Confounding Integrity: Humanity as Dissipative Structure

From the perspectives of physics (thermodynamics) and ecological economics, the human enterprise is a far-from-equilibrium dissipative structure. It can grow and maintain itself in a ‘far-from-equilibrium’ (low-entropy) state only by consuming resource gradients found in nature and by dissipating degraded energy and matter (‘entropy’) (a.k.a waste and pollution) back into the ecosphere. Ecosystems (e.g., forests, grasslands), non-human species, soils, mineral ores and petroleum are examples of the gradients of available energy/matter that people consume and dissipate to grow the human enterprise. The rate at which natural systems can (re)produce themselves and the goods and services they provide to humans, is strictly limited by the solar flux and various intrinsic biological factors. It follows that, beyond a certain point, the continuous growth of the human enterprise must inevitably destroy the substance and functional integrity of the very ecosystems that sustain it. Biodiversity loss, landscape degradation, soil erosion, fisheries collapses, declining fossil energy supplies, and climate change are just a few of the inevitable contemporary by-products of economic growth that suggest the human enterprise has already passed that critical point. Indeed, the accelerating degradation of the ecosphere and consequent loss of integrity threatens the future of civilization. There are no exemptions from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To survive, the human enterprise, as a dissipative structure, must adapt to eco-reality and learn to live within the eco-thermodynamic means of nature.