Better Late than Never: Open Systems Theory’s Plan to Deal with Climate Change

My (outlandish) hope in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is to help push capitalism closer to the center of political theory and political science. On my reading, a capitalist “axiomatic” binds together labor, capital, growth imperatives, and commodities. But these defining elements are also insufficient. A specific capitalist assemblage simultaneously depends upon, affects, and folds to varying degrees into its institutions other relatively autonomous force fields, including climate change, religious intensities, mutating diseases, scientific research, new political movements, novel financial instruments, compensatory hopes poured into investment and consumption, wars, and security anxieties. Such intersections combine with the intrinsic instability of markets to produce the volatility of capitalism. It, too, is an open system in a world of open systems that invade, energize, and threaten it.

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Tipping points in open systems: bifurcation, noise-induced and rate-dependent examples in the climate system

Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rsta.2011.0306 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 370 (1962) ◽

pp. 1166-1184 ◽

Cited By ~ 137

Author(s):

Peter Ashwin ◽

Sebastian Wieczorek ◽

Renato Vitolo ◽

Peter Cox

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Open Systems ◽

Rapid Change ◽

Climate System ◽

Balance Model ◽

Tipping Points ◽

Static System ◽

Global Energy Balance ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rate Dependent

Tipping points associated with bifurcations (B-tipping) or induced by noise (N-tipping) are recognized mechanisms that may potentially lead to sudden climate change. We focus here on a novel class of tipping points, where a sufficiently rapid change to an input or parameter of a system may cause the system to ‘tip’ or move away from a branch of attractors. Such rate-dependent tipping, or R-tipping , need not be associated with either bifurcations or noise. We present an example of all three types of tipping in a simple global energy balance model of the climate system, illustrating the possibility of dangerous rates of change even in the absence of noise and of bifurcations in the underlying quasi-static system.

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Commentary on Sequestering Atmospheric CO2 Inorganically: A Solution for Malaysia’s CO2 Emission

Geosciences ◽

10.3390/geosciences9020090 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 90

Author(s):

John Gallagher ◽

Nithiyaa Nilamani ◽

Norlaila Zanuri

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Carbon Dioxide ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Carbon Sequestration ◽

Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽

Co2 Emission ◽

Inorganic Carbon ◽

Open Systems ◽

Carbon Dioxide Sequestration ◽

External Sources

The commentary questions the basis behind an article on accounting and calculating inorganic carbon sequestration services for Malaysia. We point out the omission of coastal vegetated ecosystems. We also bring the author’s attention to the problems of using a seemingly resultant chemistry within open systems, in which reactive species come from external sources. In addition, we point out that ecosystem services in the mitigation of climate change must be referenced against a manufacturing process, such as cement’s normal lifetime of carbon dioxide sequestration. Without such a reference state, sequestration services may be severely overestimated and when used within a cap and trade system, it will lead to an increased rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

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Putting the anthropos back in consumer research: Beyond reductionisms

Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition) ◽

10.1177/2051570720980430 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 90-102

Author(s):

Søren Askegaard

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Consumer Research ◽

Consumer Culture ◽

Interdisciplinary Research ◽

Open Systems ◽

Human Biology ◽

Biological Anthropology ◽

Culture Theory ◽

Consumer Culture Theory ◽

Point Of Departure

The purpose of this article is to open for a missing dialogue between consumer culture theorization and biological anthropology and biology. In this sense, it is a kind of “manifesto” for a future interdisciplinary research program. The point of departure is for consumer researchers to get beyond and avoid the lure of much of the standard evolutionary Neo-Darwinist theorizing with its focus on a sharp division between innate and acquired features and adaptationism as the driving logic. Instead, consumer culture theory can – and should – find inspiration in open systems approaches to human biology and culture, in biosemiotics, and in current movements toward a post-anthropocentric anthropology that reinserts the human as a “becoming” element in a dynamic natural unfolding. Finally, it is argued that such a renewed dialogue is pivotal in the establishment of an ecological wisdom for addressing contemporary issues of climate change and sustainability.

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Averting robo-bees: why free-flying robotic bees are a bad idea

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20190063 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (6) ◽

pp. 723-729

Author(s):

Roslyn Gleadow ◽

Jim Hanan ◽

Alan Dorin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Computer Simulation ◽

Food Security ◽

European Countries ◽

Plant Interactions ◽

Plant Insect Interactions ◽

Native Habitat ◽

Insect Pollinators ◽

Insect Interactions

Food security and the sustainability of native ecosystems depends on plant-insect interactions in countless ways. Recently reported rapid and immense declines in insect numbers due to climate change, the use of pesticides and herbicides, the introduction of agricultural monocultures, and the destruction of insect native habitat, are all potential contributors to this grave situation. Some researchers are working towards a future where natural insect pollinators might be replaced with free-flying robotic bees, an ecologically problematic proposal. We argue instead that creating environments that are friendly to bees and exploring the use of other species for pollination and bio-control, particularly in non-European countries, are more ecologically sound approaches. The computer simulation of insect-plant interactions is a far more measured application of technology that may assist in managing, or averting, ‘Insect Armageddon' from both practical and ethical viewpoints.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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