Climate, Compexity, and Problem Solving in the Roman Empire

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title

Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth

Publisher

MIT Press, Cambridge

Publication Date

1-1-2007

First Page

61

Last Page

75

Abstract

The Roman Empire was established in northwestern Europe in the last two centuries B.C. and the first century A.D. during a warm, dry era known as the Roman Warm Period or the Roman Climatic Optimum. In northwestern Europe the Romans disrupted earlier systems of production, exchange, and political relations to establish Mediterranean production systems oriented toward markets and government revenues. Being based on solar energy, the Empire as a whole ran on a very thin fiscal margin. The end of the Roman Warm Period would have introduced uncertainty into agricultural yields just as the Empire was experiencing a concatenation of crises during the third century A.D. The Roman response to these crises was to increase the complexity and costliness of the government and army, and to increase taxes to pay for the new expenditures. This undermined the well-being of the population of peasant agriculturalists, leading to a reduction in the government’s ability to address continuing problems. The Western Roman Empire collapsed while in the process of consuming its capital resources: productive land and peasant population. The experience of the Roman Empire has implications for the IHOPE project, and for problem solving in general, in two areas: (a) the relationship of hierarchy to heterarchy, and local to global, in addressing environmental and social problems, and (b) the development of complexity, costliness, and ineffectiveness in problem solving.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS