THE IMPOSSIBLE MATH OF MANAGING PLANETARY POLYCRISIS

Type: Discourse-Level Essay

Word Count: 2,847 words

Reading Time: 13 minutes

Date Published: October 20, 2025

Primary Theme: Global Risk Management

Secondary Themes: Collapse, Energy, Economy

Preview (150 words):

Global risk management operates on a foundational assumption now proven thermodynamically impossible: that civilizational complexity can be maintained through better forecasting, planning, and coordination as energy surplus declines. The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2024 identifies 34 distinct planetary threats requiring management. But what mainstream analysis systematically conceals is that managing complexity itself requires energy surplus—and at EROI below 10:1, 90% of available energy goes to maintaining existing infrastructure, leaving virtually nothing for the coordination mechanisms risk management demands.

This essay applies PAP three-layer analysis to reveal why risk frameworks break down not due to insufficient data, inadequate models, or political failures—but because the maintenance burden of complexity management exceeds available thermodynamic capacity. The math is simple and unforgiving: You cannot manage what you cannot power.

THE IMPOSSIBLE MATH OF MANAGING PLANETARY POLYCRISIS: WHY RISK FRAMEWORKS BREAK DOWN AT EROI <10:1

By Sudhir ShettyGlobal Crisis Response, Mumbai

The World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risks Report opens with an ambitious claim: "Navigating an era of overlapping crises requires unprecedented coordination across governments, businesses, and civil society." The document proceeds to identify 34 distinct planetary-scale risks requiring management—from climate tipping points to AI alignment, pandemic preparedness to financial contagion, biodiversity collapse to great power conflict.

What the report doesn't calculate is the energy cost of the coordination it prescribes.

In 2023, the United Nations system employed approximately 44,000 staff across its specialized agencies. The World Bank Group operates with 16,000 employees. The European Union's institutions employ roughly 60,000 people. National governments collectively employ tens of millions managing climate policy, pandemic response, financial regulation, infrastructure resilience, and international coordination. Academic institutions worldwide dedicate hundreds of thousands of researchers to risk assessment and modeling.

All of this complexity—the meetings, the models, the monitoring systems, the multilateral negotiations, the early warning networks, the coordinated responses—requires energy. Not metaphorical energy. Actual thermodynamic work capacity measured in joules.

And that's the problem mainstream risk discourse systematically refuses to confront: At EROI (Energy Return on Investment) below 10:1, maintaining the very institutions designed to manage civilizational risk becomes thermodynamically impossible.

THE MAINTENANCE BURDEN MOST RISK ANALYSTS IGNORE

Energy Return on Investment measures how much energy you get back for the energy invested in extraction. In 1950, finding oil in Texas delivered returns of approximately 100:1—invest one barrel's worth of energy drilling, get 100 barrels out. By 2020, global average EROI had declined to approximately 15:1. Tight oil (fracking) delivers 5:1. Tar sands: 3:1. Biofuels: often below 2:1.

Charles Hall and his colleagues at SUNY have demonstrated what happens as EROI declines. At 100:1, only 1% of extracted energy goes to extraction itself—99% is "surplus" available for civilization. At 10:1, extraction consumes 10% and surplus drops to 90%. But here's what conventional EROI analysis often understates: maintaining existing infrastructure consumes increasing shares of that declining surplus.

The United States maintains approximately 4 million miles of paved roads, 615,000 bridges, 140,000 miles of railroad track, 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, plus water systems, sewage networks, airports, ports, and telecommunications infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates a $2.6 trillion infrastructure funding gap through 2029—and that's just for basic maintenance, not expansion.

At EROI 30:1, maintaining this complexity was manageable. At EROI 15:1, we're deferring maintenance across multiple systems simultaneously. At EROI 10:1, the mathematics become unforgiving: if 90% of energy goes to maintaining existing infrastructure and systems, only 10% remains for everything else—including the elaborate coordination mechanisms risk management requires.

PAP ANALYSIS: THREE LAYERS OF RISK MANAGEMENT IMPOSSIBILITY

Applying the Paradigm-Aligned Praxis (PAP) framework reveals why global risk management institutions are structurally incapable of addressing the polycrisis they identify:

Base Layer (Thermodynamic Reality): EROI declining from 100:1 toward 10:1 creates exponentially rising maintenance burden. The energy cost of coordination itself—the meetings, the monitoring, the modeling, the multilateral negotiations, the implementation bureaucracies—scales with complexity. But available energy surplus is declining. This creates a thermodynamic scissors: coordination requirements rising, energy capacity falling.

At EROI 10:1, you face a binary choice: maintain existing infrastructure OR coordinate complex responses. You cannot do both. The United Nations cannot simultaneously maintain its New York headquarters, convene annual climate summits attended by 40,000+ people, operate its specialized agencies across 195 countries, AND implement the coordination its own reports prescribe—not when the energy to power all of it is declining.

Structure Layer (Institutional Design): Every major risk management institution—the UN system, the World Bank, the IMF, national environmental agencies, pandemic response organizations, financial regulators—was designed during the era of EROI 30:1+. Their operating assumptions, bureaucratic structures, and coordination mechanisms all presume energy abundance.

The World Health Organization's pandemic preparedness framework assumes rapid global mobilization, international supply chain coordination, simultaneous vaccine development and distribution across continents, plus real-time epidemiological monitoring. This worked (barely) during COVID-19 when EROI was still ~15:1. At EROI 10:1, the energy required to maintain WHO's global operations, coordinate multinational responses, and implement complex interventions exceeds available surplus.

The European Central Bank operates 19 national offices, employs thousands of economists and analysts, conducts daily market operations across multiple currencies, maintains complex monetary policy tools, and coordinates with central banks worldwide. All of this requires computational infrastructure, international travel, telecommunications networks, and bureaucratic coordination that consumes energy currently in decline.

Superstructure Layer (Cultural Narratives): The dominant risk management discourse operates entirely within what Joseph Tainter calls "complexity as problem-solving." More data will improve forecasting. Better models will enable prevention. Enhanced coordination will manage converging threats. Increased funding will build resilience.

This narrative systematically denies thermodynamic constraints. The World Economic Forum's solution to overlapping crises is—invariably—more complexity: new monitoring systems, enhanced coordination mechanisms, additional multilateral frameworks, expanded early warning networks. But complexity itself has an energy cost that existing risk frameworks refuse to calculate.

THE TERRA ASSESSMENT: WHERE RISK MANAGEMENT FALLS ON THE PARADIGM ALIGNMENT GRID

Applying TERRA (Thermodynamic & Ecological Reality Rating Apparatus) to mainstream risk management initiatives reveals their fundamental misalignment:

Quadrant I (Paradigm-Aligned, Systems-Integrated) initiatives would recognize EROI decline, accept simplification as thermodynamic necessity, and build resilience through radical localization that minimizes coordination overhead. Examples: Community-scale food systems, municipal water management, neighborhood mutual aid networks. These operate at scales where coordination costs remain manageable even at declining EROI.

Quadrant II (Paradigm-Aligned, Isolated) initiatives might include transition towns preparing for simplification but operating as disconnected local experiments without broader replication infrastructure.

Quadrant III (Paradigm-Unaligned, Isolated) initiatives include most current "resilience" efforts: individual preppers, isolated eco-villages, small-scale projects that don't challenge growth paradigm but also don't scale.

Quadrant IV (Paradigm-Unaligned, Systems-Integrated) initiatives—where virtually all mainstream risk management falls—are the most dangerous category. These initiatives:

• Demand global coordination (high energy cost)

• Presume continued institutional complexity (impossible below EROI 10:1)

• Operate within growth paradigm (requiring 3% annual increase)

• Ignore maintenance burden (treating coordination as free)

• Consume resources at scale (diverting energy from essential maintenance)

The UN's Sustainable Development Goals exemplify Quadrant IV. SDG 13 (Climate Action) alone involves 193 member states, thousands of NGOs, multilateral funding mechanisms, annual conferences, extensive monitoring systems, and coordinated implementation across continents. The energy cost of the coordination framework itself—independent of actual climate mitigation—is substantial and rising as institutional complexity increases.

THE CASCADE DYNAMICS RISK FRAMEWORKS CANNOT ADDRESS

Mainstream risk management treats threats as independent variables requiring separate management strategies. Climate change gets climate policy. Pandemic risk gets public health infrastructure. Financial instability gets regulatory frameworks. Each threat has its specialized institution, its dedicated funding, its expert community.

But in a declining EROI environment, these risks cascade rather than accumulate:

Cascade Example 1: Energy constraint → reduced agricultural yields (mechanized farming, fertilizer production, food transport all require energy surplus) → food price spikes → social unrest → government instability → inability to coordinate pandemic response or climate mitigation → further institutional degradation → accelerated EROI decline through infrastructure breakdown.

Cascade Example 2: Financial crisis (triggered by energy price volatility) → reduced government revenues → deferred infrastructure maintenance → increased system failures → higher energy costs (damaged pipelines, degraded transmission lines) → further financial stress → inability to fund risk management institutions themselves.

The World Economic Forum's 2024 report acknowledges "polycrisis"—the interaction of multiple threats. But it frames polycrisis as a coordination challenge solvable through better integration. What it cannot acknowledge is that coordination itself becomes thermodynamically impossible as EROI declines. You cannot manage cascade dynamics when the energy required for management exceeds available surplus.

REAL-WORLD FAILURE: PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS MEETS ENERGY CONSTRAINT

COVID-19 provided a test case of global risk management under EROI stress. Despite decades of pandemic preparedness planning, extensive early warning systems, and established coordination frameworks, the global response revealed fundamental institutional fragility.

Supply chain breakdown for PPE production demonstrated dependence on just-in-time global logistics—itself dependent on cheap energy for transportation. When borders closed and energy costs spiked, coordinated responses fractured. Rich countries hoarded vaccines. Poor countries faced simultaneous health crisis, economic collapse, and reduced energy access.

Cuba—operating at EROI ~5:1 since Soviet collapse—maintained better pandemic outcomes than many wealthy nations through community-scale health infrastructure, neighborhood medical clinics, and mutual aid networks that minimized coordination overhead. Their "risk management" succeeded not through complex global integration but through radical localization.

WHAT THE DOMINANT NARRATIVES CONCEAL

Five dominant narratives currently shape risk management discourse. All five systematically deny thermodynamic constraints:

1. "Better Data Enables Prevention" – Treats forecasting as primary challenge, ignores energy cost of monitoring systems themselves

2. "Enhanced Coordination Manages Complexity" – Presumes coordination is free, denies its rising energy cost

3. "Innovation Provides Solutions" – Technology-solutionism ignoring that innovation requires energy surplus

4. "Market Mechanisms Allocate Resources Efficiently" – Assumes price signals coordinate without energy cost

5. "Resilience Through Integration" – More complexity as solution to complexity failures
   

What all five narratives conceal: At declining EROI, the institutions designed to implement these strategies cannot maintain their own operations, let alone coordinate planetary responses.

THE GANDHI-KUMARAPPA PRINCIPLE: SWADESHI AS THERMODYNAMIC NECESSITY

Gandhi's concept of Swadeshi—local production for local needs—was dismissed by development economists as romantic primitivism. But thermodynamically, Swadeshi minimizes coordination overhead. When production, consumption, and governance occur at community scale, the energy cost of coordination drops dramatically.

J.C. Kumarappa's "Economy of Permanence" recognized what modern risk management denies: complexity has an energy cost. The more intermediaries between production and consumption, the more coordination required, the higher the thermodynamic burden. At high EROI, this burden was manageable. At EROI approaching 10:1, it becomes prohibitive.

Kerala's cooperative networks—13,000+ cooperative societies managing local credit, production, and distribution—function as de facto risk management at community scale. When COVID-19 struck, these networks maintained food distribution, elder care, and mutual aid without requiring coordination from state or national authorities. Not because Kerala rejected modernity, but because they maintained institutional structures whose coordination overhead remains thermodynamically viable at declining EROI.

WHAT ACTUAL RISK MANAGEMENT REQUIRES: ACCEPTING SIMPLIFICATION

The thermodynamic math is simple and unforgiving:

• At EROI 100:1, global coordination institutions were viable (1% extraction, 99% surplus)

• At EROI 30:1, they remained functional though strained (3% extraction, 97% surplus, ~20% to maintenance)

• At EROI 15:1, they're encountering resource constraints (7% extraction, ~75% to maintenance, 18% surplus)

• At EROI 10:1, they become thermodynamically impossible (10% extraction, ~90% to maintenance, <1% surplus)

Real risk management in a declining EROI environment requires accepting what current institutions cannot admit: Simplification is not risk to manage but thermodynamic necessity to navigate.

This means:

• Abandoning global coordination frameworks that consume more energy than they provide value

• Scaling governance to levels where coordination overhead remains manageable (municipal, bioregional)

• Prioritizing essential systems (food, water, shelter, basic health) over institutional complexity

• Building Category 8 alternatives before Category 5 institutions collapse under their own maintenance burden

• Redirecting resources from managing impossible complexity toward enabling viable simplification

The World Bank cannot coordinate this transition—it requires the very complexity the transition must abandon. The United Nations cannot manage civilizational descent—its existence depends on the abundance that descent eliminates.

CONCLUSION: THE PARADOX OF RISK MANAGEMENT DURING COLLAPSE

The institutions designed to manage civilizational risk are themselves casualties of the collapse they're tasked with preventing. This is not failure of will, inadequacy of funding, or insufficiency of data. It is thermodynamic inevitability.

At EROI below 10:1, you face binary choices:

• Maintain existing infrastructure OR coordinate complex responses

• Power essential systems OR fund risk management bureaucracies

• Enable local resilience OR preserve global institutions

  
  

You cannot do both. The energy isn't there.

The polycrisis is real. The overlapping threats are genuine. But the solution is not better risk management—it's accepting that the complexity requiring management exceeds our thermodynamic capacity to maintain it.

This is what the Global Crisis Framework makes visible and what mainstream risk discourse must deny to preserve its own institutional existence. The question is not how to manage planetary polycrisis. The question is how to navigate simplification with minimal suffering when management becomes thermodynamically impossible.

The answer, thermodynamics suggests, will not come from Geneva, New York, or Brussels. It will emerge from Kerala's cooperatives, Cuba's community clinics, Mondragon's worker assemblies, and the yet-to-be-built neighborhood mutual aid networks that minimize coordination overhead because they must.

Not because complexity is undesirable. But because complexity, below EROI 10:1, becomes thermodynamically impossible.

RELATED RESOURCES:

Perspective Paper: Global Risk Management: Maintaining Impossible Complexity During Energy Descent (15,000+ words) - Available at globalcrisisresponse.org/praxis/risk-management.

Related Themes: Energy Transitions & EROI (Theme 1), Civilizational Collapse Dynamics (Theme 7), Economic Growth Paradigm (Theme 4).

Framework Tools: Learn more about PAP Analysis and TERRA Assessment at globalcrisisresponse.org/framework