darwinian evolution can be summarised in these five propositions:

(a) Reproduction.   Reproduction in populations of organisms produces descendant populations of similar organisms.
(b) Excess. The reproductive potential of the parent population always greatly exceeds the actual number of its descendants.
(c) Variation.   Members of a population always vary; much of this variation is transmitted to the descendants (heritable), and novelties (mutations) may appear.
(d) Environmental selection.   The space and resources of the environment are limited, so that there is competition within and between populations.   Individual possessing favourable characteristics, of whatever sort with respect to their environment, will tend to compete successfully and leave more descendants than other, less favourably endowed individuals.
(e) Divergence.   The environment varies with time and from place to place, for whatever reason, including the effect of population activity.

Computational experiments with Genetic Algorithms, started by Holland's seminal book (Holland 1975), and with algorithmic organisms (Ray 1991, Ray 1994, Mitchell 1994) show that the process of differentiation and speciation, as well as the need of exploring the boundaries of extinction on search for suitable niches, seem to be inherent to organism interaction, provided that: (a) the environment is bounded in some way, (b) the organisms generate similar (but not identical) organisms with some random variation, (c) the new organisms substitute their ancestors at least in part.

Thus, if resources are limited in some way and if humans give birth to random variations of themselves, then we should expect Darwinian consequences from their interactions.

(a) Differences among individuals and groups are continuously generated and sorted somehow independently of their wishes.
(b) Future states of the environmental system cannot be easily and reliably predicted, since all interacts with all and regularities of the system are weaker and more complex than, for instance, those of chemistry.
(c) Conflicts are unavoidable.
(d) Fitness function cannot be known in advance.   So, no Common Good is definable without explicitly specifying the group of beneficiaries and the procedures to identify them at any given time.
(e) Any action is experimental from the actor's point of view.
(f) Effects of taken actions can be locally unpredictable.

This perspective shows that biological processes are intrinsic generators of differences.   Hence any aspiration to eliminate or reduce differences arising from bio-organism interaction seem inconsistent from its biological roots and devoted to failure.   As a consequence, this perspective contrasts any action paradigm based on global rationality notions, as any plan idea embedded in the notion of government.   Any action, that has degrees of freedom within a set of constraints, cannot have any legitimacy beyond the one deriving from local desires of actors.   The notion of force to put an action into execution is primitive and illegitimable in abstract.   { 3 }

7.   GOVERNMENT NEEDS ETHICS, BUT ETHICS IS UNNECESSARY TO EVOLUTION

To overcome these legitimacy problems and try to give general validity to their desires, humans tried to invent normative ethics, perhaps through a process of abstraction.   Generally, it is necessary for normative ethics to work to postulate the existence of places without constraints.   So we can see the appearance of Hell and Paradise, Cyclic Reincarnations, Republics of Philosophers, Societies without Classes, Infinite Resource Environments, Sustainability, etc.   

However, that doesn't seem to work very well in constrained environments, especially when the definition of the boundaries of the group, where a set of ethical rules is in effect, tend to vanish.   Hence, the definition of a group, through criteria for excluding those who cannot be member of the group, may not be separated from the definition of ethical principles.   Perhaps, it's not by chance that wars ending in the definition of some sort of National Identity (or Ethnic Identity) periodically explode.   In constrained environments, conflicts resulting in the creation of a National Identity are somehow a complementary and unavoidable counterpart of ethical legitimacy.   But evolution always challenges these criteria and the unsteady equilibrium produced by ethics through these criteria.   Evolution works independently of ethics and its assumptions.

Ethical attitudes, with their associated legitimacy of desires, may be viewed as a product of evolution.   They may be considered a sort of statistical memory of successful attitudes along past conflicts.   They always are formulated and formalised by winners, since their competitors have been swept away, somehow.   However this says nothing about their effectiveness in different environments or situations.   As a consequence, ethical norms are unreliable tools to predict and track future states of a changing system, even though a rational planning activity would require this prediction to avoid being prone to subjective desires.   Perhaps, that's why ethical norms enter a turbulent phase in fast changing contexts.  We are in front of an asymmetry between evolution and ethical norms.   Evolution may explain in a straightforward way how ethical norms arise; in any case, it takes place anyway.   On the contrary, ethical norms cannot explain how evolution takes place without assuming myths and faith of some kind; moreover, they are subject to evolution.

Generalisation of desires made by ethics leads to points of view that frequently conflict.   { 4 }

Examples of rational behaviour from the LOCAL point of view:
(a)   To maximise the resource availability.   To minimise the effort to satisfy individual needs or local group needs.
(b)   To live as long and as in a good shape as possible.
(c)   To provide each one's beloved offspring the best chances for success.
(x)   Etc.

Examples of rational behaviour from the GLOBAL point of view:
(a)   To limit the population as a function of the finite available resources at any given time.   { 5 }
(b)   To share limited health care resource uniformly among all, considering medical cost/result balances.
(c)   To provide everyone chances for success on an equal opportunity basis, prizing those who increase the Common Good (but which entity establishes the meaning of the Common Good, the evaluation criteria, the selective procedures, etc.?)
(x)   Etc.

Thus, any strong Theory of Rights (of Common Good, etc.) tends to become a weak relative theory of conflicting desires, as long as from an abstract generality it tends to identify concrete subjects of rights, environments of applicability, physical constraints.

An example would perhaps better clarify these statements.   Let me briefly examine what I call a high environment tax & constraint policy.   It is commonly believed that applying strong environment constraints and high taxes against un-sustainable behaviours would produce a positive effect on global life-quality indicators (should life-quality notion be of any relevance to the uniqueness of the experience of living).

However, it is highly probable, for instance, that such a high environment tax & constraint policy, applied everywhere, would lead to an explosion of Mafias.   Just in the same way as the drug traffickers have prospered over a prohibition of narcotics mainly inspired with ethical principles and good proposals.   Moreover, such a policy may be unacceptable by those regions starting from less favourable conditions.   Hence, these regions may become hospital places for those Mafias.   As a consequence, it is probable that an increasing amount of resources should be destined to crime repression, that in turn could demand for further restrictions.   Up to chaotic explosions.

Conversely, a local application of the same high environment tax & constraint policy may accelerate a migration of production facilities towards those regions where taxes and constraints are lower.   This fact, in turn, may become unacceptable for the job-loosing populations.   Hence they will tend to abrogate such restrictions.   All this looks very like to Socialism of some years ago.   That is: Sustainability has to spread everywhere, otherwise it will die.

On the other side a laissez-faire policy may deteriorate the environment up to the point that it becomes harmful for its inhabitants.   { 6 }

What is better?   For who is it better?   What happens?  In most cases the question is unanswerable.   The interactions are always too complex to model, especially in the long run.   Besides, the non linearity of these phenomena may lead a model to over‑under-estimate some aspects.    In most cases there is nothing else to do than Try and Watch, which is an implicit negation of a neat rational government activity.   Furthermore, in most cases there will never be the chance to verify if another action would have been better (e.g. would have produced less conflictive situations, etc.), since there will never be the same initial conditions.   

Unfortunately, sustainable actions (or simply complex actions) belong to the vast class of phenomena affected by weak regularities, where experimental operations strongly interact with the object under study, and modify it.   Thus it is difficult to separate experiments from well-known routine activity, observations from plans and actions.   Any activity tends to become experimental.   This is why a bio-organism is a biological experiment that alters and is altered by its environment.

But even if predictions of consequences of our actions at system level would be possible and accurate, the unanswerable "why someone should not dissipate resources now" question always stays in the background.

If any rule about action planning activity can be drawn from this analysis, that should go in the direction of developing diffuse individual reactive attitudes and fast learning abilities, rather than in the direction of planning action strategies, in my opinion.   This is especially true when regularities of phenomena are weak.

8.   SOME QUESTIONS

How will Northern populations react in front of the perspective of massive unemployment?   How will Northern populations react in front of the perspective of loosing an expected lifestyle?   How will Southern populations react if, for legally imposed constraints in name of a Sustainable Common Good, they will have the sensation of probably never getting out of their penury?

How can the conflict between the presumed individual right to decide about each own offspring and a possible Common Good prescription, like limiting the world population, be handled?   How can it be handled  the Right of such offspring (meanwhile increased in quantity) to inherit the same presumed Rights of their parents?

How can the concept of Universal Rights be compatible with biological facts instead of being a mere abstraction (or hallucination) of the history of the nervous system of some (eventually relatively rare) bio-organisms?   How can humans be separable from the rest of other bio-organisms in a way that those criteria cannot be used to separate the supposed Humans the ones from the others?   Is it their genetic similarity?   But what is similarity?   How can similarity (and notably genetic similarity) be expressed in an unambiguous formal-legal way that doesn't contradict the fact that evolution takes place?

In any of these cases the weakest point is the notion of Right and of other ethical principles; and the most probable outcome is the elimination or modification of these notions and principles, as history shows.   Moreover, how can this non necessity of ethics legitimate or even consent the formulation of Government notions and of Sustainable notions that are independent from individual desires and passions?

In a democracy (but in any working form of association, I suppose), delegated deciders may take any decision up to the point that the decision represents the perceived local interests of the members of that association, in some way.   Otherwise deciders are removed and replaced.   I pay an insurance if I'm confident that I will be refunded in case of an accident.   I don't pay an insurance if I'm not persuaded of the risk or because it may contribute to the Common Good.   Even intentional martyrs have their own trade-off.

The Government of Sustainability seems to imply an ever more fine tuned co-ordinated control of the human population behaviour.   But which subset of the human population has the right to (or simply can) control such a collective object as the Human Population.   How can that be done without generating conflicts originated from establishing, judging and prizing-punishing good and bad behaviours of others?   Who is invested of such a legitimacy?   Should it be an investiture given to a Republic of Philosophers?   Should it be a Divine investiture?   Is something like a theology of the Divine Sustainability next to come?   Could it work?   Or, more modestly and materialistically, will all this be only an instance of the Darwinian struggle for life ending with the survival of the fittest, where both who are the fittest organisms and which are the global fitness functions are unknown in advance, or even indeterminate?

9.   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I'd wish to thank Prof. Lorenzo MATTEOLI, who introduced me into the arcana of the environmental debate some time ago.   I'd also wish to thank all those whom I exchanged opinions with.   The list would be very long.

10.   REFERENCES

La Découverte. 1994.   L'état du monde 1994.   Annuaire économique et géopolitique mondial.   Éditions La Découverte: Paris.

Malthus, T. R. 1789,1826.   An Essay on the Principle of Population.   Murray: London.

Wiener, N. 1950.   The Human Use of Human Beings.   (Chap. II - Progress and Entropy).   Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1971.   The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.   Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1976.   Energy and Economic Myths.   Pergamon Press: New York and Oxford.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1979.   Energy Analysis and Economic Valuation.   Vol. 45, 4:(1979).   The Southern Economic Journal.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1965.   "The Institutional Aspects of Peasant Economies: an Analytical View."   Subsistence Agricultural and Economic Development, chapter 4, pp. 61‑93.   Edited by C. R. Wharton jr.  (1969).   Aldine, Chicago.   [also in: Energy and Economic Myths (1976)]

Dasgupta, P. S. 1995.   "Demographic Growth, Poverty and Environment."   Le Scienze (Italian edition of Scientific American), Vol. LIV: 320:20-25 (1995).   Milano.

Darwin, C. R. 1859.   The Origin of Species.   Murray: London.

Patterson, C. 1978.   Evolution.   British Museum (Natural History): London.

Holland, J. H. 1975.   Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems.  The University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.

Ray, T. S. 1991.   "Is It Alive Or Is It GA?"   Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Genetic Algorithms, pp. 527-534.   Edited by: R. K. Belew and L. B. Booker.   Morgan Kaufman Publishers: San Mateo, CA.

Ray, T. S. 1994.   "An Evolutionary Approach to Synthetic Biology: Zen and the Art of Creating Life."   Artificial Life 1:179-209 (1994).   MIT Press Journals: Cambridge, MA.

Mitchell, M., S. Forrest. 1994.   "Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Life."   Artificial Life 1:267-289 (1994).   MIT Press Journals: Cambridge, MA.

Appendix:
Author's replies to reviewer's notes and rejection statement.

This paper has been rejected, after abstract approval, by the Designated Panel Leader (Panel 5: Energy policy for a sustainable environment) of  1995 ECEEE Summer Study, Françoise GARCIA, Ademe, PARIS, with the following rejection comment:

This is not a scientific paper, just a gathering of ideological views.   There are no results from a precise research having been done by the author.   There are no insights about energy use and energy efficiency.

I accept rejection as a free act of reviewers, but I confirm my opinions and I wish to reply to reviewer's comments.

Note on the final version of the paper as it appears here and as it would have been submitted to the 1995 ECEEE.

[  The version presented here is revised and corrected.   I also added some further considerations that I had not time to put in the draft version.   They are marked on the left side, like this note.   None of these changes affect the text commented by my reviewer. ]

Author's Replies

{ 1 } page 2
Rights are something like an optical illusion of the nervous system of some organisms.   They are of the same nature of desires.

{ Reviewer's Note }
Absolutely no!

{ Author's Reply }
I register my reviewer's absolute disagreement.   Hence, I suppose that she must have some scientific evidence of the absolute existence of Rights.   In my opinion, Rights cannot be explained beyond the fact that they are a recent historical formalisation of behaviour agreements whose origin is the generalisation of subjective desires (e.g. the desire of not to be killed and eaten, the desire of being protected by the group against the conflicting desires of other individuals or groups, etc.).   Rights always are emphatically proclaimed and easily violated when contrasting desires occur.   

Interesting scientific and philosophical problems arise when Rights are extended to individuals outside the presumed well-identified boundaries of a group.   This is the case when Rights are extended to other animals, as Animalists claim in name of the continuity of life processes.   However, if Rights (and notably the Right to Live, without which any other Right is nonsense) existed (for example: in the same sense as DNA exists), then food chains would be impossible.   As a consequence, without food chains, life, as we know it, wouldn't exist and Rights couldn't be formulated nor have any object of application.
 
This consideration  suggests that, for Rights to exist as an absolute non‑historical non-local non‑contingent property, the boundaries of the group must be fixed, and that an unambiguous procedure to identify the members of the group must exist.   For instance, it is necessary that humans be irreducibly different from other animals and have an invariant set of core properties that make them identifiable.   In other words, species need to be fixed for Rights to exist.

However, from a scientific point of view, fixity of species is difficult to conciliate with the fact that species evolve, adapting to environment.   Besides, this perspective cannot explain how novelty may appear, consolidate and extinguish; and it cannot explain how Rights and Ethical Norms can originate without invoking mystery, revelation or faith.   This is a respectable point of view.   Anyway it cannot be claimed a scientific point of view, unless we consider science from an integralist point of view, that is as an ancillary technique for the Major Glory of God.

Furthermore, since anything may be proclaimed as a Right of someone to do something, anything may become legitimable.   History shows that any desired behaviour, that was also physically possible (and even only plausible), has been locally legitimated and frequently adopted.   As legitimable, it often has been considered global or universal.   However, this universality is always obtained by omitting some details of the context that are arbitrarily assumed as irrelevant.   Integralists of any kind adopt this formalistic reasoning style.   Unfortunately for them, things always are far more complex and intricate than their schematic formal representation of facts.   This mitigates, at least in part, the disasters that they would be able to do.   In this sense, once more, biology shows its statistical robustness against all regressions to infinity that an Idealistic or Platonic world encounter at any corner.

The same considerations generally apply to other bio-ethical reasonings.

On the other side, desires have a precise substrate in neurophysiological activity.   They have a primary role in addressing our behaviours in activities like feeding, mating, etc.   From an evolutionist point of view, those who developed a set of adequate features (including desires and their abstractions, like Rights) may have reproduced and spread more efficiently in the long run, given their respective environment.   We are their products and it's not surprising that we feel these practices good and right.   But this says nothing about their adequacy in different environmental conditions nor about their absolute value.

The problem of establishing hierarchies of Values is intrinsically unscientific, if it claims to be disjoined from the neurophysiological activity of those who establish the hierarchy.

Anyway, wishing to be more precise, we should say that we have inherited from our ancestors not only notions like that of Ethical Norm and of Right, but also the ability to use anything as a weapon, including our ethical attitudes and those of our competitors.   Even food is normally used as a weapon.   It may be an exciting poetic vision that conflicts and wars (especially high cost wars) arise for philosophical or literary controversies, instead of for more mundane reasons like vital interests.   Since always are poets that narrate conflicts, they may influence our visions, especially when conflicts are far and do not interfere with our vital interests.   Perhaps a glance at four great thinkers of the past may help to mitigate an excessive faith in the absolute value of notions like Ethical Norms and Rights.

These considerations, among others more tied to neurophysiology, let me conclude that Rights, despite their claims of general validity, are local manifestations of the nervous system of some, eventually rare, organisms acting in the environment: just like desires and passions, even if far less diffused.   

All this reasoning has nothing to do with what I prefer, or even with what many may prefer.   I'm very pleased to live in a place where the so called Rights are respected.   However, I consider them a historical relative formalisation of desires.   I don't think that to forget how Rights originate may help to understand how things happen, from a scientific point of view.

Hence we can try to explain evolution, if we renounce to legitimate our actions beyond our subjective desires and passions.   Otherwise, we can try to legitimate our actions and behaviours from a global point of view, but we must renounce to explain how evolution takes place and how Rights and Ethical Norms originate and modify.   Anyone makes his own choices.

{ 2 } page 4
The fact that those who used less energy 20 years ago tend to increment their energy use, is a clear indication that a consistent increase in resource conversion efficiency is quite difficult.   I remember that these figures are averages of large numbers.   Hence they represent large complex phenomena and strong tendencies, very hard to modify.

{ Reviewer's Note }
Not at all! Look at the price increments!

{ Author's Reply }
I don't understand the comment of my reviewer.   In the table I compared Per Capita Energy Consumption expressed in physical units.   I don't think that physical definition of energy has changed during the period under observation, nor the definition of Per Capita.   A good question would be to ask if official statistics correctly measure all the energy inputted to the economic process or if they measure only the officially bought one.   But this is practically an unanswerable question.   I hope that the measurement method be, at least, consistent.   Per Capita Energy Consumption, as measured by the information source I used, show an increase almost everywhere in the countries I reported, except in USA, where 20 years ago they were already higher than anywhere now.   

The table simply shows this fact: energy needed to satisfy living standards of an average person increased everywhere (except in the USA) respect to 20 years before.   This may be due to a sophistication in what is considered a need or, less probably, to an efficiency decrease in resource conversion technology.   Anyway the result is that more energy is needed now, compared to 20 years before, to satisfy subjective needs and support new behaviours.   This means that Per Capita Energy Consumption tends to increase even if engineering energy efficiency in conversion technology also tends to increase.   The fact that the countries with lower Per Capita Energy Consumption have a higher trend of its increase also have the greatest part of world population and generally have a higher population growth rate, leaves little hope in an energy efficiency increase at global system level.

Since a Sustainable goal (and a constant claim of Sustainability adepts) seems to be a reduction of energy use at global system level (that is less energy without loss of customer satisfaction), I simply noticed that last 20 year's average trend is in the opposite direction and that this fact may be a hard challenge to an Energy Efficiency Policy.   I do not pretend here to judge good and bad needs and behaviours nor to plan world's life styles.   I leave this duty to truth-bearers.   

Here is an extended table that shows this fact.

Table 1.  Comparison of Per Capita Energy Consumption in some countries (data from: L'état du monde 1994, La Découverte) [Extended Table]

Country	TCE per capita  year '70       [Tons Coal Equivalent]	TCE per capita  year '90       [Tons Coal Equivalent]	Trend to reduce (- sign) or increase Per Capita Energy Consumption respect to 20 years before	Population Increase during last 20 years	Percent of World's Population '90 	Density '90 [hab/km2]	TCE year '70 [million Tons Coal Equivalent]	TCE year '90
[million Tons Coal Equivalent]	Population '90
[million hab]	
USA	10.81	9.73	-10.0%	24.4%	4.7%	27.3	2216.9	2482.0	255	
Canada	8.86	9.93	12.0%	28.6%	0.5%	2.7	188.8	272.0	27	
Belgium	5.58	5.82	4.4%	3.1%	0.2%	327.9	54.1	58.2	10	
Czechoslov.	5.40	5.58	3.3%	9.6%	0.3%	122.8	77.4	87.6	16	
Germany *	5.17	5.69	10.1%	32.3%	1.5%	224.9	313.9	457.3	80	
UK	4.88	4.97	1.8%	3.7%	1.1%	236.4	271.3	286.5	58	
Australia	4.81	7.22	50.2%	39.7%	0.3%	2.3	60.6	127.1	18	
France	3.83	3.89	1.7%	12.6%	1.1%	104.6	194.5	222.7	57	
Japan	3.79	4.11	8.6%	19.4%	2.3%	334.4	394.9	512.1	125	
Italy	2.64	3.63	37.6%	7.4%	1.1%	191.9	142.0	209.9	58	
South Africa	2.53	2.67	5.5%	76.9%	0.7%	32.6	56.9	106.2	40	
Venezuela	2.32	2.78	19.7%	90.6%	0.4%	22.1	24.6	56.1	20	
Israel	2.13	2.88	35.1%	70.0%	0.1%	250.9	6.4	14.7	5	
Argentina	1.58	1.78	12.9%	37.9%	0.6%	12.0	37.9	59.0	33	
Spain	1.47	2.53	72.5%	15.7%	0.7%	77.5	49.6	99.0	39	
Mexico	1.01	1.76	75.1%	67.0%	1.6%	44.8	53.1	155.3	88	
Iran	0.96	1.47	53.1%	116.9%	1.1%	37.4	27.2	90.3	62	
South Korea	0.66	2.40	265.7%	38.6%	0.8%	444.3	20.9	105.9	44	
Turkey	0.48	0.99	108.7%	65.4%	1.1%	74.8	16.8	58.0	58	
Brazil	0.44	0.75	71.7%	60.8%	2.9%	18.1	41.7	115.1	154	
Syria	0.37	1.00	166.9%	111.1%	0.2%	71.8	2.4	13.3	13	
Algeria	0.37	1.41	277.9%	92.0%	0.5%	11.0	5.1	37.0	26	
China	0.35	0.78	123.6%	43.0%	22.0%	123.8	288.4	922.0	1188	
Vietnam	0.29	0.14	-54.1%	62.8%	1.3%	208.7	12.6	9.4	70	
Tunisia	0.29	0.79	167.1%	64.7%	0.2%	51.3	1.5	6.6	8	
Egypt	0.26	0.70	167.2%	66.1%	1.0%	54.7	8.7	38.6	55	
Thailand	0.19	0.73	290.4%	57.1%	1.0%	109.1	6.7	41.1	56	
Pakistan	0.19	0.27	46.7%	90.0%	2.3%	155.2	12.2	34.0	125	
India	0.14	0.30	118.8%	58.5%	16.3%	267.5	76.4	264.9	880	
Indonesia	0.12	0.29	150.8%	58.9%	3.5%	99.9	13.9	55.4	191	
Cameroon	0.07	0.24	256.6%	84.8%	0.2%	26.7	0.4	2.9	12	
Nigeria	0.05	0.18	269.5%	104.5%	2.1%	125.2	2.7	20.4	116	
Ukraine	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	1.0%	86.5	#N/A	#N/A	52	
Russia	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	7.0%	2.8%	8.7	#N/A	#N/A	149	
TOTALS of considered countries (except #N/A data)	1.73	1.76	1.5%	47.8%	73.8%	57.8	4680.5	7020.6	3987	
* Germany is BRD only for '70 data and UNIFIED for '90 data.   This fact may affect especially Population Increase indicator

{ 3 } page 11
This perspective shows that biological processes are intrinsic generators of differences.   Hence any aspiration to eliminate or reduce differences arising from bio-organism interaction seem inconsistent from its biological roots and devoted to failure.   As a consequence, this perspective contrasts any action paradigm based on global rationality notions, as any plan idea embedded in the notion of government.   Any action, that has degrees of freedom within a set of constraints, cannot have any legitimacy beyond local desires of actors.   The notion of force to put an action into execution is primitive and illegitimable.

{ Reviewer's Note }
Is man just a biological component?

{ Author's Reply }
Yes, it is, in my opinion, if we want to try to study human-environment interaction regularities from a scientific point of view.   Humans are, at least, heavily interacting biological components of the environment (more precisely very complex biochemical aggregates, but not very more complex than chimpanzees).   As such, they are at least subject to the same biological constraints and mechanisms that, from the DNA on, regulate their machinery, brain enclosed.  

When speaking of action paradigms, as for instance speaking of energy efficiency policies, we cannot ignore the puzzle of basic ethical behaviours, in my opinion.   Human ethology cannot be removed as an irrelevant ideological stuff.   Nor ethical principles can be acritically assumed, if we want to deal with policies, actions, energy efficiency at anthropic level, etc., from a scientific point of view.   If we treat themes related to life processes (and trying to design how we stay in the environment has something to do with life processes, in my opinion), we cannot elude the radical questions that both Entropy Law and Darwinian Evolutionism pose to the foundation of ethical principles.

Someone believes that humans are not reducible to their biological machinery.   However there is no evidence of this belief in a strict scientific sense.   On the contrary, current advances in Biology, and notably in Neurosciences (considered in a broad sense to include computational neural network insights on how the brain works), show strong evidences for eliminating any spiritualism from thinking activity analysis.   Current neurophysiology makes it possible to foresee how mind cannot exist without brain, thus emphasising the materialistic approach to the so called mental activity.   In this perspective, mind is an emergent collective property of the undelying biochemical interactions of polpulations of neurons.   This evidence, in turn, solicits a complete revision of many classic philosophical problems, and notably of those tied to ethics.   Perhaps, some further readings on this subject may help to reconsider the role of biological components in human behaviours and cognitive tasks, as opposed to the role of the supposed spiritual ones.   In this perspective, all claims of irreducibilty to biological machinery appear to be, once more, just a mere anthropocentric ideological conjecture, not even very useful to explain how humans behave.    

I understand that this perspective leaves quite unsatisfied those who have, in some way, a religious view of life, and notably of human life.   By my side, I prefer not to consider bio-ethical reasoning a scientific reasoning.   Rather, I prefer to consider it as a manifestation of subjective desires, useful to give their adepts a pleasant sense of comfort.   It may help to produce endorphins more efficiently.   Possessing such an ability may have given some humans an evolutive advantage over others.   Coupling the ethical notion of Progress with the tools developed by means of the scientific thought gave a great power to Western culture during last centuries.   This confusion may have its deep roots in the unification of notions like Truth and Good, in my opinion.   

A confusion between scientific reasoning and ethical reasoning may help giving the pleasant sensation of feeling legitimated in doing what each one desire to do.   However, it may lead to inconsistent illusions, from a scientific point of view.   Scientific reasonings (at least the ones I know as scientific reasonings) are not aimed at giving answers to unanswerable questions like "what is the Common Good".   I prefer to consider scientific thought as aimed at exploring regularities and at trying to describe how things happen.

Some philosophers, and notably the German one, Vittorio Hösle, have recently proposed some new more global science based «[...] on a notion of the knowledge of the Being centred on the idea of Good», perhaps mainly inspired by the philosophy of Hans Jonas.   

April 1995 Berlin conference on climate makes the NASA scientist Vittorio M. Canuto affirming that we should relinquish the Bacon's separation between scientific values and ethical values.   He says that we need a geo‑theologian to teach us planetary ethics.

Anyway, I'm still more confident in the old fashioned reasoning style that produced the mass‑energy conservation law and the second law of thermodynamics, rather than in a new science centred on bio‑ethical principles.

{ 4 } page 12
Generalisation of desires made by ethics leads to two points of view that frequently conflict.

{ Reviewer's Note }
NO

{ Author's Reply }
(see answer to { 1 }).

{ 5 } page 12
(a)   To limit the population as a function of the finite available resources at any given time.

{ Reviewer's Note }
Doubtful as an example of legitimate global rationality: human population is not an object.

{ Author's Reply }
Why not, if you enter a perspective of government from a global point of view?   If, for any reason, you cannot expand supply, you, the King of All, act to reduce demand.   Plans are always made in name of a Common Good.

History shows several imperfect experiments of such ethical foundation of government.   Nazism; all kinds of dictatorship or aristocracy that try to legitimate themselves beyond passions; in a more complex way, all kinds of Communism; Phalansteries of various kinds; etc.:   in general, any Realm of God on Earth, included all kinds of Republic of Philosophers.   In a word, any Organicism applied to the doctrine of the State.   Even the most liberal government is not immune from these calls and is always suspended between anarchy and an ethical foundation of government.

I don't like them, and I don't think they can work for the fundamental biological reasons I tried to focus along my paper.   But it's a possibility that the abstraction capacity of human nervous system can conceive and the language express.   Just like the notion of Common Good, Rights, etc.

{ 6 } page 12-13
An example would perhaps better clarify these statements.   Let me briefly examine what I call a high environment tax & constraint policy.   It is commonly believed that applying strong environment constraints and high taxes against un-sustainable behaviours would produce a positive effect on global life-quality indicators.

However, it is highly probable, for instance, that such a high environment tax & constraint policy, applied everywhere, would lead to an explosion of mafias.   Just in the same way as the drug traffickers have prospered over a prohibition of narcotics mainly inspired with ethical principles and good proposals.   Moreover, such a policy may be unacceptable by those regions starting from less favourable conditions.   Hence, these regions may become hospital places for those mafias.   As a consequence, it is probable that an increasing amount of resources should be destined to crime repression, that in turn could demand for further restrictions.   Up to chaotic explosions.

Conversely, a local application of the same high environment tax & constraint policy may accelerate a migration of production facilities towards those regions where taxes and constraints are lower.   This fact, in turn, may become unacceptable for the job-loosing populations that will tend to abrogate such restrictions.   All this looks very like to Socialism of some years ago.   That is: Sustainability has to spread everywhere, otherwise it will die.

On the other side a laissez-faire policy may deteriorate the environment up to the point that it becomes harmful for its inhabitants.

{ Reviewer's Note }
Not serious: there are existing taxes already, on labour, consumptions and even gasoline!
This issue should be looked at concretely and precisely not as an ideological theme.

{ Author's Reply }
Can Environment Taxes be expanded indefinitely? Or there are break-even points somewhere, beyond which alternative decisions, as migration or illegal behaviour, are taken?   What kind of protectionist policies and barriers against illegal behaviours and migrations (of goods, capitals, job opportunities and humans) have in mind those who support high environment tax & constraint policies?   How can it work a high environment tax & constraint policy without protectionist policies, barriers and increased Police controls?

Illegal labour to elude taxes seems diffused everywhere and still increasing.   Immigrants and less protected people get involved in this type of labour.   Usually, this is their only chance to work.   Dangerous or pollutant productions migrate towards countries with less restrictive constraints.   Other productions migrate towards places where labour costs are lower.   Even intellectual jobs like accounting and software development jobs migrate where labour costs are lower and other constraints are weaker.   International information networks may consistently destroy any localisation constraint of intellectual activity.

Mafia seems very active in the organisation of clandestine immigration travels.

According to EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) illegal CFC business now appears to be lower only to drug business.   

Illegal traffic of radioactive material seems expanding.

Somewhere you can already illegally buy under-taxed gas oil for agricultural use instead of normal taxed one to run Diesel vehicles.   Or buy GPL for kitchen use and use it to run your car's gas system. 

Currently, one of the emergent Mafia's business seems to be the management of waste disposal.   Mafia's waste disposal service seems to offer substantial discounts compared to legal waste disposal.   Obviously it is quite difficult and dangerous to get precise and reliable data of the phenomenon, from a scientific point of view.   I have no aspiration to become a Martyr of Sustainability.   So we can only rely on crime repression statistics and guessing.

Unfortunately, tax laws are not of the same nature of physical laws.   Their validity is heavily affected by the power of some entities to impose them.   Obviously, the problem is irrelevant in an Ideal Country, where ethical rules are respected by definition.   But in the dynamics of Real Countries it might be different.   It may be easy to apply high environment tax & constraint policies in countries like France now, where national identity is strong and people seem to trust their governors.   Elsewhere, the story may be different.   A break‑even point between legal and illegal behaviour costs and benefits that permits a high tax policy may be an indicator of the cohesion of the group applying such a tax & constraint policy.   But this break‑even point may be different from place to place and from activity to activity.   

History shows that fiscal revolts belong to the spectrum of possible behaviours and happen with some regularity.   Unless we really think that we have reached the End of the History.

{ 7 } Review Form
[Panel Leader's comment to the reviewer form question: "Are the conclusions sound and justified?"]

{ Reviewer's Note }
Definitely no.

{ Author's Reply }
I'm very surprised that my reviewer found the conclusions definitely not sound and justified, since I explicitly stated that I had no conclusive answers and I closed my paper with questions.   Of course there are opinions and sensations expressed here and there, but conclusions on a delicate matter like Sustainability certainly not.   Maybe my reviewer got a little nervous after a lot of time spent reviewing scientific papers.

{ 8 } Review Form
 [Panel Leader's rejection general comment]

{ Reviewer's Note }
This is not a scientific paper, just a gathering of ideological views.   There are no results from a precise research having been done by the author.   There are no insights about energy use and energy efficiency.

{ Author's Reply }
I'm sorry, but I understood that 'Sustainability and the Reinvention of Government' summer study was an occasion of debate and not just the place where to present precise numbers to demonstrate that energy efficiency is the precursor of  happiness in the world, from a scientific point of view.   The call for paper seemed to solicit contribution for exciting the debate.

Such an impressive ethical project like to build (and, especially,  to govern) a new more Sustainable World certainly deserves the best cares and the best scientific discussions to avoid the problems that affected Charles Fourier's Phalansteries and their Phalanxes in the middle of XIX century.   Among other things, my contribution simply tried to focus the context into which an Energy Efficiency Policy falls and the reasons why it may fail.   The world is not full of Sustainability Adepts only.   There are very many different kinds of people and other biological components living and acting there.   I think it's a good scientific and engineering practice to carefully explore the boundaries and the chances of success of a very expensive enterprise.   

This enterprise strongly interacts with an environment full of biological components of many levels of complexity (humans included) whose reactions are not easily predictable.   If you kick a stone, the stone describes a Newton's parabola and then stops.   However, if you kick a dog, the dog still describes a Newton's parabola and then stops, but after landing, maybe he gets back to bite you or escapes howling.   I'm sorry, but Darwinian Evolutionism is still the best scientific framework that we have to explain how life processes take place and how environmental interactions occur, even if that framework is not very useful to make predictions and completely useless to legitimate ethical projects.   Biological facts raise very interesting scientific questions to science methods.   Every one of us would certainly be happier if some few equations could describe life facts in a deterministic way.   However, in that case, what need of Governing a Sustainable World would there be?

Unfortunately now it's too late.   If I only had known that my contribution would have been switched from panel 4 (Human Factors) to panel 5 (Energy policy for a sustainable environment), I should have presented my last research on Energy Efficient Tourism.   It could have been more appropriate to the scientific perspective of panel 5.   

In that research I clearly demonstrate, by precise numbers, that a reduction of Tourist Travels in favour of Mental Travels, produce a consistent increase in energy efficiency.   Since I have measured that Mental Travels do not alter metabolism and thus do not generate an extra energy demand compared to normal brain activity, I discovered the following fundamental principle:
 
Energy Efficiency Gain in Tourism tends to +¥, whenever Mental Travels tend to completely substitute Tourist Travels.

May be another time.  

I hope you will enjoy the summer study.   Have a nice business!
 
Bruno Caudana