The strongest attribute of Resilience theory is it’s ability to prepare for potential disturbances. That of course, is also it’s weakness. Should those disturbances fail to materialise your community will have failed and been surpassed by all around. You end up with a community frozen in time in a state of perpetual paranoia.

Peak oil did not happen because we have a capitalist system that will adapt supply to demand. Hence shale gas and tar sands becoming profitable. So what are the resiliences that a future community should be developing? Clearly we need to think about population consumption from a global perspective. Yet how should the local community prepare a resilient approach? Hoarding baked beans might be an option. Food will clearly be a global issue. But the faster you prepare for it in Europe, the worse the famine gets in Africa and Asia. So it becomes a question of morals and ethics, not resilience. Resilience theory is clearly that. A question of theory. Underlying it all is the theory of the ethial and moral approach.

PS: Good luck with the BAked Beans, Tesco has a special this week.

There is no way to “outsmart” nature. You’re anthropromorphising something that can’t be. So to put it in similar terms: it’s like thinking, when you’re 5, that your parents don’t know you’re lying when you claim that a giant green monster drew on your walls with the crayons, and left the room a mess.

Like it or not, we simply aren’t those gods. We are these primates. We don’t have a choice in that. It’s time we grew up a little and understood that, and dealt with it appropriately, rather than sticking our figers in our ears going “LALALALALA I can’t hear you!” because that’s futile. Infantile. More to the point: it doesn’t work.

Theory X is that boundaries are remote, at least gradual if not benign, and that most are local, so diversity ensures that their aggregate effect is smooth even if individual effects are not. Examples are the Breakthrough critique of boundaries and the Brooks challenge, discussed here recently (“Planet without humans”).

Theory Y, more in the spirit of the nonlinear dynamics/CAS world, is that there’s a lot of positive feedback, intrinsic to ecosystems and their interactions with humans, and a lot of coupling both among boundaries or the variables they affect and among regions due to trade and migration. This makes the system prone to surprises and catastrophes, irrespective of any individual boundary.

If you’re content to talk about tradeoffs and let the political sausage machine grind along with no real chance of observing boundaries, you either need a hefty dose of Theory X, or have a low estimation of our ability to solve any of our problems, or both.

I find the parallel with the financial crisis a bit disturbing. The analog of Theory X in 2007 was the idea that micro prudential regulation of institutions was sufficient to provide stability and that growth was robust. Theory Y is systemic risk. We know how that worked out. I suppose that a political scientist could have argued from a Theory Y perspective that things were not OK, but nothing could be done about it due to the power structure at the time, and been right. But it’s not very comforting to repeat that experiment on a larger scale.

I agree.

I still don’t see the practical threat in the claimed “power grab” because there is no mechanism or likelihood for it to occur. Anyone who’s proposing a truly authoritarian global EPA is simply naive, and probably also pursuing a course that’s counterproductive to the goal of respecting boundaries.

If it is too complex for majority to understand (and hence manage), reduce the interconnections.

The outcome may not be ideal, but it is part of the evolution process.

It’s fine as long as not over. • Moderation • balance
Tony

For example, in the paper by Rockström, Sachs et al you refer to (http://unsdsn.org/files/2013/03/130316-Sustainable-Development-and-Planetary-Boundaries.pdf), I agree with you that science is an aspect in the Sustainable Development Trajectory they explore (very clear in the beginning as a foundation for the argument, I agree). But there really are loads of other issues and suggestions that I would say appear much more prominent in the paper – e.g. the need for increased transparency/”good” governance, elimination of extreme poverty, transitions in socio-technological systems, technology, the role of multilateral institutions, multinational businesses, and more. The role of experts and science is hardly mentioned in those sections.

There is one argument where your “power grab” should have been visible (assuming that this paper is an illustration of PB-scientists trying to grab hold of formal power): that’s the section on Governance Transformations (pp. 8-9). But the section does not include e.g. a suggestion to create an overarching scientific body with authoritative (advisory/decision-making/conflict-resolving/agenda-setting) powers. Instead, the section is an elaboration of existing institutional architectures, and a call for changes in business models. In all, the words “science” and “scientific evidence” appears only 4 times in the whole report (main text). So where is the “power grab” here? Clearly I must be missing something.

Now, Shellnhuber’s piece http://www.humansandnature.org/democracy—hans-joachim-schellnhuber-response-61.php
I note that he does not use the term “world government” in the way you imply, he talks about a “global democratic society”. He uses the first term as a contrast to his vision – global democratic society as (quote): “a sophisticated—and therefore more appropriate—version of the conventional “world government” notion”.

In terms of his specific suggestions about an Earth Constitution, Global Council and Planetary Court it is (again) all about the details. Who should decide on what to include in such a constitution? What is the mandate of this Council? What sort of powers should be assigned to this imaginary Court? Highly unrealistic proposals obviously, and I would probably look at the body of literature on transnational democracy for inspiring in-depth debates about this, rather than on a really short and vague think-piece like this.

But still: I can’t find evidence that indicates the sort of “power grab” you suggest. Where is the suggestion to create an institution, or governance mechanisms which puts scientific/expert advice at the driver’s seat in the creation of these imaginary global institutions?

I’m starting to think that we are looking at these issues from two very different social science angles, which creates some communication problems and different interpretations of the evidence. But a clearer definition of what a “power grab” really means, and the way in which such claims can be validated or refuted, would have been really useful.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2013/04/planetary-boundaries-as-millenarian.html

Boundaries should not be set by unelected experts.