The Techno-Cornucopia Vanishes

“Civilization Critical – Energy, Food, Nature and the Future,” by Darrin Qualman, 2019

This is a systems’ analysis of how the natural world works and how present capitalist civilization is breaking every logical natural link, leading to disaster.  Without a theory any understanding is limited and flawed and Qualman has a theory.  Qualman’s background as a farmer in Alberta, Canada gives him a real-world understanding of how nature functions.  He also delves into the past to understand how pre-industrial society existed.  Qualman has massive data backing up his ideas and pounds them into the readers head.  Basically, Qualman makes the familiar point that a closed circular system like earth cannot afford open-ended and unending linear growth. 

Politically, Qualman is not a socialist and carefully couches solutions in vague reformist political terms, as his real focus is on natural laws.  He doesn’t brand capitalism as the enemy but instead calls it ‘eCivilization.’  Because of this he seems to be a technological determinist, divorcing technology from economics, but denies that.  He does not mention global warming’s ‘Great Acceleration’ right after World War II around 1946, as he identifies human interference in nature with the beginnings of the industrial age, citing 1850 as a crucial year.  In the process his tiny chart lines muddy the dates.  The book ‘seems’ to come off as deep nature ecology, harking back to a romantic time before machines, before coal, railroads, steam engines, shafts and tractors.  At the end he does not recommend returning to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle at all.  The book’s understanding of soil is incomplete, not mentioning agroecology or soil fertility except in passing.  He cites Marxists Fred Magdoff and J.B. Foster in his Acknowledgements, but also uses the term ‘communist dictators’ like some cold-war scribe.

Biological Systems Analysis:

I’m going bullet-point some of his excellent insights, as they can be of great value in constructing an actually sustainable socialism.

1.            The natural world is a circular system, not a linear one.  eCivilization runs as a linear system.  Everything that comes in and goes out must also return in a biogeochemical cyclic system.  In other words recycling is not just a ‘nice thing to do’ but essential to natural functioning.  Human shit (as Marx noted) and all natural products have to find their way back into nature, while things that cannot be recycled or only pretend to be recycled (plastics, cell phones, etc.) break the cycle.  Putting things in landfills short-circuits recycling. 

2.           eCivilization actually ‘decycles’ not recycles. 

3.           The world runs on sunlight.  Photosynthesis is the basis for nearly all processes, primarily food production but also gas, oil and coal. 

4.            An extensive carbon-energy eCivilization ruins the future and reaches into the far past to literally fuel the present. 

5.           Externalities are ignored and un-priced in a linear system.  They are ‘free’ - out of sight, out of mind, until no longer able to be ignored.

6.            Artificial fertilizers deplete the soil and ruin water, creating dead zones, ocean acidification and toxic tides, releasing global warming nitrogen, while made using natural gas and emitting methane. 

7.            eCivilization speeds up time in one direction, while the biosphere operates at a certain slow pace.

8.           Species destruction is a direct result of habitat destruction.  Habitats are being destroyed on a daily basis in the interests of growth.

9.           GDP is a false way of understanding progress.  It combines desirable and undesirable / useless economic inputs while ignoring externalities.  Yet capitalist governments and markets all worship GDP and growth.

10.       Negative feedback loops that balance functioning have been removed and only positive feedback loops are preferred, leading to non-stop acceleration.

11.       Unelected capitalists and bureaucrats are actually in charge of nature, not ‘democratic governance.’

12.        Any economy is a subset of the biosphere.

13.        Social and economic complexity requires more energy.

14.        Most biologic processes are local and many solutions can be local.

15.        Human capital ultimately over-exploits natural capital, as trawler fishing in the Atlantic depleted the cod stock.

16.       The building blocks of any society are bio-chemical – nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon, sulfur and water. 

17.        eCivilization is structurally unsustainable, no matter its advertising.  It is also structurally unjust.

18.       Consumerism is unsustainable.

19.       Modern efficiency actually leads to more consumption. (The Jevons paradox.)

20.        In eCivilization simplifying natural webs results in natures’ poverty, aka monocultures, while technologic complexity increases at the same time.

21.       Energy flows through but materials recycle.

Some quotes: 

“Industrial agriculture is a black box to convert fossil fuel energy into edible fuel energy.”  Alternatively the process is: “fossil fuel calories into fertilizer into food calories.”

“8 units of grain production are required to make 1 unit of pork production.”

“In its current form, mass production depends almost as much on the garbage truck as on the assembly line.”

Unending growth and sustainability together are “merely nonsense on stilts.”

“Today machines do 99% of the work and humans do perhaps 1%.”

“To save minutes, we consume eons.”

“Progress, our secular quasi-religion, encourages magical thinking that licenses non-rational activities.” 

“The rising tide that has lifted our boats now threatens to submerge our cities.” 

Solutions:

Qualman’s vague solutions are to ‘limit growth,’ ‘limit sprawl,’ ‘limit extractions and emissions,’ ‘limit interventions into natural cycles’ and instead manage ‘biosphere and business.’ He quite rightly wants any society to function along the lines of science.  His eco-solutions are found in immediate sun-based technologies – solar and wind – wind being created by sun-based heat differences.  Energy-conscious and health conscious agriculture and diets are part of his solution, though he is also vague on this.

On the issue of theory, Qualman ignores the fact that seemingly stable ‘circular’ flows actually change over time too, so circularity is only an approximation.  Dialectical flow is more accurate, combining different values of circular and linear in opposition to each other.

Qualman paints a dire and apocalyptic portrait of the present and the future.  The disconnect between his solutions and his analysis is somewhat ridiculous and represents a huge failure of political understanding.  This may reflect Qualman’s time as a small businessman and independent farmer, which allows him to coddle the profit motive. What is required is quite literally a revolution in society – in theory, in technology, in power and class relations, in economics, in our grasp of nature.  It will not come by half-means, quarter-means or compromise.

Other prior reviews on this topic, use blog search box upper left:  “This Changes Everything” (Klein); “Anthropocene or Capitalocene?,” “Marx and the Earth” and “Ecological Revolution” (both by J.B. Foster); “The Sixth Extinction,” “Ecology & Marxism,” “History of the World in 7 Cheap Things,” “A Redder Shade of Green,” “Stop Tar Sands Oil,” “Tar Sands,” “Climate Emergency,” “Planning Green Growth,” “The Collapse of Western Civilization,” “The Vanishing Face of Gaia,” “The Party’s Over.” 

And I bought it at May Day Books, which has a huge selection of discounted books on the environment from a left-wing point of view. 
Red Frog

January 7, 2020