When people argue against taking action to fight climate change, they usually cite the economic impacts of such measures. Yes, fighting climate change does cost money, but the financial implications of letting it go unchecked could eventually be much worse.

Recent research found that for every degree Fahrenheit that global temperatures rise, the US could loss around 0.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. Part of what makes this situation complicated is that much of these costs won’t be visible for many years and won’t be distributed evenly among geographical regions and sectors of society.

It also might not be obvious that climate change caused some of these costs. Natural disasters, for example, will be a prominent cause of economic damage due to rising global temperatures. Let’s take a look at just how much these catastrophic natural events may cost.

Large-Scale Storms

In recent times, billion-dollar hurricanes such as Harvey, Irma and Sandy have devastated various parts of the US. These kinds of events have been increasing in frequency, and if climate change continues to progress, they’re only going to become more common.

While hurricanes are not expected to become more frequent overall, scientists do believe they will become more intense and will last longer in the future.

Other storms, such as tornados, hailstorms and thunderstorms, may follow similar patterns, further adding to the economic damage.

Warmer ocean temperatures lead to stronger hurricanes, so as ocean temperatures continue to rise, the formation of stronger storms becomes more likely. Increasing water vapor in the air due to increased air temperatures also gives hurricanes additional fuel.

The rising sea levels could also make hurricanes more destructive, as the storms will have a higher starting point, enabling them to reach further inland.

Heat Waves

In some areas, the frequency of heat waves has been increasing. The US set twice as many record highs over the last decade than record lows. In the past, the ratio was about one to one.

Some of these heat waves have led to costly droughts. At the peak of the drought in 2012, 81 percent of the contiguous US was experiencing unusually dry conditions. In 2011, Texas had its driest 12 months ever.

Heat waves cause significant human health risks, especially to the elderly. They also increase demand for energy, which exacerbates the rise of global temperatures if energy is generated using fossil fuels.

Droughts and heat waves can harm various industries, especially agriculture. In extreme droughts, crops wither. Livestock may also experience heat stress, which, in cattle, decreases milk production.

When droughts occur, the electricity sector may have an especially hard time meeting the increased demand caused by heat waves, as many plants require cooling water, and hydroelectric generation may run dry.

Massive Floods

Conversely, flooding may increase in other regions, even if total precipitation declines there.

Floods can be both costly and deadly. Damage to property and crops in the US averaged around eight billion dollars per year from 1981 to 2011. From 1959 to 2005, floods caused 4,586 deaths in the U.S.

Rather than increasing total rainfall, climate change may increase the frequency of instances of very heavy precipitation. In the Northeastern United States, for example, the heaviest storms produce 67 percent more rain than they did 50 years ago.

The reason for this change is that warmer air holds more moisture, so as global temperatures increase, so does heavy rainfall during precipitation events.

If emissions remain at current levels, scientists predict that precipitation during the heaviest events will increase by around 40 percent by the end of the century.

Winter Storms

Skeptics sometimes use the occurrence of extreme winter storms to question whether climate change is real, but scientists say that it could actually be causing more extreme winter storms.

Like with rain, weather like snowfall, hail and other forms of winter precipitation rely on moisture in the air, which climate change is increasing.

Another factor that could be contributing to the growing number of severe winter storms is the North American winter temperature dipole, a winter weather pattern that causes temperatures in the West to be abnormally warm and those in the East to be abnormally cold.

Research suggests that, as greenhouse gas emission increase, the dipole is becoming more common. Over time, though, global warming is expected to reduce the contrast between east and west and temper the effects of winter weather overall.

A warmer, moister atmosphere in the winter could also increase the strength of cyclones. Scientists emphasise, though, that changes in weather do not necessarily mean changes in climate and that the link between winter storms and climate change is especially tricky to decipher.

Devastating Wildfires

Wildfires have become more common in the Western United States. Today, US wildfires burn twice as much area as they did in 1970, and the average wildfire season has extended by 78 days.

Scientists project that this trend will continue if global temperatures continue to rise. For every one degree Celsius of temperature increase, the median areas burned each year could increase by 600 percent for some forest types. The hot and dry conditions caused by rising temperatures increase wildfire risk and make it easier for fires to spread.

Increases in the area burned would increase the already-high costs of forest fires. Since 2000, the US has experienced 11 billion-dollars in fires. As forests cover about a quarter of the land in North America, or about 500 million hectares, the potential for damage from wildfires is immense.

These fires have heavy consequences, from the destruction of homes, other facilities and infrastructure to the costs of fighting the fire. Wildfires can also cause substantial injury and loss of life.

Climate change can cost us in many different ways. One prominent way is through the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. To protect against this damage from natural disasters, we need to take steps to mitigate and stop climate change today.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.