Systemic insights in unlikely places

Apropo of the new Australian 'national conversation' about vested interests - most of them mining - I was struck last year by an episode of The Gruen Nation which went behind the green-washing of the mining and resources industries.  An insider reveals how communities who oppose are bought off by the developers.  If only Wayne Swan had shown this clip to the nation at his Press Club address we would have seen it for how it really is - a nation that has come to believe through massive expenditure in advertising and spin that mining constitutes 30% of the economy and 10% of the work force when it is actually more like 10% and 3%. 

Clips like this also presage the current preoccupation with billionaires.

Having a national conversation

I have just finished reading Lois Banner's insightful account of the lives of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict in 'Intertwined Lives'.  Both were scholars of outstanding merit so it's a pity that they have both slipped, somewhat, from contemporary view.  Today was a good day to finish  this book as it coincides with heightened media interest in Australian Treasurer, Wayne Swan's essay exposing the threats to democracy that can arise through the actions of vested interests and by the abuse of wealth.  Although the general theme is not new it has needed saying (or resaying) in Australia for some time.  So good on Swan.  It is a pity he and others in government did not make this case to the Australian people before they began the process of introducing a mining tax, a key factor in the undoing of  Kevin Rudd as PM.

Ruth Benedict, amongst other contributions, developed typologies based on her anthropological studies  that attempted to account for the 'good society'.   According to Banner her work was described by Abraham Maslow 'as the most viable, post-Marxian theory of the good society'.  She talked about 'funnel' societies which 'chaneled wealth into the hands of a few men who had little concern for anyone else, while 'siphon societies' constantly spread wealth throughout the community' (p. 425-6).   For Benedict the Blackfoot of North America epitomised a 'siphon society'.  They were optimistic, free from violence, 'operating to an ethic of care: leaders identify with followers, the wealthy make certain that everyone is provided for, and leadership positions are opened to talented individuals. True freedom, Benedict asserted, means not only individual independence but also taking responsibility for others'. (p. 426).

Both Benedict and Mead were struck by the level of cooperation that occurred during war time (WW 2) in the US. They both worked hard to try to make that spirit persist in the peace as a necessary part of civil liberties.  Benedict worried that the US 'ran the risk of becoming a 'funnel' rather than a 'siphon' society' and that democracy would falter in the US because 'its system of government was based on reconciling special interests at the expense of the individual' and that 'its economy benefited the few over the many.'   Whilst undoubtedly worse in the US (see this posting) the place of special interests in formulating Australian national policy needs much more critical scrutiny and to be added to the national conversation that Swan has launched.

However we want a conversation of quality based on listening and mutual respect. I for one was sickened yesterday morning to hear on ABC radio Mitch Hooke gloating about his role, and that of the Minerals Council of Australia (of which he is CEO), in defeating  the government's original mineral tax proposals.   I also thought  the ABC's Emma Alberici's interview of Swan, heard on ABC News Radio this morning, discourteous and disengenouous.  To paraphrase  Margaret Mead, upbringing not race produces the differences between national groups.  So if Australia is to conserve its egalitarian nature then we need to attend to our manners of living together and, thus, the upbringing we provide to the inheritors of our culture.

Systems conferences in California in July

I am hoping to attend the ASC conference being organised at Asilomar (9-13th July) in conjunction with the Bateson Idea Group.  The ISSS then starts its conference at San Jose on the 15th.  I hope to take in the first few days.  The incoming ISSS President has posted a powerpoint that has much - perhaps too much? - interesting material.

New book series

CRC Press, an imprint of Taylor and Francis, has just launched a new book series, entitled “Communications in Cybernetics, Systems Science and Engineering”.

A fine mess of human invention

This paper 'How economic theory came to ignore the role of debt’, by Michael Hudson and the subsequent discussion provide fascinating insights into contestations of ideas with profound implications for how we govern what humans do.   

Tellingly Hudson notes that: ‘Increasingly, the discussion of finance and debt has been limited to monetarists with an anti-government ax to grind and vested interests to defend and indeed, promote with regard to financial deregulation.’

Avaatz's message seems good to me

From Avaatz:

'In the last 30 days, our community has grown by 2.5 million people. We were already the largest political web movement ever, and yet we're growing faster than anyone has seen before! We're taking more actions, winning more victories, donating more and generating thousands more media hits in one month than we used to in a year. It's thrilling, even a little scary, especially when we see that the pace is still accelerating...

Just to give a snapshot of the last few weeks --

• 5 million of us stood up to the ACTA and SOPA internet censorship bills, helping to put SOPA on ice, and putting ACTA under threat, with the President of the European Parliament and Germany, Poland and many other countries reconsidering their positions.
• we smuggled $1.8 million worth of medical supplies into Syria when no one else could, and raised $1.5 million more in donations, while our citizen journalists provided much of the world media's information and images.
• we generated thousands of news articles on 20 different campaigns.
• our sex trafficking hotline generated information that will result in a major set of arrests this week (can't say which country yet).
• we raised over 4 million dollars/euros/yen online to supercharge our work, and are growing our staff team like mad to keep up with the need.
• we ran over 40 campaigns, took over 10 million actions and told 25 million friends about campaigns we care about, on everything from deforestation in Brazil to the Murdoch scandal in the UK -- and made a serious impact on many of these.

If all that wasn't enough, we're about to launch a couple of big projects (stay tuned) that will take our community to a whole NEW level!

It's a thrilling privilege to serve this amazing community, and while the challenges we face are growing, the surge of spirited people rising to meet these challenges is growing even faster and stronger. We've come together and built something special, and it's taking off. Let's shoot for the stars.'

Get Up's top 10 issues for 2012

The results of Get Up's poll of members is out is a very user-friendly fashion. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 all concerned environmental issues.  As the Get Up folk say:

'It’s pretty amazing to be able to ask hundreds of thousands of Australians not only what they think will make this year the best year yet, but what they're prepared to do and to know that together, we actually have the power to do it. 
   
GetUp was created on the promise of a bold idea: that a great many people were ready to have a new kind of voice in our democracy, on the heartfelt belief that people cared more than pundits gave them credit for, and would change the country for the better if provided with meaningful opportunities to do so.'

Toward a Batesonian Cybernetic Concept of Culture

Guest lecture at the Department of
International Culture and Communication Studies

29 February, 2012

15.00 – 16.30

Copenhagen Business School

  Phillip Guddemi

Toward a Batesonian Cybernetic Concept of Culture

What would a cybernetic concept of culture look like if it were based on the mature epistemology of Gregory Bateson?  In some ways Bateson should be the best source of such a culture concept, as he was one of the pioneering anthropologists in New Guinea in the 1930s prior to his involvement in the Macy Conferences.  His interest in intercultural communication was catalyzed by the Second World War as well as by his prewar ethnographic experiences.  But after this period he ostensibly left anthropology and work on these issues.  I will show that his later cybernetic epistemology does have clear implications for culture and the concept of culture., concepts which in a second-order cybernetic epistemology have a distinct relationship to the Wittgensteinian idea of forms of life.

PHILLIP V. GUDDEMI: President, Bateson Idea Group, Sacramento, California USA; Managing Editor, Cybernetics and Human Knowing

Education: The University of Michigan, Ph.D., Anthropology, 1992; University of San Francisco, M.S., Environmental Management, 1982; The University of Michigan, M.A., Anthropology, 1979; University of California, Santa Cruz, B.A. (Honors), Anthropology, 1977.      

I was an undergraduate student of Gregory Bateson and I took four courses from him including an independent study on animal and human communication.  My graduate work at Michigan was with Roy Rappaport who included Batesonian and cybernetic ideas in his own research.  I did anthropological fieldwork in the far western East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, spending 20 months in 1986-87 and then 6 months in 1995.  In 1990-91 I held the Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, researching the relation of Papua New Guinea art to ritual and social life.  My dissertation on Papua New Guinea art and ritual was completed in 1992.  Since that time I have revisited the field of cybernetics, presenting papers and publishing on Bateson’s work and on topics such as autopoiesis and semeiosis. I have specifically looked at a cybernetic reinterpretation of the concept of power, and I am also very interested in biosemiotics as an emerging paradigm for many of the issues Bateson worked on.  I have held the title of Managing Editor at C&HK since 2006 and I was Vice President for Membership for the American Society for Cybernetics between 2008 and 2011. 

Selected Cybernetics and Bateson Publications

“Conscious Purpose in 2010: Bateson’s Prescient Warning.”  Systems Research and Behavioral Science 28:5, 2011, pages 465-475.

“A Multi-Party Imaginary Dialogue about Power and Cybernetics.”  Integral Review 6:1, 2010, pages 197-207.

“You are adapting more to me than I am adapting to you (but what does more mean?): Cybernetic and Foucaultian explorations of the domain of power.  Proceedings of the 52^nd Annual Meeting of the ISSS, 2008.

“Toward Batesonian sociocybernetics: from Naven to the mind beyond the skin.”  Kybernetes 36:7/8, 2007, pages 905-914.

“Breaking the Concept of Power (and Redescribing its Domain): Batesonian and Autopoietic Perspectives.”  Cybernetics and Human Knowing 13:3-4, 2006, pages 58-73.

Autopoiesis, Semeiosis, and Co-Coupling: A Relational Language for Describing Communication and Adaptation.”  Cybernetics and Human Knowing 7:2, 2000, pages 127-145.

Fire in the street - a call to action

A few weeks ago I missed one of my pilates classes for very good reasons.  It had been a day when the temperature here in Melbourne had risen to 35 degrees. Just before 6pm, upon walking out my front gate, I found the electric cable and light pole on the opposite side of the street blazing like one of the sparklers we  played with as children on bonfire nights.  It was a shock.  I immediately went back inside and dialled 000 - the first time I have had to do this.  Then I walked down and cautiously knocked on the front door of the house  under the pole.  Despite an open front door those inside knew nothing of the blaze - but could 'smell some burning'.  Shifting the car from below the pole, by now dripping molten pastic, was a good idea - and fortunately done early enough to prevent any damage.  The fire brigade arrived soon enough and before long had the blaze out.   We had a short power outage, but within several hours all seemed fine again.

Disturbing though this incident was in inner city Melbourne, it is the wider implications that ring bells of alarm. It was a very hot day - but by no means one of the hottest we have had nor will continue to have.  Yet here was a spontaineous ignition of the sort that triggered major bushfires in rural Victoria in February 2009 with significant loss of life.

The subsequent Royal Commission concluded that: ' Faulty power lines are believed to have caused five of the 11 major fires on Black Saturday and the commission said the solution was the replacement of single-wire earth return power lines with aerial bundled cable or underground cables.'   Depite these findings the state government has deferred implemetation of these recommendations on cost grounds.

A few weeks earlier, on an even hotter day when my family and I were returning from Adelaide, the implications of power line failure in contexts of weather extremes became even more apparent.  As explained in this opinion piece published in the Adelaide Advertiser, based on an article written by my daughter on that very trip, electricity authorities are being forced to close down whole grid systems in periods of extremes, particularly where bushfires might ensue.  The end result is a community potentially subjected to life threatening heat stress.  As pointed out there is a need for institutional and technological innovation to break out of this trap.  It need not be expensive, but it does involve challenging the thinking and corporate interests that dismiss arguements for investing in more locally resilient power/energy systems.

Joining the American Society for Cybernetics, or renewing ASC membership

ASC President Ranulph Glanville writes:   "These are exciting times for the ASC. 

• The ASC is the most lively, radical, passionate and experimental of the cybernetics (and systems) societies that we know. It is also surprisingly international.
• We have expanded the range of our conferences: the web site for 2012, to be held in Asilomar together with the Bateson Idea Group, will be launched in a matter of days.
• We are developing a publishing program, including conference proceedings (the 2011 conference proceedings are in their final stages of editing).
• We are building software to allow a multi-authored introduction to cybernetics. 
• Naturally, we have facebook and linkedin accounts and a YouTube channel. 
• We will shortly invite members to join in an online discussion about the benefits the ASC brings.
• We ran the "Cybernetics of Cybernetics" competition to gain suggestions for how to become more cybernetic in our working.
• Later in the year we expect to announce a vastly reduced subscription to an electronic library of publications for members.
• Furthermore, our new VP membership, Javier Livas, is developing strategies to expand our membership.

These are amongst the many good reasons for being a member of the ASC. So I write to you as someone who has recently been a member of the ASC and/or attended our conferences, to invite you to join the ASC, or renew your membership for 2012,  by paying the annual subscription.

Go to https://www.regonline.com/ascmembership2012 where you will find our all new and much improved membership payment system. Please fill in the appropriate membership immediately! Do it now so we don’t chase you! Remember to check the renew automatically option (except if joining as a life member), thus automating your renewal.

Call for papers, 11th International Conference of Sociocybernetics

2- 6 of July, Algarve University, Faro, Portugal

Complexity and Social Action: Interaction and Multiple Systems

Recent events throughout the globe have put into perspective the need for new theory settings, new approaches and new insights into the current social dynamics that many consider on a verge of  rupture. Financial crises, social uprisings, forced governmental collapses, and increasing inequalities within several spheres of the social world are some of the events that necessarily put collective and individual social action into new perspectives.

It is no longer possible to think of social phenomena in a disconnected way, since their foundations and limits are not clear. The understanding of social action and interaction, as cause and consequence of social phenomenon, depends on the capacity to consider and analyze all possibilities in action systems, their diversity and relations integrating micro, macro and meso perspectives. It is therefore, imperative for the sociocybernetic approach to address such a challenge.

The study of the interaction between multiple systems can be a useful and sound new way of thinking, especially if it follows a transdisciplinary approach. From the variety of subjects relevant in this respect, the next RC51 2012 Conference in Faro, will emphasize the following:

1. Decision Making and Action: Decision making is a highly complex embodied process resulting from the concerted action of a diverse set of interconnected systems that allow for the development of social action under the uncertainty that the future holds. Under this theme, we intend to explore the complexity of the intra-systemic and inter-systemic pathways framing decision-making and subsequent social action.

2. Violence: Violence is an interconnected system, socially and culturally produced and reproduced, and therefore embedded in individuals, institutions and states. The production of violence is a phenomenon with deep interconnections between the social, cultural, biological, emotional and symbolic systems. The discussion between the articulation of the individual system (composed of responses/actions/reactions/interactions),and the social and cultural system which provide the actor with thesymbolic, and many times, unconscious tolls of actions and interactions, iscrucial to advance the production of knowledge in this area.

3. Social Movements: The new social movements, now emerging in many countries, with different levels of economic development, combine a variety of new dimensions that exceed previously sociologically knowledge. The sociological analysis of these movements’ actions requires, primarily, an intersystem approach of the complexity of all its dimensions, and secondly, two other dimensions of the social actors' selves: the relationship between themselves and the relationship that each social actor wants to have with old and new groups, organizations and institutions.

Papers are welcomed which address these issues. Beyond that other papers addressing conceptual and theoretical issues in sociocybernetics or reporting relevant empirical findings are also welcomed.

Systems thinking exposes major myths

It is a great pity that journalists and media commentators are not versed in systems thinking like Simon Caulkin.  In his most recent article Simon exposes the widespread myth of shareholder ownership of companies.  He writes:

"Where did the myth come from? For once it is possible to pinpoint the source with some accuracy. Flashback to the end of the 1970s, when a growing feeling that shareholders were being short-changed by corporate managers who had grown fat and lazy in the long post-war boom was crystallised by Michael Jensen and William Meckling in a paper that despite its less than pulse-quickening title, 'Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behaviour, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure', remains the most quoted ever in the economic literature.

The authors cast managerial underperformance as a 'principal-agent problem'. In their construct, shareholders are the firm's 'principals' who hire managers to run the company on their behalf. The 'agency problem' arises because if they can get away with it managers will (like everyone else) put their own interests first. In other words, the incentives are misaligned. Ergo, the argument runs, the way to get managers to do their job is to realign the incentives by giving them significant amounts of stock-based compensation, turning executives into shareholders too.

There is one glaring snag in the theory. In law, directors and managers aren't employed by shareholders at all but by the company as ‘autonomous legal person’. But that doesn't square with the new (and wholly ideological) assertion that the company’s sole purpose is to maximise shareholder value. That can only be the case if shareholders actually own the company. To sidestep this inconvenient fact, the authors simply dismiss the company's autonomous status as ‘legal fiction’— a ‘simple falsehood’, points out Gordon Pearson in his careful study, The Road to Cooperation, on which is based the entire edifice of governance that has stood ever since.

Ironically, Jensen and Meckling’s pro-shareholder remedies were eagerly seized on managers who correctly spotted in them a bonanza-in-the-making that would make their previous pickings look like small change. The theory expected them to be greedy; they complied in full, demanding ever greater incentives for their alignment in a perfect example of the self-fulfilling prophecy."

So at the root of so much of the current angst about bonuses, corporate greed and company non-performance are ill-equipped theories - ways of thinking - that become institutionalised. No wonder Maynard Keynes once said: 

‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist’

Sustaining some faith in economists

Economics journalist Ross Gittins has come to play an important role in Australia's body politic.  Amongst readers of the Fairfax Press, and generations of  students studying economics for their Higher School Certificate (and its variations),  he almost single-handedly sustains some faith in the economics profession.  As I have blogged before,  I do not always agree with him.  In terms of heterodoxy within economics he rarely strays far from the mainstream.  But that is a particularly Australian affliction anyway.

Several Gittins columns from 2010 and 2011 made it into my cutout pile (I know, very last century as is my pocket diary).  These included 'Politicians confound classical theory that competetition leads to greater choice'  (The Age, August 30, 2010); 'People aren't donkeys so best put away the carrot and stick' (The Age, April 20, 2011) and 'Breakdown in relations is everyone's business'.  On the strength of my enthusiasm for this last article I sent Ross a copy of my book, 'Systems Practice. How to Act in a Climate-change World’.  My systems-theoretical arguments - and their practical implications - extend and strengthen the arguments made in that piece.  It is also an argument in favour of the Systemic and Adaptive Governance Research Program that I am running.

It remains to be seen if Ross sees the same connections and possibilities?

What are some of the systemic implications of a power analysis of global agriculture?

A recent work called the 'Power in Agriculture Report', commissioned for the 2011 Oxford Farming Conference, and undertaken by the Policy Research Unit at the Scottish Agricultural College, raises a number of interesting systemic insights.

As Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) observes: 'The political power relevant to global agriculture is still concentrated in the hands of the USA, major EU countries and some other economically powerful countries within the G8 coalition' but 'in the coming decades, EU countries may have to confront increased pressure to allow greater access to their markets'.  Competition is 'likely to come from emerging economies – like China, India and Brazil..'

From within Australasia the rhetoric seems to imply that Australia and NZ have more power than this analysis reveals.  This analysis raises significant uestions about  Australia's focus on WTO/GATT arrangements and other policies led by idealogical commitments to economic theory rather than the hard work of 'real politik'.  It also raises questions about whether Australia's pursuit of free trade agreements have been helpful.  In the power index devised by the report's authors Australasia comes in at less than half that of the EU and USA and on a par with Brazil.  Perhaps surprisingly it is also less than the UK.

Power now and in the future is likely to be concentrated in the hands of TransNational Corporations (TNCs) who are moving (really, have already moved) to incorporate emerging nations into their networks of power.  Consider the following findings:

• four companies account for 75-90% of global grain trade;
• 10 companies represent over 40% of the global retail market
• seven companies control virtually all fertiliser supply
• five companies share 68% of the world's agrochemical market
• three companies control almost 50% of the proprietary seeds market

 And where are these predominantly based ? The US and EU of course!  The authors did note, however, that: 'in some cases civil society organisations and farmer groups have had a significant impact in countervailing or balancing corporate influences'.

In what is decribed as a 'potentially grim picture' one of the reports conclusions is that: ' population growth, depleting mineral reserves and the impact of climate change will all put increased pressures on natural resource availability and it is clear, as evidenced through the process of ‘land grab’, that control of natural resources will become increasingly important as they become more scarce.'

Where good ideas come from

This YouTube clip from Steven Johnson relates well to what is taught in our recent Open University course (TU812): 'Managing systemic change: inquiry, action and interaction'.  In particular, as my colleague Chris Blackmore says:

"Good stuff here….. links quite well with Donald Schon’s early work on ‘ideas in good currency’ that we include in TU812"

Cyber-systemic conference in Vienna and ASC in Asilomar in July

Note from Ranulph Glanville:

The EMCSR (European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research) conference series was founded in 1972. At the last meeting in 2010, Robert Trappl, who had chaired it since its beginning, retired. The new chair, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, who directs the Bertalanffy Archive in Vienna, has just published the outline program for next spring's conference.

There are changes in how the conference will be run. For instance, round table discussions are welcome. There will be a pre and post doc colloquium. There are new symposia and symposium chairs. And the process for submission and publication is different, with extended abstracts for proposals, and papers written in final form after the conference, for publication.

Please note the symposia (look under programme >> symposia). Apart from symposium E, chaired by Karl Mueller and myself, there are other symposia that cover a wide range of different approaches and areas.

I invite you all to have a look at the programme and, if you find the conference interesting, exciting and/or relevant, to make arrangements to be there. Check out the web site: http://www.emcsr.net.  Vienna is lovely in mid-April.

At the same time, let me advise you of the American Society for Cybernetics' conference, 9 to 13 July, at Asilomar State Park Conference Centre, California, to be held in conjunction with the Bateson Idea Group. This promises to be a richly interesting event, and will remind us that there many sources of today's cybernetics, and many ways forward. This conference is in the week before the ISSS conference at San Jose: we are planing a special, reduced rate for those attending both. The conference web site will be launched in the new year, and will be accessible through the ASC home page, http://www.asc-cybernetics.org

Economist's critique of economists

Thanks to Roy Madron for drawing this Guardian article by Bernard Harcourt to my attention along with the following text:

"The contention from an economist, a politician, a pundit or columnist opining about what Occupy Wall Street must do to succeed is no longer a fully meaningful sentence because the authors of those sentences themselves have failed.

That seems to be a central message of the Occupy movement: the purported experts are precisely the ones who got us in this situation that so many perceive as intolerable – a condition of continuously increasing inequality where, today, "the 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans." That, I take it, is the guiding Jacobin spirit of this new form of political disobedience, but without the Jacobin leadership. And it is precisely the leaderlessness that accentuates the new syntactic challenges: those who are trying to "steer" Occupy Wall Street in the "right direction" – whether with good or ill will – have already failed miserably and, as a result, there is no authorial grammar to their statements.

Harcourt is the author of  The Illusion of Free Markets and this review shows his position

 

Professor Bernard Harcourt has recently released a compelling book "The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Social Order." Harcourt, a professor of law and chair of the political science department at the University of Chicago, painstakingly traces the parallel historical trend of increasing punishment during eras of strong free market advocacy.

 

Harcourt's Illusion presents crucial historical evidence that when nations' focus on freeing their trading and capital markets, there is always a concomitant rise in that nation's imprisonment and incarceration rates. Of course, the rise in incarceration is always of the nation's poor and disempowered.

Harcourt's thesis perfectly situates the failed American War on Drugs. The explosive rise in mass incarceration in the United States over the past 25 years (imprisonment increase of 335% as a result of the War on Drugs) occurred when the presidential administrations of Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. simultaneously worked tirelessly to deregulate the U.S. capital markets. Free market advocacy and deregulation have been occurring at exactly the same time that prison rates and populations have been skyrocketing. Harcourt describes how this is not just an American anomaly, but is a global historical reality.

The question that this historical reality begs is why?

 

Why during eras of powerful free market advocacy do governments' radically imprison their own citizens?

A great question that no economist seems willing to hear, let alone try to answer. "

Stiglitz on inequality US style

As always Stiglitz is systemically revealing in his concerns and writing.

Richard Wolff's systemic account of the financial meltdown

 Just watch the preview.  With thanks to Roy Madron.


"With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government “bailouts,” stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis - in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics and charts, this is a superb introduction designed to help ordinary citizens understand, and react to, the unraveling economic crisis."

First carbon capture testbed opens in Yorkshire

In the spirit of balance I felt it important to acknowledge that:

'Energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne has opened the UK's first real-world pilot project to test whether carbon emissions can be captured from coal-fired power stations and buried underground, to fight global warming.'

The article acknowledges that the project  'comes after considerable uncertainty over the viability of projects in the UK, since several other large players including SSE, BP and E.ON have recently cancelled projects due to cost factors.'

The article also makes clear that UK government policy in this area is in dissaray, and increasingly out to attack what George Osborne has termed 'green tape'!  My own feeling is that 'green tape' is an emergent property of a policy position that lacks systemic clarity, urgency and strategic resolve.

Not seeing and talking about the bigger picture - and why it matters

Miles Mander and colleagues make an excellent point in their article that argues:


'As environmentalists, we are terrible salespeople. We are not enabling people in society to make informed decisions. So people are left to make their own meaning of the role that the natural environment plays in their lives and in the lives of others based on lists of ecological components, but without a sense of the bigger picture. People end up making trade-offs between ecological curiosities, on one hand, and the services supplied by new developments, on the other. The inevitable result is that they choose the known benefits offered by development.


We environmentalists are failing to explain how ecological processes improve people’s lives and contribute to the success of businesses, governments, and communities. How can lists of ecological curiosities help the city treasurer, city engineer, or city manager make an informed decision when she must choose between providing potable water to city residents or protecting a forest?'

They go on to argue that:

'The evolving language around ecosystem services is now starting to build the bridge between scientists’, engineers’, and society’s perceptions of the environment. Ecosystem services is becoming the common currency, or language, between society, engineers, and ecological sciences. The time for all sides to learn this common language has never been more urgent or, indeed, opportune'

Carbon capture and storage - a systemic non-starter?

Carbon sequesteration has never made systemic sense to me so I am not surprised to see reports emerging such as the following:

'The future of carbon capture and storage (CCS) was called into question last week with two high profile projects being cancelled. The UK government scrapped plans for the nation's first CCS project at the Longannet power station in Fife, as it became apparent the project would require more funding than the £1 billion the government is prepared to allocate.

Meanwhile Vattenfall's application to develop a CCS project at a Danish geological structure has been denied. The country's government is waiting to evaluate the success of CCS projects in other nations before moving forward with any of its own.'

Joe Romm argues here that:

'There are simply too many unanswered questions for anyone to say today that we could rely on large-scale deployment of CCS in the 2030s as a major climate solution.'

Gale and Gusto launched with fanfare

A few weeks ago we went to the launch of the two new wind turbines commissioned by Hepburn Wind which is Australia's first community wind farm.  It was a delightful community-oriented ceremony in which 760 people gathered on Ron and Nathalie Liversedges property  to witness local 10 year old Neve Bosher of St Augustine’s School in Creswick cut a massive ribbon wrapping the girth of a 68m high wind tower. Neve was the winner of a competition run through local schools to name the turbines - hence Gale and Gusto!  These turbines are symbolic of what could become widespread throughout Australia with far-sighted governance and community engagement. 

Whilst the Australian PM has written in support of the development the policy setting is still very uncertain. Depite the policy uncertainties Hepburn Wind had made significant achievements by the time of their 4th birthday in July this year. Hepburn Wind started from humble beginnings with a simple, but powerful idea — that a community could own and operate its own wind farm for the benefit of the entire community.

The Hepburn Renewable Energy Association (now known as SHARE), with the help of many, established Hepburn Wind.  In July 2007, 23 members came together and voted to form the co-operative and vote in the first board. In just four years Hepburn Wind grew to almost 1900 members and are proud of their role in establishing the community renewable energy movement in Australia.  Their achievements include:

• built a $13.5m wind farm, the first in the country to be initiated and owned by a community 
• almost completed commissioning and already begun generating clean, safe energy for our community
• raised more than $9.6m from the community, been awarded $1.7m in state government grants and secured a $3.1 financing facility with Bendigo Bank
• joined up almost 1900 members, mostly locals
• entered into an innovative power off-take agreement with Red Energy that will enable supporters to purchase  locally generated power, while at the same time delivering significant financial benefits to the community
• applied the co-operative legal structure where members have equal voting rights (ensuring democratic control) but share returns in proportion to their investment
• developed the most generous benefit sharing program of any wind farm in the country, which will give special benefits to those living closest to the project as well as returning well in excess of $1m to the Hepburn Wind Community Fund over the next 25 years.
• set a new standard for community engagement and support for a wind farm — recognised with a recent honour, the Victorian Premier’s Sustainability Award for 2011.

Earlier this month the Clean Energy Future package completed its passage through the Australian parliament. From the middle of next year there will be in place the beginnings of the policy framework that will usher in a lower pollution future.

As well as pricing carbon pollution, the full package mandates the establishment of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC). The CEFC will direct $10 billion of the funds collected from the big polluters towards driving commercial investments in clean energy.

Hepburn Wind, Embark and their many supporters have worked hard to establish the community energy sector. With almost 60 groups nationwide starting their own journey of community power, it is important to ensure that the CEFC gets behind this sector.

The CEFC is currently seeking advice on the design of the $10 billion program — this is a great opportunity for systemic perspectives to be heard. Community groups, environment organisations, expert and passionate individuals need to advocate for the inclusion of community renewable energy into the mandate of the CEFC.

Hepburn Wind's key messages concern three basic requirements for supporting the community energy sector:

• recognise the value of engaging the community in the clean energy transition by specifically including community energy projects
• ensure that community projects are not ruled out due to their relatively small scale
• make provision for early stage equity investment in community projects

The community energy sector warrants specific attention in the construction of the CEFC as it will underpin community understanding of and support for both clean energy policy and the roll out of clean energy infrastructure. This seems to me to be an essential climate chnage adaptation strategy for Australia and to make systemic sense - distributed, resilient, networked community enterprises make sense in a climate change world where surpise and breakdown in the face of extremes will be more common.

Submissions must be emailed to cefc@treasury.gov.au by 5.00pm Thursday 8 December. Anyone can make a submission.

Using systems thinking to good effect

I have made postings before about how the Munro Review of child protection and social work practice drew heavily on systems thinking and advocated more systemic practice.  It is pleasing that good work is emerging in this field influenced by the report's findings and the enthusiasm of local staff in Hackney.

The 'howlers' are in the ascendency?

I began this post some months ago, but never quite finished it despite the plethora of examples that demonstrate my point.   I wrote then:  After nearly three months away from Australia I have returned to find that the 'howlers' have flourished in my absence.  Barbara Kingsolver's potent metaphor from her book The Lacuna fits all too well, unfortunately.  She says, referring literally, but not metaphorically, to a troup of Mexican monkeys:

'In the beginning were the howlers.  [Their howling] would start with just one: his forced rythmic groaning like a saw blade. That aroused the others near him, nudging them to bawl a long with his monstrous tune. Soon the maroon-throated howls would echo back from other trees...As it was in the beginning, so it is every morning of the world' (p. 3)

I find myself very unsettled, and not unlike Kingsolver's young protagonist who, subjected to the daily tirade from the howlers, wakes terified 'at every day's dawn'.

Clearly, and thankfully, I am not the only one worried.  But those who worry as I do are drowned out it would seem by the howlers.  Sean Carney illustrates my point well in his article in the Saturday Age when he says of the howler-in-chief:

"Since he became leader in December 2009, he [Tony Abbot] has reduced himself almost to a political parody - a politician who can rail and complain and harness community anger and generate fear but himself appears to stand for hardly anything, including the words from his own mouth."

Barry Jones pursues a similar line of argument to mine when he claimed during the week: 'intelligent discussion all but extinct'.  What is it about Australians?  More and more they seem to portray all the worst features of those trapped in an island state, where news of difference and reasoned debate merely trigger even more outrageous howling.  My cousin, a therapist, relates a story about a German client, a young woman here because of her relationship with an Australian lad, disturbed because she has yet to encounter anyone in her circle able to engage in civilised critical discussion. Having been in the reverse situation when young, with a German girlfriend, I can relate to her experience. I cannot imagine any Australians I know in Australia sitting in a mixed sauna discussing the latest news of the Baader-Meinhoff gang and the antics of Helmut Schmidt. But that was how it was in Munich in the 1970s.

In many ways the Murdoch press in Australia is the main megaphone for the howlers.  But how it works is not straightforward.  Some years ago when Vice Master of Wesley College at the University of Sydney I helped the students run a guest speaker program. One of the more interesting speakers was Wendy Bacon, then a well recognised and 'radical' journalist.  She was asked whether she had ever had stories censored by her employers (Murdoch, Packer, Fairfax). Her answer was revealing.  My memory of her answer was that to her knowledge she had never had a story censored or blocked by her employer.  Instead, she said, the main form of censorship was self-censorship by journalists themselves. They knew that if they wanted to keep their job, or to get another job in Australia, they had to observe certain rules.  Concentration of ownership in the press has increased since Wendy gave this talk so I imagine that self-censorship has become even more insidious.  There is good evidence for this today in an article by Wendy Bacon in The Age where she reports a revealing exchange with News Corp (Australia) CEO John Hartigan:

"I emailed Hartigan some questions. They included: Do you consider that bias by newspapers in cities where only one company owns a newspaper could ever be an issue? How do you monitor whether fair means of reporting the news are being applied across the company? What auditing or monitoring mechanisms do you apply? Are there occasions when you do take up matters of bias with editors? Do you think that it would be a good idea if the Australian Press Council became an independent body with funding from both media and other sources, including government?

I received this reply:
''Your bias against our organisation over many years and the errors and omissions in your recent New Matilda piece renders your right to answers from me completely redundant. It is deeply troubling to me and to all of our editors that someone like you has any role in teaching young journalists in Australia.''

Hartigan did not elaborate on my errors or omissions. Nor, to my knowledge, has he pointed these out to online magazine New Matilda (which has a policy of publishing corrections)."

It is a pity freedom of information legislation cannot be used to find out what was discussed at the recent meeting of  News International senior staff at Rupert Murdoch's Californian ranch.  Given the power News International has, the intentions of FoI legislation would, in this instance be better directed at News International than governments.

I agree with Martin Flanagan, whose witty piece today sums up the week of Murdoch theatre in tremendous style, when he says:

  "I hope the debate about journalism that the News of the World has triggered hits Australia like a tsunami"

Since I wrote this piece Murdoch junior has reappeared before the House of Commons Committee in the UK highlighting to us all the inadequacy of his answers.  In Australia an inquiry has been mounted and is now underway.   I fear its terms of reference are inadequate to the circumstances. Particularly telling is recent research released from Wendy Bacon's academic group which concludes:

" The first of a two-part analysis of Australian press coverage of climate change, A Sceptical Climate, has found that between February and July this year negative coverage of the carbon policy across 10 major newspapers outweighed positive coverage by 73 per cent to 27 per cent. Report author Professor Wendy Bacon said the overall result was driven by News Ltd group publications (82 per cent negative versus 18 per cent positive), compared to a more balanced result for the Fairfax press (57 per cent positive articles outweighing 43 per cent negative)."

News Corp is clearly the verdant forest for modern day howlers!

Storms over Melbourne

Release of Insight Maker

Systems Thinking World has just advised of the first general release, on Friday, October 21, 2011, of  Insight Maker -  a FREE web based drawing and simulation package.

Insight Maker was designed as a modeling and simulation environment but it also does Rich Pictures, Mind Maps, Dialogue Maps and Causal Loop Diagrams with ease.

Please refer to the overview at  this site for further insights as well as a list of the new features in the general release.

Feedback from users is welcome.

New Book from Bernard Scott

Second-order cybernetician, Bernard Scott has  had a collection of his papers published recently. Bernard is well know as a scholar of 'conversation theory' as developed by Gordon Pask.

The geoplitics of water and dams

This article provides valuable insights into the current status of the geopolitics of water, particularly the China, Laos, Burma 'triangle':

"The Mekong and Irrawaddy rivers, though unconnected and hundreds of miles apart, are both integral to life in Southeast Asia, supporting millions of people and more than 1,200 species of animals, including freshwater dolphins and-in the Mekong-giant catfish.

Now, in an energy-hungry age on the continent, the rivers share another distinction, as wellsprings of financial temptation for the struggling countries that rely on their flow, Laos and Myanmar (Burma). Both countries are grappling with decisions on whether to build massive hydropower dams on the two significant rivers. The projects could put fragile ecology and associated livelihoods at risk, but the dams could help the two countries reap billions of dollars by exporting the megawatts to China and Thailand, two neighbors with rapidly growing energy demand......."