There is no such thing as a free lunch
Political leaders tell us not to worry; today’s problems can always be fixed up tomorrow. We can have our cake and eat it. But what if our actions today produce irreversible changes in the way the Earth system behaves? Maybe ‘waiting for tomorrow’s solutions’ is not the rational thing to do. Quentin Grafton reflects on the consequences.
There are limits to how much a complex system can be changed and still recover. Beyond those limits the system functions differently because some critical feedback process has changed. These limits are known as thresholds. Sometimes it’s easy to cross back over to the identity you want, sometimes it’s difficult and sometimes it’s impossible. The concept of ‘thresholds’ is central to understanding the resilience of your system.
Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize so as to retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks – to have the same identity. Resilience is the ability to cope with shocks and keep functioning in much the same kind of way.