This one is counter-intuitive to me, i.e. Irish localization advocates are proposing a shift to closed systems of production.
Reactions from ‘open advocates’ would be very welcome.
David Fleming:
“Lean thinking, adapted to this context, is about establishing and sustaining a closed system which provides food, water, energy and materials from local resources and, as far as possible, conserves and renews these primary assets in the local economy. A closed system means no material imports, no material waste, and dependence on solar energy. Well, you cannot get completely closed systems in human affairs, except on the scale of the planet as a whole, but, on a local scale, you can get very much closer than we are at present.
A closed system in the case of food requires fertility to be retained locally – that is, not only nitrogen, phosphates and potash – but the micronutrients too. If conserved as capital, composted and used again and again, fertility – including human waste – can be more than simply sustained; it can be built up towards the extraordinarily high local yields achieved by such virtuosos of food production as Alan Chadwick and John Jeavons.
You don’t have to do this, quite, with water, because it rains, of course, though we will have to get used to droughts as global warming intensifies, but even in a rainy climate, a local economy needs to maintain, shall we say, a conservation system in its use of water. Among the reasons for this – first, lean production will use aquaculture, which is a more productive food system than the soil; secondly, permaculture, which loves closed, circular systems, typically has a central place for water – for instance, the pond is habitat for water weeds, that fertilise the land, that grows the food, which is attacked by slugs, that are eaten by the ducks, that live in the pond, and fertilise the water weeds. Water has a way of connecting things up. One immensely effective form of it is the Japanese Aigamo method for rice production. It can be many times more productive, for a given area of land, than the most high-tech agriculture.
In the case of energy, closed systems do not really apply since they are defined in terms of materials, and energy takes a one-way ticket from the sun to dissipation in the form of low-level heat. But the principle is similar, because the Lean Economy is built on “solar string” technologies – that is, various forms of renewable energy derived ultimately from the sun, and strung out in a minigrid in which every member of the grid is generator, user or storage depot as opportunity offers.
A minigrid uses the full range of technologies including solar, wind, water and biomass, conserving energy through the use of the benign army of emerging energy technologies that is on the way. It stores energy with the use of media such as hydrogen, biomass, supercapacitors, flywheels, ceramics and pumped storage. It uses information technology to manage demand. And the giant users of energy – transport and industry, and houses that leak energy – are not, and cannot be, part of that world.
The stabilised Lean Economy gives a sharp and very ambitious meaning to energy efficiency. Changes in behaviour, including (for example) a drastically reduced dependency on transport, could reduce the demand for energy-services by two thirds (a factor of 3); and energy efficiency – the energy services provided by a kilowatt of energy – could be improved by as much. That multiplies up to a 90 percent improvement – or a demand for just 10 percent of the energy we use now – and that is well within the capability of renewables.
Figure 6. The Carbon Budget for Domestic Tradable Quotas is defined over ten years: the first five years (the Commitment) cannot be changed; the second five years is set in advance but can be revised. There is then a ten year “forecast” which gives guidance on the scale of the reduction that can be expected in the future. The budget represents a guarantee that reduction targets are met and it enables people to make informed preparation for it.
The transition will require energy rationing. There is an electronic rationing system for energy called Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs) which uses information technology to distribute fair access to fossil fuels, guaranteeing that a year-on-year budget for reduced consumption is achieved. The DTQ budget looks like this (figure 6). It is the basis for a step-by-step decline in emissions of carbon dioxide from all fossil fuels. This is, I would argue, the only way of achieving equitable allocation of the declining access to fuel that we will face in the near future. It will need to be a national scheme, firmly based on a strong sense of national solidarity. And its significance extends beyond energy. A decisive and persistent reduction in energy use could provide the pathway by which our present day economy can achieve the transition – a massive achievement it would be, if it happened – to the stabilised Lean Economy.“
Via email from Sam Rose:
I think it is a real mistake to call these systems “closed”.
“Local” is better. I totally agree that we need what he is talking about. I just think his systems-language is off.
In fact, I think what he is talking about is what Janine Beynus calls “Type 2” and “Type 3” systems. http://www.massivechange.com/2006/07/11/janine-benyus-interview-october-14-2003/
Our systems are now largely centered around what Beynus calls “Type 1” ecology, which is part of natural cycles. It is a mass/monoculture system based on rapid growth. After a damaging forest fire, this is the ecology that emerges.
In nature, systems tend to move to towards a “permaculture”, Shrubs and then trees grow and establish a more permanent system that is far more self sustaining. Conversion of sunlight into resources is increased, biodiversity is increased. Much of the activity happens “locally”, but there are larger regional systems, and even global systems which are affected by the local system, and vice-versa. This larger regional/global system scale is something that we tend to ignore, because it’s temporal pace is different than systems that have emerged on human-sense scales. (of course, they are getting a lot of attention now that climate change is happening).
There is no closed living system, including any human system, in my opinion. People would be better off understanding the nature of things this way, then going along thinking that what some people describe as “local” means “closed”. This may seem frivilous. But in my opinion, it is important that people understand the nature of what they are looking at.
I’ll go with the term “closed” systems, which David Fleming uses. Here’s why.
We should have a closed system in mind as the ideal, not a local system. Closed in the sense that the system is as much as possible self-contained and does not need continuous input of external resources. The term “local” does not have that connotation.
Think of the biosphere, where we experiment to see whether humans can live completely closed off from the environment for long periods of time. We do this to see whether long space voyages are possible, where everything on the ship is re-cycled including what we normally see as “waste”.
There can be closed systems on a local scale, as in the idea of permaculture.
But there could and there should also be closed systems that are regional. And ideally, humanity should fit into the planetary environment in a way that is as near as possible a closed system. Let’s face it. We are resource hogs. We spend resources that are for the most part not renewable as if there was no concern whatsoever. And there should be concern. We don’t want to use up the earth’s resources in the blink of an eye of geological time. It has only taken us a hundred years of industrialized existence to make a serious dent in resources that – if we look at it in a serious way – should last us for thousands of years.
So yes, closed systems is the ideal. Lean systems would approach that ideal. Let’s go for it.
From Vinay Gupta, via email:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22closed+society%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I think you’ll find many links there that describe *relatively* closed human systems with all kinds of attendant problems and undesirable properties.
Similarly, closed loop industrial ecologies do exist: your technical nutrients stay in the *closed* system, and do not leak out into the environment. Things like this really exist – closed loop coolants in various kinds of industrial processes, closed vs. open cycle OTEC systems… closed has a technical means: crap, often toxic crap, does not escape into the world.
Closed is a useful property of systems which contain things you do not want to spread. Things which are toxic-but-useful – *solvents* are a great example – stay in closed systems under ideal conditions.
This is a real engineering term. It is used, every day, in industry, in science, even in ecology, to describe a property of systems.
You might not *like* the word “closed” because of one ideological stand or another, but I think that if you are going to do any *actual systems engineering* you’d do well to actually understand what the term “closed system” means and learn to recognize where and when to apply it.
Similarly, if you want to discuss societies, the “open society” vs. “closed society” model is one way that people discuss the issues, although it’s not a way of discussing the issues that I have a particularly deep allegiance to, but it is common enough in the field.
Sam Rose, via email:
Also, just because people talked about things in a certain way, eg:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22closed+society%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
..does not mean that it reflects the way things are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn discusses this in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”: how paradigms in science come to be.
So, I can accept that it is an existing paradigm to apply “open” and “closed” to all systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn can help you understand that when people raise objections to existing norms in science, they are not always coming from a position of ideology, nor ignorance.
Sometimes instead they are coming from a different way of viewing existence.
It is my viewpoint that it is very difficult to apply the label of “closed system” to many, if not most living systems, that can adapt and change over time. it is difficult to apply this in accurate ways. I accept that many people are doing this, I accept that it can be accurate in technical systems as a description. I accept that it is present in sociology (as in “closed society”).
My position is that I don’t see how “closed” applies accurately to living things which can adapt and change over time, and which affect one another in non-fixed, complex adaptive ways.
You can explain to me how parts of some system on a certain *scale* may have a nature which you are calling “closed”, and if that system contains living things, i will show you how on other scales, and/or within the same scale, it is not “closed”. (because, it is complex adaptive)
Sam Rose, via email:
…and if you can pin any “ideology” on me for making these arguments, it would be the “ideology” of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems theory as it applies to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system
When you are talking about human systems, and living systems, it is my stance that you are talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system
This is important if you are saying “let’s change the nature of this system”
Ok, what is the “system” you are trying to change? How does it work? How will it react to change? I think many of our systems are collapsing now in part because people imagined that they are linear, and fixed, and so acted accordingly. Only to find out that the mechanisms they into place collapsed when these complex adaptive systems…adapted in complex ways over time.
I hope this helps explain what I am getting at.
If not, it may be useful to keep in mind the central theory of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
“…science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called “paradigm shifts” (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed.”
…rival paradigms are incommensurable—that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm.”
You may not understand what I am talking about, because you are thinking about it through a different “paradigm”, a different way of viewing the world.
If so, is my way fo viewing the world “better”? That is for you to decide.