PLANETARY HEALTH WEEKLY

In Blog # 24 on human carrying capacity on planet Earth I mentioned Donella Meadows’ places to intervene in a system that I first came across in a Whole Earth Review 1997 issue. She worked with Jay Forrester who developed systems theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At an American Public Health Association meeting in 1994 I heard Forrester describe how most steps to change a system in one direction actually get it going in the reverse. Perhaps this applies to planetary heating.

In a subsequent publication Meadows increased the number of interventions to 12. In this blog I will amplify what was in that issue as it can help in understanding today’s crises.

They are ordered here beginning with the least effective and adding some of my explanations.

12. Numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).

Almost three decades ago I came across Ralph Estes’ book “Tyranny of the Bottom Line: Why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things.” He pointed out that the U.S. public costs of private corporations amounted to $2.6 trillion in the 1990s. Consider workplace injuries and deaths, injuries from products such as cigarettes, various forms of pollution and many forms of corporate crime. These harms from the rich are in a system where the richest 400 families in the U.S. pay the lowest rate of combined federal, state and local tax on their incomes. We subsidize the rich to an enormous degree at great harm.

11. Sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their                flows

It helps to have money in the bank as a buffer for times when you don’t have enough income to provide necessities. It is troubling for so many with record amounts of poverty in the U.S. In Canada my parents received a baby-bonus check every month issued by the government to create an asset account which was a buffer. Many other nations provide similar safeguards for their citizens through health insurance, pension plans, etc.

10. Material stocks and flows. (such as transport networks,                        population age structures)

Our US and Canadian cities are laid out such that cars are required to go between work, education, home, shopping and recreation. Changing to a less fossil-fuel based system is tough.

Consider that the U.S. consumes over three quarters of the world’s opioids in an attempt to deal with the high levels of social pain there in part caused by road rage in traffic jams created by a system designed to further economic growth but not population well-being.

9. Lengths of delays, relative to rate of system change

It takes considerable time to transition to sustainable power by solar, wind and other green energy sources. And these production devices have limited life-spans, measured in decades requiring subsequent replacement. Without fewer people as in Blog # 24 this is not a long-term solution for a green planet.

8. Strength of negative feedback loops relative to the impacts they        are trying to correct against

Planetary heating is such a negative loop. It is still more profitable to continue warming the planet given our focus on economic growth where extracting a liter of fossil fuel adds to GDP.

7. Gain around driving positive feedback loops

Population growth is declining which is a positive loop but the response is now to try to increase fertility to have younger folk to take care of those who are aging. Instead we need to create communities of diverse ages as was the case among hunter-gatherers who lived in stable communities and took care of everyone as discussed in Blog #21.

6. Structure of Information flows (who does and does not have                access to what kinds of information)

Since Meadows’ time the growth of social media has allowed anyone to find reinforcement for any beliefs they may have no matter whether there is evidence for them or not. Whether or not, and if so how, this should be regulated may be the challenge of our era.

5. The rules of the system (incentives, punishment, constraints)

While free speech is supposedly protected in the U.S. and it’s a hallmark of democracy there is little or no monitoring of mis- and disinformation. Artificial intelligence is facilitating deep fakes. Critical thinking suffers. Perhaps in smaller communities with co-housing as the norm cooperation and incentives for planetary health may become more feasible.

4. The power to add, change, evolve or self-organize system                      structure

Epigenetics provides us with mechanisms in which aspects of the physical and social environment can be passed on to subsequent generations. This profoundly influences the system structure. Epigenetics is a biological process whereby diverse environmental influences can be transmitted through DNA expression to subsequent generations. It will be covered in a future blog.

3. The goals of the system

The goal of our current system is to increase shareholder wealth which boosts planetary destruction. Changing the goal to be one of long-standing human welfare on Earth is required.

2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback        structure arise

Is our current paradigm based on greed and individual meritocracy? Certainly that seems the case in the U.S. and Canada, but the focus in many Asian cultures is on ‘WE’ instead of ‘I’. This gives us hope.

1. The power to transcend paradigms

To me power is the key operative here. Our world is built, and seemingly always has been, with a small number having great power over others. One way to change that is to decrease the inequity that causes this hierarchy and get us un-stuck from paradigms (through education, rule of law, human rights, democracy, liberal democracy, flatter heiracrchies).

The Planetary Health Weekly covers 12 very well and addresses some of the others. System dynamics requires us to consider the goals and mindset we hold. The goal is changing the system to further human health as well as that of the planet.

Stephen Bezruchka, Seattle, WA