[Ed: A huge welcome to our new subscribers from LinkedIn. Thank you for all the positive feedback. It’s scary putting content like this out there, but your encouragement has suggested there is a need for what we’ll publish in future. That said, time will tell. Thank you for your early support. 🙏 Onwards…]
What’s in this Post?
Evolution & Climate Change
The discussion about climate change has turned into a mudslinging match, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. One side says humans have a role to play and the other claims it’s all part of Nature’s ever-repeating cycle. One side believes technology will be our savior and the other side adamantly clings to nature-based solutions.
What gives? Why the polarizing views? What are the nuances involved in the complexity of climate science? These important questions are seldom addressed in the “1.5 degrees cacophony.”
Since we’re just getting started with this newsletter, we thought it may be important to publish our position on this complex matter. More importantly, why is an understanding of climate science important for corporates?
Let’s get started.
For context, we are not climate experts. We’re not even scientists. We are generalists with a keen interest in how this climate debate affects our children and grandchildren. So, we promise to never bandy about statistics, temperature readings or the latest ‘climate emergency.’ If anything, our approach to this topic is more along the lines of evolution biology. What does climate change mean in the context of human evolution and how should the role of business adapt, if at all? That’s the question that most drives us.
A Useful Tool: Nature, not Technology
We use a simple tool that helps us understand climate science in a slightly different light to the mainstream version. Officially known as physarum polycephalum, it’s also known as slime mold, mycelium or a form of protist. These single-celled organisms show us profound insights into human behavior. In the 2min video below you can see how slime mold solved real-world challenges that took teams of engineers decades to figure out.
A similar single-celled organism is bacteria in a petri dish. We can learn so much from these organisms that one university founded the world's first academic program for non-human species, slime mold. They also help us understand climate science.
As you read our position statements below, it may help to keep an image of a bacteria-filled petri dish in your mind. (You may have to stretch your memory back to the days of school biology experiments.) In this case, the petri dish is analogous to the planet.
Climate-Related Observations from the Petri Dish
1. Perfect Growth Conditions
Over the past 11,500 years, the human species has experienced perfect environmental conditions for growth (ever since the last ice age). These perfect conditions led to all kinds of technological progress, particularly since industrialization.
In biological systems, the primary variables determining thrivability are temperature, energy (nutrients), light and pH level. In human systems, the primary variables determining thrivability are temperature (as it pertains to nutrient/food production), energy (to power our industrialized activities), light (related to our energy sources) and pH level (or general living conditions).
[Learn more about Perfect Growth Conditions since the last ice age at Pleistocene epoch: The last ice age - Live Science 2022.]
2. Decline of Growth Conditions
As we learn from bacteria in the petri dish, the growth phase begins to decline when one or more of three conditions occur:
Available resources become depleted;
Waste products start to accumulate excessively;
The favorable environmental conditions which led to growth start to change (temperature, energy, light and pH level).
[Learn more about what happens in the petri dish at Phases of the Bacterial Growth Curve - ThoughtCo 2021.]
3. Decline of Human Civilizations
Our current globalized human civilization is experiencing all three conditions simultaneously:
Hydrocarbon energy sources are becoming depleted (more specifically, the Energy Return on Investment—EROI—is plummeting);
Excess waste can be found in our soils, water, air and oceans (vast amounts);
The climate is changing (through both natural cycles and human impact on the natural cycles).
As these three conditions converge, we should expect behavior similar to that which occurs in the petri dish.
[Learn more about the historical cycle of civilizational collapses at https://bit.ly/Civ-Collapse. This is the first of many future links directly to topic pages in our research portal.]
4. Competition for Remaining Resources
Under the less favorable conditions, competition for last remaining resources increases. In living systems, this competition leads to what is known as "virulence factors." These are behaviors which are harmful to the host and to others of the same species. Despite the harm they cause, these behaviors (temporarily) increase the chance of survival in harsh conditions (for those who employ virulent behavior).
The behaviors have severely negative consequences for the host (often killing the host) as well as weaker members of the same species (they succumb to disease, starvation, low birth rates and more). It is this behavior that hollows out the middle of society and ultimately always leads to collapse. It happened to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Mongolians, the Franks, the Ottomans, and many smaller civilizations. It is happening in the West right now. Protests against the plummeting standard of living and rising energy costs are merely the canary in the coal mine.
[Learn more about the grab of last resources at Virulence Factors that Promote Colonization - LibreTexts libraries 2022.]
5. Adaptation
Species which survive are those which are most able to adapt to the increasingly unfavorable conditions. In the case of bacteria, their spores are able to survive the harsh conditions to become growing bacteria when the environment can support life again. In some cases, bacteria adapt to much higher or lower temperatures or significantly higher or lower pH levels. In other words, it is not so much survival of the fittest; it is survival of those who fit (adapt) best into the changed environment.
For the current human condition, this adaptation means pretty extreme adaptations:
A shift from competition to collaboration;
A shift from hydrocarbons to carbohydrates as our primary energy source (renewable energy continues to use vast amounts of hydrocarbons in their build and installation and so are a form of hydrocarbon protectionism);
Proactively including waste in our energy sources (circular economy);
Recognizing and addressing attack behaviors (virulence factors); and
Embracing rather than trying to mitigate climate change (bacteria never participates in behavior that tries to change the temperature of their environment—instead it adapts to the changing environment).
[To learn more about the two different versions of evolution theory (Competition & Struggle and Collaboration & Mutual Aid, see https://bit.ly/Two-Ev - research portal collection.]
6. Virulent Policies
Like the virulent factors in living systems, many of the existing climate change policies, frameworks and organizing principles are extremely harmful to the host (the planet) and ‘weaker’ members of society (those who bear the brunt of the costs involved). This is because they require vast investments (a cost to society) on actions which accomplish very little good for the planet longterm. Instead, the behaviors promoted by these policies benefit the ‘stronger’ members of society (energy and hydrocarbon producers and those whose influence has been bought).
A particularly harmful organizing principle is ‘Net Zero,’ which we will discuss in more detail in a future post. For now, Net Zero addresses only emissions, a tiny fraction of the maelstrom of adverse conditions converging in the petri dish of planet earth.
[To (briefly) learn more about addressing virulent climate policies, see Chill Out - Washington Post 2007.]
Summary
In short, our position is this:
Climate change, whether caused by humans or not, is but a distraction from the many other circumstances negatively impacting the Perfect Growth Conditions humanity has enjoyed for the past 11,500 years. More importantly, the focus on ESG and Net Zero distracts us from the grab of last resources. Rather than getting caught up in a response designed to benefit a small percentage of the human species (Net Zero), our calling is to co-create solutions which benefit the largest percentage of living species possible.
Net Zero is a virulent climate policy which protects the fossil fuel industry and should be transcended (more on this controversial notion in a future post). Net Positive is a much more inspiring policy to pursue.
The petri dish must be put before profit. Shareholders should review their holdings in those companies who excessively deplete available resources and foul the petri dish with excessive amounts of waste. All other (non-offending) companies should be left in peace to do what they do best: generate ethical economic returns. Small portions of profits from non-offending companies could be channelled to Ethical Sustainable Development Initiatives (more on this notion in a future post). The measuring of carbon footprints and the like is meaningless.
The focus of our collective activities should be less on the E in ESG and more on the S and G. Governance, in this context, refers to how we coordinate human activity to address the condition of the petri dish and how we adapt. There’s enough focus on E already, and look what that has achieved:
@guardianeco The real score board is the graph of CO2 in the atmosphere. After 26 iterations the COPs have done nothing to prevent it rising at an ever faster rateWe’ll cover more on conscious corporate responses to Social and Governance in future posts.
Why are the Petri Dish Lessons Important for Business?
Companies of all sizes are facing increased pressure to act on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. In most cases this pressure translates into “What is the least we can do to continue Business-as-Usual (BaU) while keeping investors, shareholders and suppliers satisfied?
None of the ESG strategies we have seen and worked with acknowledge the ‘petri dish realities’ of the overall change in the circumstances which have led to such spectacular growth. Does your ESG policy address this? More importantly, should yours? Or is it safe to continue BaU with a few tweaks to ‘reduce emissions?’
These are the kinds of questions we’ll explore in future posts. Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks for joining us on this journey!
What We’re Reading This Week
13 Oct 2022 - Yet again, IPCC’s climate math doesn’t check out: financialpost.com
21 Sep 2022 - Banks Try Quiet Quitting on Net Zero - Last year’s enthusiasm for GFANZ turns into anxiety: bloomberg.com
20 Sep 2022 - Important new paper challenges IPCC’s claims about climate sensitivity: thegwpf.org