The Three Things this Week are the concepts of Meliorism, Wicked Problems, and Confidence Intervals. I really like the ramifications of thinking through conservation issues as a Wicked Problem. And I realized that I am a complete and total Meliorist.

Meliorism
In studying the philosophy of deviance in leisure this word kept appearing: meliorism. I’d never heard of it before.
 
Meliorism: the belief that the world can be made better by human effort
 
I guess I never thought about Meliorism. I’ve had the Hobbesian discussions with people about whether people are inherently good or bad but I suppose I’ve always assumed that focused and directed human effort toward making the world better can, in fact, make the world better. I’ve never thought anything different. My assumption has always been that most people aren’t striving to actively make the world a better place but are instead just trying to survive (e.g. make money, feed their family, provide for basic needs) or trying to build their life in accordance to the values they believe in (e.g. being a member of their family, of their community, of their church, etc). I’ve always assumed that our problems of pollution, overpopulation, overexploitation, and habitat destruction (let alone all social ills of crime, homelessness, etc) are repercussions of poor management of the commons and our basic desires for survival and maintaining the status quo.
 
Additionally, I’ve always believed that there are people who try to meet those two basic desires while simultaneously choosing to direct their efforts toward betterment of the group. This can manifest itself as police officers, politicians, and priests or revolutionaries, social workers, and conservationists. Whether you feel you are helping the world or not is subjective and whether you actually are or not is difficult to quantify and dependent on your rubric. I’ve thought this way and apparently that is Meliorism. The opposite belief is that we can’t make the world better.
 
Existentialism, nihilism, apathy, anomie and cultural subjectivity all play into this idea a little bit but the belief that you cannot objectively make the world a better place is so odd to me. Existentialism and nihilism as philosophies just say that you are choosing your moral structure and defining your own meaning and purpose. Apathy and anomie intuit that you just don’t care. Even Zen or Taoist acceptance are exercises in accepting the world as it is but make no reference to an inability at betterment. The conscious belief that the world cannot be made better ignores these personal choices and extends beyond the idea of checking out. It is an idea that presupposes an objective standard of what better is that will never be met.
 
The best I can wrap my head around this is as a cultural entropy.  All cultural expression is loss. I don’t think this a great analogy but I can’t imagine a belief system that actively believes that something, anything anywhere is getting better. I guess I am a meliorist.
 
Wicked problems
This is a concept that I believe contains the environmental issues we have. A Wicked Problem is vastly more complex than a normal problem. A normal problem, even a difficult problem, has at least one solution, a set of standards and examples in which to compare it to, and can be clearly identified before attempting to solve it. How to get to the moon and finding the Higgs Boson are difficult problems. How do you protect wildlife and rare habitats is an especially difficult problem. How do you feed and provide basic and above-basic needs for 7 billion problem with limited resources is, I think, a very very difficult problem.
 
But, how do you feed and provide for the human population while simultaneously protecting non-human nature and ensuring a habitable global climate with the ability to still explore off-planet and sub-atomic levels? This is a wicked problem.
 
Here are the characteristics of a wicked problem:

1. The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
4. Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a 'one shot operation.'
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

 
I’m reminded of the Kardashev Scale and Robert Wright’s Non-Zero in thinking about wicked problems. Kardashev says that we have three types of civilizations (type 1 uses the energy of the sun that hits the earth, 2 uses the actual energy of the sun, and 3 uses the energy of the galaxy) and that we are currently a Type .85. He says that transcending from a .99 to a 1.01 will the most difficult of all the transitions ever because it requires a change in every level of existence (how we think, how we consume, what we value, etc). Other theorists have said that this means this transition has the greatest opportunity for collapse. And this is what Wright says in Non-Zero. The more complex our society gets the better we become because we develop more and more answers that are Non-Zero, as in not a zero sum conclusion where one party wins and one party loses. When you have a non-zero sum conclusion both parties gain something. This is the idea of trade versus war. When you war, one party comes out ahead and the other does not but the whole population stays the same. When you trade, both parties get something and the whole population is that much further ahead. But, maintaining these non-zero sum relationships requires a lot of resources and as you grow larger and more successful the greater the opportunity for collapse.
 
This is where I believe we are. Globally, I think we are very near developing the necessary thought processes and technologies to transcend to a Type 1 Civilization through more and more Non-Zero sum solutions. But! Pushing us past that last hurdle is a Wicked Problem. This is the best I’ve been able to state the problem but I have left out so many aspects of humanity (i.e. cultural expression and the utilitarian values of non-consumption species) that I don’t think we fully understand our problem. Also, we wont be able to recognize what is right or wrong but only trajectories of appropriateness. Further, if we fail and sea levels rise 10 ft or 30-60% of the planet’s biodiversity is lost, then we cannot reverse that. That makes it a ‘one shot operation’ with no alternative solutions. We have figure this out as we go and every temporary solution we develop has novel problems that have to also be solved timely.
 
Developing the statistical probability that an alternative hypothesis is within the Confidence Interval you determine.

I learned this however I am angry at it because I have a test coming up and it is taking me too long to apply what I’ve learned. So, my revenge is to not dignify this concept with any more page space. ​

“The great Existential Environmental Threat that we keep hearing about where we all live in a post-apocalyptic world is basically what the average Somali lives like now. What that is is poverty, what that is is energy poverty.” Mr. Nordhaus, Chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, ended his presentation at last night’s Aquatic Academy with this answer to a participant’s question. That startled me. That startled me partially because I believe that he is right in asserting that globally we are striving for more than that. It also startled me because I can’t imagine that I, as a wealthy Westerner, am so blind to not understand that that feared world is not one of a lack of (or polluted) natural resources but a world that is too poor to access those natural resources. That is too simplistic a view for the plight of an East African famine but it does spark a thought within my head that the causes are only partially environmental and more a case of tribal terrorism, gangsterism, corporate and foreign exploitation, wealth inequality, political corruption, the all-too biological characteristic of congregating and reproducing en masse, and the geographic luck of the draw as far as natural resources go. It makes me think that with better technologies of political development and more wealth for more people, the environmental concerns are exactly what Mr. Shellenberger described as “trade-offs” that will be addressed.

Mr. Nordhaus followed Mr. Steve Chazen, president of Occidental Petroleum. Both individuals shared that there is a growing global trend of oil and gas consumption that will not stop anytime soon. This has nothing to say about morality or whether it is “right or wrong” that this trend is growing but that it is the reality. In fact, the only morality presented by either speaker was whether it is “right” to deny anybody in the world access to energy needs that are available to everyone else.

I had to write down my question because I have difficulty understanding how I feel about this information. Here is the question that took me four weeks to articulate: “To get to a ‘green’ planet that addresses environmental concerns and raises the basic needs for 9 billion people, a cheap and clean energy is required. With our best science now, your position is that cheap and clean energy is nuclear and solar. To get there, to get away from high emissions, we need a good transition fuel and that is shale gas or fracking. Mr. Shellenberger mentioned last week that we need to consciously address the “environmental trade-offs” along the way but if we continue down this path, wont the environmental trade-offs become too large? Wont events like the Deepwater blowout and Fukishima hit a tipping point that will destroy the Earth before we get to that point?” His response was perfect: there is little to no scientific evidence that those large-scale events did much lasting harm. Additionally, there is little evidence that there has ever been a tipping point that we as humans haven’t been able to innovate ourselves past. Dr.  Schubel carried the response further by saying that the organics from agriculture coming down the Mississippi for over two hundred years has done far, far worse to the Gulf than the Deepwater blowout. His response is that we’ve found that nature is not fragile and we have found that it responds well to anomalies and resiliently bounces back but does not respond well to chronic problems.

Dr. Schubel ended by saying that environmentalists are losing this effort and we are losing it big.    My question to that is: what are we losing then? And that goes to the heart of the discussion presented by this Aquatic Academy. These new paradigms are waking up to a reality that no matter what, consumer trends are not changing and even if they do, it is absolute fantasy, a mathematical impossibility to believe that we will achieve 350 ppm Carbon in the atmosphere. Our focus needs to be to save our biodiversity, keep our wild-lands wild, raise the global wealth and access to basic needs, and work toward transitioning to cheap and clean energy. In the science fiction parlance that I know, this means taking us to a Type 1 Civilization on the Kardashev scale. And as David Deutsch points out, this is the only way to achieve humanity’s Beginning of Infinity.

I'm going to start with summary of what an Eco Modernist wants first:

• Truly believing and understanding that the world is still natural and enchanting
  
• We need to embrace our high energy planet
  
• Accelerate the speed and amount of energy transitions
  
• Understand the environmental trade-offs with any action
  
• Intensify energy and agriculture production to minimize footprint
  
• Real innovation takes decades and hard persistent work
  
• We need to consider the reversal of technology transfer from developing countries

The reason I want to start with it is because the way those come about is through the non-environmental-orthodoxy strategy of supporting the exploration of fracking and nuclear energy. 

The Aquarium of the Pacific hosted another speaker at the Aquatic Academy course last night. The talk was as controversial as the previous two classes. Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute spoke about using a new narrative to understand the human relationship with nature and specifically the human relationship with exploiting natural resources. Creatively, Mr. Shellenberger made parallels between the Judeo-Christian trope of a morality that promotes more austerity to achieve harmony. Using the tenets of the religious idea that if we a)recognize we are sinful, b) repent for our sinful ways, c) discipline our sinful desires toward more praising of the Ideal, then we will achieve Heaven. He then compared this to the findings of Cognitive Therapy, where Dr. Aaron Beck found that depressed people have the same three things in common: a)My world is bleak, b) I'm no good, c) My future is hopeless. And to tie it all together, Mr. Shellenberger used both of those narratives to explain the dominating paradigm in the Environmental Movement since the 1970's: human behavior is a greedy consumption-based exploitation that is virus-like and that we need to consume less and be less so that we can live in harmony with nature.

Using the Eco-Modernist label that Slate gave him and his colleague, Ted Nordhaus, Mr. Shellenberger states that the orthodox environmental movement is anything but orthodox. Using the the Tennessee Valley Authority as his first of several examples, he shows that what were termed 'environmental efforts' involved a paradigm that benefited humans as well. In essence, he is talking about the Nature vs Humans binary that I have grown up with in my own understanding of the environmental paradigm in ten years of conservation work. He exposes the dubious foundation of the development of this binary and discusses, although not explicitly, William Denevan's discussion of the idea of the Pristine Myth - the myth that indigenous cultures lived in harmony with their surroundings. This is Daniel Quinn's idea of Leavers and Takers presented through his talking primate, Ishamel.  The reason this is a myth is that hunter and gatherer/nomad/tribal people did not live in harmony with their surroundings. Instead, they did anything they could to survive because conditions no matter where you live are harsh.  For example, evidence is shown that many of the East Coast forests were planted by native peoples, that regular large-scale burning was utilized to hunt game, and damming of rivers and tributaries was a regular occurrence. People did what they needed to to survive. And, as Robert Wright and Steve Pinker point out, the world was more violent as well partially because of the scarcity of resources. 

Shellenberger mentions that the Environmental Movement has had two accomplishments. First, it has put in our heads that we need to reduce the environmental footprint and, second, that we can live in harmony with nature. His thesis is that while reducing our footprint is exactly what we need to do, the second accomplishment is not possible and that it actually undermines the first. 

If we are to apply the Nature Vs Humans binary for a second (to understand his argument in terms I can understand), it seems his focus from an environmental perspective is saving as much wild-lands as possible and the rest stems from that. Intuited in this sentiment is the restoration of degraded lands, the consolidation of 'human-influenced' lands (cities, agriculture, etc) and conversion of under-utilized production land toward more wild-lands - primarily, low/non producing agricultural fields. Of the Big Nine Planetary Boundaries that Jared Diamond talks about in Collapse and that were identified by Johan Rockstram's team from the Stockholm Resilience Center, this perspective deals easily with only a couple of them. Not explicit though is how to deal with air, water, and land pollution, and from what I understand he terms those issues as "trade-offs." 

I have yet to process the information that Mr. Shellenberger presented but I like the foundation that he works from. Particularly, I am uncertain whether minimizing the 'human' footprint should be the number one priority of the environmental movement. But I do understand and enjoy the logic that the 'trade-offs' of pollution can be solved if our footprint becomes our focus. This is an admirable thread that is found from Thoreau to Gary Snyder, where Snyder wanted to the massive consolidation of cities and urban planning that involves 500 years. 

For the Eco Modernist, the primary goal is a greater and faster energy transition. The paradigm that would entail what I started with:

• Truly believing and understanding that the world is still natural and enchanting
  
• We need to embrace our high energy planet
  
• Accelerate the speed and amount of energy transitions
  
• Understand the environmental trade-offs with any action
  
• Intensify energy and agriculture production to minimize footprint
  
• Real innovation takes decades and hard persistent work
  
• We need to consider the reversal of technology transfer from developing countries
  

I'm curious to see how the Breathrough Institute plays with these thoughts more and I will definitely be following their innovative thought.

Last night at the Aquarium of the Pacific’s Aquatic Academy class, speaker Jesse Ausubel presented Creativity and Innovation Got Us Into This Pickle and They are Our Only Way Out; What Will It Take? It May Surprise You. Mr. Ausubel is the Director of the Program for the Human Environment and Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller University. He presented one of the most intriguing and curious environmental lectures that I have ever seen. Ausubel’s talk flies directly in the face of the “Doom and Gloom” environmentalism and is a kindred spirit to Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature thesis (that society is getting less violent as we progress), David Deustch’s Beginning of Infinity thought (that humans as creators of our own destiny have developed the foundation for infinite growth), and Robert Wright’s NonZero philosophy (that society is progressing toward better on every important metric).

Mr. Ausubel shows a way out of the environmental mess by showing that in many ways we are on our way out. Using Population Growth, Agriculture, and Consumption as his main points, he shows that we while we have more people than ever, that agriculture “is the single biggest rapist of our land”, and that we as a globe consume too much, the trends are not what we are led to believe. Population explosion is unprecedented but the population growth rate in the United States peaked in the 1970’s and has been falling since. In the US, more food is produced on less land and has since the 70’s. And consumption in relation to GDP in the first world has fallen for 89 of 100 of the most popular consumer items (from asbestos to ladders). Globally, he says, the trends are off a bit but the same idea holds for almost every economic sector and nation (for example:  China has the lowest growth rate compared to any other country [it takes 6 Chinese adults to create 2 children], more calories are produced on less land everywhere, and while countries get wealthier they only consume more in the beginning and then it levels off quickly – this is called the Kuznet’s Curve).

What I took from the talk and what I love is the following:

• Currently, we have more forest volume, more previous agricultural land being spared, lower consumption rates
  
• With all this, caloric food production is currently being met (distribution and alleviation of chronic hunger is a separate issue), drastically more people with much more access to basic needs, more people have access to phenomenal possibilities and consumer goods than at any other time in history, and more wild lands now than since the beginning of the industrial revolution
  

This is because:

•  We have become exponentially more efficient through drastically better information, dematerialization and greater capacities for communication
  
• There is higher affluence globally providing more people with more choice
  
• A lower growth rate providing even more choice and for even more people
  

His big caveat is the ocean. All of the above points only to the terrestrial. The ocean is still 100 years behind the curve and ocean exploitation is still within the atavistic hunter gatherer paradigm.  The ocean is demonstrably worse off

Where I see his argument could use further analysis, study and discussion is the following:

• Endangered species and biodiversity are not fully accounted for
  
• While trends are better than we thought, the current situation is also worse than we thought in many instances and the trajectory he speaks of is not fast enough to not just meet sustainable limits but to actually fix it
  
• Ausubel started his talk with the disclaimer that he thinks the current idea of relying upon the government (or any extrinsic entity) to save us and our problems needs to be addressed and counteracted, the spirit of his argument is a market-driven, silicon-valley mindset that consumer habits and increased technology will save us. These need to be tools, just like government regulation is a tool or like current cultural values are a tool, in the tool belt to fix the problems. This is actually the biggest problem I have with his talk and I can’t fully explain why. It just gives me an “icky”, pit-in-the-stomach feeling.
  

Overall, I believe his perspective is needed and I want desperately to believe it is the truth. I want to believe that trends like he is describing will help us transcend the Type 1 Civilization on the Kardashev Scale that Sagan, Michio Kaku, Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil talk about as being the critical point of transcendence for our species. I look forward to following Ausubel’s work to see how his unique perspective will interpret more global problems and help open the door for more creative solutions. 

For more: check out Mr. Ausubel's interview here: The Intelligent Optimist