Ellen Macarthur Foundation. Rethink the future

The power of feedback.

• by Ken Webster
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• 30 Nov 2010
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It’s a puzzling old world. No sooner has the IEA’s latest outlook on world oil (1) announced that as far as conventional and cheap-to-extract oil is concerned we are on a plateau of production and cannot expect to see the levels of 2006 again (so peak oil is passed?) than articles in a journal as august as Nature bring us notice that not only might peak coal be upon us in a matter of about 20 years but that reserves are heavily overstated (2). Yet, we are told there is plenty of oil and coal around, and certainly enough to continue our profligate ways, so what’s going on? And what does it mean for education around ‘sustainability’ the notion of a circular economy?

There is a huge difference between the resource being in existence and it being accessible and at a price which does not disrupt the whole intricate web of economic connections. Scrabbling for very deep water and deeply buried oil nearly took out one of the biggest oil companies in the world in 2010 and several commentators(3) attribute the straw which broke the asset bubble economy of 2008 to being the price of oil at $147 a barrel and the consequent outflows of funds from the US and Europe to pay for it – which in turn squeezed real incomes. Pay the mortgage or get to work? Hmm…

Rising costs to extract oil and coal also mean that competitor technologies can gain headway: but as we know this is from a low installed base. It means efforts at energy efficiency gain ground too as the payback is rapid and the result exceedingly pleasant. But the happy picture of transition is discoloured by what high and rising energy costs mean to a global economy. If the hope is that, post recession, the middle and low income consumers will be able to spend once more on cheap goods from China and India, travel to here there and everywhere, eat out at restaurants when desired or browse the novelty processed foods at a supermarket-near-you for ‘something a bit different’ then no, that’s not going to happen without something like an industrial revolution – perhaps even with it, as we have left it very, very late. Not only is oil the source of hitherto cheap transport, plastics and pharmaceuticals and access to low labour cost production but it is the very core of industrialised food production. Energy is the master resource. A better quality of life is possible but its not going to be based on a take-make-and-dispose mindset and microwave meals economy. All change…

In educational terms a new resources constrained world means there probably has to be a premium on three things. Firstly, if we are of necessity left with attempting a ‘closed loop’ and energy frugal economy then understanding better how real life closed loops work is important. This is the world of complex feedback led systems and knowing how they can be productive is key. Feedback is easy to understand at one level – the diagram below shows how feedback might change the design of cars!

Understanding how meteorological systems display feedback over and over is quite another. It will sound like a babble of terms but that is the language we are likely to have to learn. From the familiar exponential function (think compound interest and its effects) to feedback in ecological systems, to the tension between efficiency and resilience; the notion of unintended consequences, uncertainty, stable and unstable states, tipping points, positive and balancing feedback… Being creative within limits, how cycles within cycles can increase output… Phew. There is a lot to learn to make use of a systems thinking framework. (3)Much of it requires getting a grip on unfamiliar terms and the new or repurposed metaphors which surround a novel ‘worldview’ and its framing. For good or ill it is the key to all further sustained thinking on the circular economy.

It goes someway to answering Albert’s oft repeated challenge:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Well, a circular economy and its intellectual scaffolding make a promising new ‘level of consciousness’. It’s a perspective that has associated skills. It is not merely a set of skills btw. It is taking the red pill (Neo)…

Secondly, when youngsters are introduced (again!?) to eco-issues and they yawn and pitch in the stereotypical ‘green’ solutions of a few solar panels, a wind turbine and cycle lane its time to pause. There needs to be a space to challenge some of the ‘green’ myths and legends; a circular sustainable economy is far away from just a few techno-fix add ons and a call to ‘do your bit’ but recent workshop experience tends to confirm just how embedded is the superficial – the refurbished building, the recycling bin and fairtrade coffee is turning into a kind of talisman, an effort to ward off reality! The challenge is to rethink the big picture stuff, or at least to get a chance to try.

Lastly, a circular economy, built on an understanding of systems thinking (in particular, living systems) is a reflection of how modern science is changing. The non-linear looks to be the natural order. It is worth mentioning lest it be thought to be just an invention for heaping misfortune on busy educators. Crux. An earlier scientific worldview was behind the image in which we created schooling: a mechanistic, ‘mass production’ factory model emphasising specialisms, in which the transmission of knowledge was dominant. Do we seriously expect a circular economy built on insights from living systems to emerge from an education structured to its core on a limited and failing worldview? Today’s schooling is every bit as wasteful as take-make-and-dispose industry and for the same reasons- its doesn’t accept feedback – a theme I will come back to in the next blog.

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