Systems Ecology and Limits to Growth: History, Models, and Present Status

Systems ecology, including systems science more generally within or associated with the discipline of ecology, started with a great deal of enthusiasm and four main areas of development a little more than half a century ago, propelled by new hardware, software, and conceptual developments. Issues pertaining to the survival and sustainability of modern industrial civilization, and indeed humans themselves, have been intertwined with systems ecology more or less since the start of each. Obvious examples include the Limits to Growth models and many subsequent analyses of sustainability (or lack thereof). Systems ecology today is far more diffuse and fragmented than it was a half century ago, although it lives on in the general use of modeling and the many concerns about the planet’s future. These include: climate issues, ecological footprint analysis, energy analysis (including EROI, or energy return on investment), emergy analysis, Hubbert energy analyses, ecological economics, and biophysical economics. Since most of these efforts include at least some means of dealing with complex data sets, and indeed complexity itself, then one can say that systems ecology is alive and well and continuing to deal with the issues that were part of their original focus. But general public and political interest, never strong, is even less so at this time even though the original concerns initiated some 50 years ago are far more clearly defined and operational today. Probably the main reason is that the price of gasoline at the pump is not perceived as being especially high (unless you are poor, or in France or much of Africa, in which case it is devastatingly so). The perceived success of fracking has led to the perspective in the minds of most Americans that technology will continue to resolve issues of scarcity, as indeed it appears (quite arguably) to have been the case so far. While most of the world may not be concerned, the issues raised by the founders of Systems Science continue unabated and to the degree they have been mitigated it is primarily through increasing energy use, most of which is carbon-based. If we are to decrease our use of carbon-based energy, the transition will be extremely difficult and will require the use of much systems science. Even with the greatest efforts, it is not clear that it is possible.