The Seneca effect, or Seneca cliff or Seneca collapse, is a
mathematical model
A mathematical model is an abstract and concrete, abstract description of a concrete system using mathematics, mathematical concepts and language of mathematics, language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed ''mathematical m ...
proposed by
Ugo Bardi to describe situations where a system's rate of decline is much sharper than its earlier rate of growth.
Description
In 2017, Bardi published a book titled ''The Seneca Effect: When Growth is Slow but Collapse is Rapid'', named as the Roman philosopher and writer
Seneca, who wrote ''Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid'' (''
Letters to Lucilius'', 91.6):
Bardi's book looked at cases of rapid decline across societies (including the fall of empires, financial crises, and major famines), in nature (including avalanches), and through man-made systems (including cracks in metal objects). Bardi concluded that rapid collapse is not a flaw, or "bug" as he terms it, but a "varied and ubiquitous phenomena" with multiple causes and resultant pathways. The collapse of a system can often clear the path for new, and better adapted, structures.
In a 2019 book titled ''Before the Collapse: A Guide to the Other Side of Growth'', Bardi describes a "Seneca Rebound" that often takes place where new systems replace the collapsed system, and often at a rate faster than preceding growth rates as the collapse has eliminated many of impediments or constraints from the previous system.
[
The "Seneca effect" model is related to the "]World3
The World3 model is a system dynamics model for computer simulation of interactions between population, industrial growth, food production and limits in the ecosystems of the earth. It was originally produced and used by a Club of Rome study that ...
" model from the 1972 report ''The Limits to Growth
''The Limits to Growth'' (''LTG'') is a 1972 report that discussed the possibility of exponential Economic growth, economic and population growth with finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation. The study used the World3 computer ...
'', issued by the Club of Rome
The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing list of global issues, global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in R ...
.[
]
Use
One of the model's main practical applications has been to describe the resultant outcomes given the condition of a global shortage of fossil fuel
A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geolog ...
s.[ Unlike the symmetrical ]Hubbert curve
The Hubbert curve is an approximation of the production rate of a resource over time. It is a symmetric logistic distribution curve, often confused with the "normal" gaussian function. It first appeared in "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuel ...
fossil fuel model, the Seneca cliff model shows material asymmetry
Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in pre ...
, where the global rate of decline in fossil fuel production is far steeper than forecasted by the Hubbert curve.[Heinrich, Torsten. "Resource Depletion, Growth, Collapse, and the Measurement of Capital." (2014).]
The term has also been used to describe rapid declines in businesses that had grown for decades, with the rapid post-2005 decline and resultant bankruptcy in Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...
as a quoted example.
See also
* Hubbert curve
The Hubbert curve is an approximation of the production rate of a resource over time. It is a symmetric logistic distribution curve, often confused with the "normal" gaussian function. It first appeared in "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuel ...
* Societal collapse
Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse or systems collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an Complex adaptive system, adaptive system, the downf ...
* Joseph Tainter
Joseph Anthony Tainter (born December 8, 1949) is an American anthropologist and historian.
Biography
Tainter studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. he hol ...
References
https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Seneca_Effect.html?id=F14yDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y
Further reading
*
*
*
*
* Jackson, Tim and Robin Webster. "Limits to Growth revisited." Reframing Global Social Policy: Social Investment for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (2017): 295.
* Novak, Peter. "Sustainable energy system with zero emissions of GHG for cities and countries." Energy and Buildings 98 (2015): 27-33. .
* Illig, Aude, and Ian Schindler
"Oil Extraction, Economic Growth, and Oil Price Dynamics."
BioPhysical Economics and Resource Quality 2.1 (2017): 1.
External links
*
Equations
Economics curves
Resource economics
Peak oil
Continuous distributions
Seneca the Younger
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