The second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is heading towards disorder.
Life is the daily channelling of the flow — temporarily creating new structures: life forms, habitats culture.
Life on Earth gets a daily boost of energy from the sun, and the movement of the planet and the moon. As long as there is energy available, we can work against the force of entropy to carry on creating complexity and richness.
But when the energy stops, dismantling begins. And when what we have becomes too expensive to maintain with the energy do we have, the system breaks down too.
This is planning as governed by the second law of thermodynamics.
For millennia, humans have lived within this flux of energy and entropy, working with the available energy and resources. And when civilisations have overreached, they have declined.
Fossil fuels changed all of this. This concentrated energy source allowed us to escape the limits of the solar cycle and unlock extraordinary complexity.
But again we have overreached.
While fossil fuels have not peaked as quickly as expected, the climate breakdown caused by greenhouse gas emissions will shake civilisations apart. What have built has become too expensive to maintain – energetically, socially and ecologically.
Sustainability asked us to think about doing less harm. Regenerative design is a fundamentally different approach.
How can we create life, habitats, homes, culture using the available energy that we have — creating things that are just complex in enough to thrive, but not so complex that maintaining them uses the entire energy budget?
This requires much more acute awareness of the systems around us.
- What is connected to what — how could better connections create better conditions, and where is connection unhelpful?
- What is in flow, surplus and abundance – and what could we harness?
- What is the system trying to do? — how could small interventions unlock something much bigger*
Left to their own devices, all systems will fall into decline. That’s the second law of thermodynamics.
But every day we get an energy boost from the sun and the moon. THat’s our budget – the energy to resist the entropy.
The question of regenerative design is simply this:
How do we use that energy to create the conditions for thriving for humans and the rest of the living world?
*These three bullets map directly to the Living Systems Blueprint. See below.