The most fundamental technological basis of a fossil fuel free society is harvesting the Sun’s energy biologically. The theoretical issues of entropy and negative entropy are presented here. Only the example of agriculture will be taken up, though other areas such as energy, housing, transport etc. are equally important.
It is not as if in a fossil fuel free society other sources of energy will not be used at all. Harnessing direct heat from the Sun itself is a different process, that is, it is not harvested biologically. Use of hydropower in the form of water mills or use of gravity in directing water flows is another example. Even metals and fossil fuels may be in use in a limited way.
When people talk of fossil fuel free society or sustainability, often terms like eco-friendly technologies, appropriate technologies using human and animal power and so on are used. Critics often infer to this as talking of going back to nature, being primitive, unscientific and as impossibility. This article attempts to provide logic for eco-friendly, appropriate technologies using human and animal power.
Entropy
In many processes in modern technology, for example, in the conversion of energy from one form to another, the net availability of energy decreases. This decrease of available energy is called entropy. ‘Entropy is a measure of that part of the thermal energy of a closed system that is not available for conversion into mechanical work. The law of entropy is known as the second law of thermodynamics. The second law holds that the entropy of the Universe invariably increases with every transfer of energy event. There is always some amount of energy that is transformed into an unusable or unavailable form of energy.’ It is on this principle that engines work. All such processes have efficiencies less than one. That is, the net output energy is always less than input. As a rule entropy, that is, the unusable or unavailable form of energy is increasing. We are moving from organization to disorganization or from order to disorder. The entropy of a closed system tends to get higher as time progresses because disorganization increases. The law of entropy is considered to be a basic law of nature and the Universe.
Negative Entropy
However, living things appear to behave in a different manner. All living things attempt to modify their environment for their own needs, by creating what for them is order. In 1943, Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Laureate in Physics, used the concept of ‘negative entropy’ in his book ‘What is life?’
This book was written for the layman. Today it ranks among the most influential books of scientific writing of twentieth century. It was one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. It attracted many scientists to biology.
The creation of order is one definition of negative entropy. One of the definitions of life might be the ability of life form to create order. A living system imports negative entropy and stores it. Life feeds on negative entropy! Rocks or other inanimate objects do not possess this property called negative entropy. Death might be defined as the inability of a living thing to continue to create negative entropy for its use. As long as a life form exists, it creates negative entropy, which we observe as the creation of order.
What is the source of negative entropy? The Sun’s energy is highly organized and carried by photons. Our Biosphere absorbs this energy and then releases it back to the Universe -the global balance of energy is zero. The black body radiation of the Sun at a temperature of 5800 degrees Kelvin is absorbed by the Biosphere and the black body radiation from the Biosphere and Earth at 280 degrees Kelvin flows to the Universe, which is at a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin.
How does life steal energy from the Sun? This is done through a process called photosynthesis. In this process the green matter (chlorophyll) in plants converts the Sun’s energy to usable energy for the plant growth. Herbivores and carnivores sustain and reproduce themselves by using the Sun’s energy through plants. This process is not available to non-living things.
Thus, biological processes creating negative entropy, unlike the mechanical processes, produce more energy than they take. The efficiency is always greater than one. Typically it is about 2.5 (this does not violate the law of conservation of energy - the rest comes from the Sun). That is for one unit of energy (calories) input, say in a ‘primitive’ sustainable farm in the form of human and animal energy; we get two calories of consumable energy output! How do we get this more output from less input? As we said above, we are not counting the input from the Sun – either for mechanized or traditional agriculture.
Compare this with American ‘agribusiness’, which in 1976 took 5 calories of fertilizers, tractor fuel and depreciation, human labour and chemical sprays to produce one calorie of food and an incredible extra 20 calories of energy – all from fossil fuels - to clean, package, transport and cook the food ready for eating in the city. Thus the primitive self-sufficient peasant life is about 50 times more efficient than industrialised food production. The reason being, primitive agriculture uses mainly biological or life processes which have normally efficiencies greater than one whereas industrial processes mainly use non-biological input and processes. (‘The Road to Alto', by Robin Jenkins, Pluto Press, 1979).
Cuban Example
In Cuba Cuba
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Integrated agro-ecological systems as a way forward for Cuban agriculture
A three-year experiment was carried out to study different agro-ecological livestock- crop systems under different soils and climates, without irrigation and using on-farm resources for animal and plant nutrition. Five farms, four in the process of conversion and the fifth with twelve years of establishment were studied. Eight sustainability indicators (reforestation, total species, food products, labour intensity, production of organic fertilisers, yields, energy efficiency and milk production) were defined. These relate to the main productive and environmental problems faced by the livestock sector due to the specialised agricultural model that has prevailed in Cuba
Biodiversity increased after the establishment of integrated systems. Starting from specialised milk production systems, diversification allowed for between 30 and 40 more products. The integrated systems increased the energy efficiency from 3 to 10 joules produced per joule of input. Labour intensity decreased yearly after a greater initial labour demand required for establishing the system. Production of high quality organic fertiliser (2 to 4 tonnes/ha) was a major resource to cover the crop nutrient requirements. Productivity increased by up to 9.7 tonnes/ha including both animal and crop production. There was some fluctuation between animal and crop production, but the final result was higher system productivity.
The results of the study show that integrated ecological livestock-crop systems can provide sufficient capacity and potential to sustain intensive production based on available natural resource management alternatives.
(From Fernando-Funes-Monzote and Marta Monzote, Pastures and Forage Research Institute (IIPF), POBox4029, CP10400, Havana , Cuba
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Sustainability
Much of the discussion on sustainability is about planet earth’s ability to support life at the present rate of exploitation by man. The main problem is the use of fossil fuels as the main source of energy. This ‘dead’ source of energy can only increase entropy.
Historically civilizations broke down when the bias towards negative entropy was replaced by a bias towards positive entropy. That is what is happening today. Capitalism has a tendency to increase ‘constant capital’ that is machinery, and reduce ‘variable capital’ that is labour. In our terminology the share of entropy generating technology keeps on increasing at the cost of negative entropy processes. This applies to sources of energy, such as fossil fuel as against biological fuel such as wood, charcoal, agro-waste etc. as well as products such as plastic furniture against wood furniture and so on. Today’s main crisis, namely climate change and global warming is primarily a result of these entropy-generating processes. If we continue with this, not only the present civilization is doomed, probably the very existence of the human specie is doomed.
Among civilisations only China and India
Technology Choice
So for sustainability, the technology choice should be such that we maximize biological processes in our technology. This implies organic farming and a host of appropriate technologies that people have been talking about. This does not mean we are going back or that we are being primitive and unscientific.
Science does not mean using the laws of science to ‘conquer’ nature or ’exploit’ it. Such a meaning acquired importance mainly in the industrial era where the logic of capitalism needed more and more production. These together define the ‘development’ models and ‘growth’ models that are responsible for much of resource depletion and environmental degradation and global warming. These are essentially unsustainable models.
Science, historically, meant understanding the laws of nature and living in harmony with it. Agriculture calendars were prepared on such knowledge and people organised their agricultural activities on the basis of these calendars. People learned to live with floods and benefited from the fresh soil that was brought with it, instead of ‘controlling’ floods with building dams and embankments. Life on earth has been sustained by harvesting the fusion reactor in the Sun rather than building a fission reactor on earth itself! Biological sciences are more complex than material sciences. Maximising biological processes in our technology implies more and better science as well as using sensible achievements of previous generations. This also implies sustainable models of near zero growth.
There are other aspects of using biological processes that cannot be measured so easily. A tree gives fruits, leaves, fuel, timber, provides shade, shelter to birds and a host of insects. It also absorbs carbon dioxide and gives out oxygen. It lets the rainwater reach the earth gently and slowly. When it dies all of it goes back to nature through the activities of insects and fungi and saprophytic flora.
There are aesthetic aspects too. Many of us admire handicrafts that are made from natural raw materials. In all our social and religious functions and marriages most of us prefer decorations and clothes made from natural material.
In sports too we can see this. Bike enthusiasts love the thrill of speed and traversing rough terrain. But horse riding can also give similar thrill and cover even rougher terrains. And the latter is more sustainable.
In Conclusion
Life on earth was sustainable before the industrial revolution and deforestation because the entropy of the Biosphere was decreasing continuously. This was so due to the fact that human beings were still mainly dependent on biological processes for their survival and growth. Stable and sustainable civilization like the Chinese and the Indian, were built on such technologies. The present crisis of climate change, which is leading to the extinction of life on earth, is due to the fact that in the last 200 years, non-biological, entropy increasing technologies have become dominant.
Apart from technology there is much else that is wrong with capitalism. It is mainly irrational production and consumption. Some estimate it to be as much as 90 % of all activities in terms of money. These include the military industrial complex and medico industrial complex, much of the extractive industry, almost all of fossil fuel industry, irrational use of agriculture to support tobacco, alcohol and narcotic industry and so on.
There is a strong correlation between capitalist irrational production and consumption and entropy generating technologies. Of course sustainable technologies will have some non-living things such as metals in hand-tools and some capitalist production such as tobacco can be biological in origin. Hence the promotion of technologies that have high content of negative entropy/biological processes and elimination of irrationalities of capitalist production and consumption can ensure a sustainable future.
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