It's not the stock, it's the flow!
Putting ecology back on track
For those of you who have been reading me for some time, you may have noticed a certain hostility on my part towards journalists in general. It's quite true. I consider today's journalism to be disingenuous, hypocritical and misleading, as it is completely intertwined with the quest for profit and funding. The hope of existing, of being read, or at least clicked on, and therefore of justifying funding or selling subscriptions has led almost all these petty writers to choose buzz and provocation as a substitute for information. In short, journalists today are actors in the society of spectacle.
As a result, the quality of the information we have access to these days is plummeting, and it is becoming harder and harder to simply find publicators capable of accuracy and rigor.
Because the work of truth can be long and difficult, and will not necessarily generate the hoped-for flood of clicks. However, I believe that there are some very important subjects on which we cannot be satisfied with doing things in a partial and disguised way.
Ecology is one of my favorite subjects, not only because of my background as a biologist, but also because of my passion for design. For me, it is absolutely impossible to dissociate ecology and design.
In this article, I would like to highlight a fundamental error in the way the subject of ecology is treated. It is a misconception that is now being peddled by many people who sadly do not know what they are talking about.
Static thinking, static numbers
Almost everything in life is quantifiable, and that is good news for science. But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about ecology?
Let me pick an example: https://gerrymcgovern.com/water-mad-digital-devices/
This article puts forward the fashionable idea of characterizing the quantity of water required by a consumer good. The aim is to put the reader in a state of shock and anxiety (they sell a lot), the origin of which is implicitly combined with an idea developed just about everywhere else: water is a rare commodity, we must save it! So, since my smartphone requires a lot of water to produce, I am somehow responsible for this scarcity.
Although few people realize it, this is a static thinking that has no value in ecological or analytical terms. The reason is simple: nothing in our reality is static.
You might say, "Sure, but these are approximations to explain a need for resource management."
I could admit it in a closed context where we consider the availability of a mineral with a very long life cycle in a time span of a few centuries, but here we are talking about water: certainly the least static element in all creation!
With this approach, our analysis becomes frozen and useless. We produce static figures that mean nothing, inform us of nothing, and remain unusable in most contexts. I will come back later on that point.
Setting ecology straight
The first thing we need to address in terms of ecology is what we are actually talking about.
Recycling? But nature is capable of recycling anything, it's just a matter of time. Why bother?
Health? But what kind of health are we talking about? What does it mean to be in good health? Is it simply human health, or are we talking about all beings, and then are we able to decide what state of health a living being should be in? Should we ignore the fact that illness is also a factor in strengthening vital structures? Should we do ourselves what is already done by nature?
What are we talking about? Or, to put it in synergetic design words: what is the context?
If we do not answer this question first, we are just flailing around in vacuum, stressed out and guilty of anxiety-provoking abstractions that delight publishing executives.
If I were to put ecology through the mill of synergetic design nomenclature, the bulk of the work would lie with context and the notion of satisfaction (criterion no. 7). Indeed, depending on who you ask, the vision of ecology will be different, and may even take forms that are sometimes irreconcilable.
I think we need to strike a balance in defining ecology between the notions of:
health of living things (including humans)
the feeling and sensation of contentment
keeping possibilities open for human adventure
sustainability
Here, I believe that the other ideas can be deduced from the second one, if taken far enough, as recommended in the synergetic conception of design.
The attentive reader will also see that these points are largely relative and therefore debatable, but it seems necessary to pose the notions of ecology in this way, more or less. I have also deliberately introduced the notion of human adventure here, because the number-one flaw of an ecology that fails to take this aspect into account is that it can quickly turn into a totalitarian ideology that takes all meaning out of human existence. It can even lead to genocide, because, as I often say in jest: "A good ecologist is a dead ecologist". Indeed, committing suicide is still the most effective way of reducing one's ecological footprint!
Let us be careful not to make choices we will bitterly regret later.
Next, contexts need to be determined, because depending on the cultures to which an ecological project is addressed, the notions evoked can take various forms. And this is where the subject gets tricky, because ecology being at certain levels planetary (like plastic pollution), there should be planetary contexts (plastic pollution management). If everyone does what they want at home, there is nothing to stop a nuclear accident damaging the health of neighboring peoples who are not responsible for the accident. Ecosystems are more or less interconnected.
However, not everything is global, and water management is one of those things that is often more local than global. As the saying goes, "Just because I turn off my tap does not mean that a spring will well up in the middle of the Sahara".
Here too, there is a concentric vision to be had, from the most local to the most global context, and this vision is sorely lacking in the debates, probably because it is more subtle, but also because it tends to be less anxiety-provoking, and therefore less sellable, less bankable, than the immediate total planetary cataclysmic vision of which we would all be guilty. It also gives back a sense of responsibility to people and new opportunities of self-determination. Not very trendy isn’t it?
It's not the stock that counts, it's the flow
Let us go back to our smartphone. We are told that it costs 14,000 liters of water to produce, but what does that mean? Do the companies that make electronic equipment burn water like we burn diesel? Are electronic components made of water?
If so, my smartphone would weigh at least 14 tons…
What always eludes us in these representations and the ensuing discussions is that it is quite uninteresting to know how much water this or that activity requires. What is important is how this activity impacts the flow of water, and this applies to any other resource.
Situations where water is actually destroyed are rare. One example is the cracking of water to recover oxygen and hydrogen. But water is also created in the earth's mantle and endogenously within living beings.
The real issue with water in the manufacture of a smartphone is where it comes from and where it goes. Its quantity is secondary, even irrelevant most of the time.
Where it comes from means where it is taken from, whether it needs to be treated for use, and where it goes after use and in what form.
In other words, we can talk about the bioavailability of water, id est its propensity to be used by and for life (humans and wild nature).
A smartphone might require 10 million cubic meters to produce, so if this does not affect its bioavailability (except for the short time of its actual use within the process), it is not a problem. On the other hand, if that smartphone requires 10 liters of water whose bioavailability then becomes zero for a thousand years, that is a potential problem for our ecological objectives.
It is all a question of flows, and since nothing can really be destroyed, we need to consider how our uses are going to disrupt the flows rather than the stocks themselves, whose quantification does not make much sense in reality, especially when it happens to be the only data put forward.
This notion of bioavailability and flow can includes large masses of resources (water, for example, has a mecanical role in some ecosystems as a huge mass of liquid matter) and we should not make the mistake of thinking exclusively in terms of molecular availability. It has to encompass all the properties of the resources, as much as we know, to be relevant. It can even sometimes involve notions of volumes and stocks but only in the context of the flows, taken extensively. Taken alone, these notions are of no use and give no clue about anything.
On the other hand, important questions should naturally arise when we destroy resources in a particular form faster than they can be renewed, such as coal or oil (at least officially).
On the subject of water, however, there is no need to pay a particular attention - its availability is close to infinite, since we hardly ever destroy it! There are far more interesting and relevant things to consider about water right now.
In fact, with sufficiently large time steps, it is possible to apply this flow analysis to all things, without forgetting to characterize the conditions of appearance (such as the link between vegetation and petroleum, for example: there is no point in waiting for it to form again in areas we have deforested!).
Drowning the fish in 14,000 liters of water
This approach on the part of the "communicators" is both misleading for reasons of buzz (shocking people with big, impressive figures) and perhaps also a way of diverting public attention from the real ecological issues, the impacts of which are already being painfully felt, even unconsciously, because it could lead to ideas and projects that could threaten the common system, that is not compatible as it is with ecology.
The subject of water stocks is not relevant in itself, but the way in which certain ecosystems are drying up is interesting. In some places, we are indeed seeing droughts. However, since water does not disappear, drought means humidification. The question is where! What is more, the emphasis is on global warming (for which the carbon released by mankind is said to be the main culprit - an idea for which I personally remain perplexed, particularly as carbon is, along with water, the element most readily assimilated by living organisms), but there is rarely any mention of the deforestation we are carrying out and its real implications.
Journalists sometimes report on specific subjects such as the Amazon (again, with a great deal of sensationalism), but we do not have to go that far to do the job. In the West, the treatment of trees and forests is by no means a closed subject, and it is easy enough to observe climate disturbances precisely where there have been forest disturbances! Nor is the role of trees in cloud formation a new subject.
However, here too, lies reign, as politicians, journalists, professors and scientists will sometimes claim that the biomass of trees in this or that country is at equilibrium or even positive. But, taken alone, this is not a very relevant information either!
Important information is missing: what tree species are we talking about? How old are these trees (and do not talk to me about averaging the data on this one!)? What is the state of health of these trees? How are they distributed over the territory?
There is a famous story in France about an old man in the early 20th century who planted around 1 million oak trees, day after day for decades. Shortly after his work, it was noticed that the region was regaining its hydrography: precipitation, springs, humus, streams, etc.
Ecology at the service of politics
At the end of the day, I personally believe that the ideas of ecology being thrown around in the media these days are, once again, nothing more than hysterical relays for nefarious political agendas. It is simple to understand: we talk about ecology all the time, yet lack the political courage to implement simple, effective measures that have long been known and documented. When the same people are screaming at us that the ship is sinking, while at the same time attacking the hull with an axe, we have to wonder whether they are incompetent, dishonest or both at the same time.
In the end, here too, the relevant initiatives are driven by the people: associations, companies, individuals, sometimes influencers, sometimes very discreet. But, it has to be said, they often come up against the pure capitalist paradigm of the current system, for which ecology, like anything else, can only be a pretext for business, and therefore cannot be truly relevant and can only produce pseudo-solutions that are market-oriented.
Worse still, being subjected to an incessant flow of anxiety-inducing, guilt-inducing information, often presented as phenomena over which we have no control, is certainly the most effective way of immobilizing creativity and action. All that remains is stress, and stress that does not lead to action can only lead to disease.
Politics at the service of ecology
Design synergy is one of the most concrete and effective ways of redefining ecologically unsatisfactory lifestyles. Because it involves many things simultaneously, this kind of design may seem difficult to integrate, but there is nothing to stop us from doing so gradually, through successive tests.
It may seem urgent, but that is not even a sure thing! And after 70 years of telling us that it is urgent, always urgent, and that the next few years will be terrible, to the point where we find ourselves as if frozen by the anguish of the worst, for 70 years we have not done much of anything revolutionary when it comes to ecology, we may even have been tempted to wallow in disaster because we let ourselves be convinced that there was, and there is, no way out, which is false.
In my lifetime, I hope to see movements built of people where information is processed honestly and coupled with enthusiastic action. My articles are a way of anticipating these phenomena, which may well appear one day among the peoples most sensitive to ecological issues. Here too, community structures will certainly be the best ones, and constructive communication should take place to address more global issues.
I expect leaders coming from these communities, of course, but I have absolutely no expectation to see this kind of leadership appearing within the rings of the pure-capitalism and ecofascism enthusiasts.
Thank you. This has been an enlightening read, I have learned much, and your ideas have articulated what were for me only formlessly incipient thoughts, and new thinking entirely.
Your work is of great value and more than merits at least a paid subscription. Since late 2020, with the COVID-19 operation in full swing and all the attendant implications, in protest against the international criminal syndicate of governments and their globocap-oiler-banker-owner-investor (GOBOI) bossess who are foisting such vicious malignancy against the people, I withdrew completely from a previously active participation in all conforming activities: I pulled-out of paid employment to eliminate an income tax liability, I have reduced all living costs in order to consume less in an effort of reducing my contribution to the economy, etc. I have not earned a single digit of income for almost three years now, and I intend never again to contribute in any substantive political manner (e.g. voting, supplementarily to how utterly futile that is), never to draw upon government services, and never to even seek work with any enterprise that complies with, collaborates, or in any way contributes to the government.
Accordingly, please accept my sincere apologies for not taking out a paid subscription to your Substack. I simply cannot afford to make the purchase.