Odum's Wisdom and Unplugging the Paris Accord: Power First, Apologies Later

Systems theory says New Zealand must choose bold energy abundance over international compliance if it wants to remain competitive in a power-hungry world.

New Zealand, for all its rugged beauty and well-mannered sheep, cannot afford to stroll politely through the 21st century while the rest of the world sprints ahead with coal-powered sneakers. The question of prosperity is no longer a matter of balancing books and printing brochures for tourists. It is about energy: how much of it we can use, how fast we can use it, and how well we can convert it into useful power. This is not a new idea. It has roots deeper than our wind farms and older than our transmission lines. It begins with a deceptively simple question: why do some systems thrive while others fade like yesterday’s headlines?

A century ago, Alfred Lotka had the audacity to suggest that evolution isn’t about cuddly pandas or who looks best on a David Attenborough special. It’s about who can grab the most energy and do something useful with it. Not efficiently, but effectively. That nuance matters. A creature that hoards every joule might be outpaced by one that burns through energy like a university student with a vending machine card and three deadlines. Lotka’s idea was picked up and turned into a doctrine by Howard T. Odum, who essentially said: if you want to stick around in this universe, you’d better learn to do a lot of work fast. He called it the Maximum Power Principle. Nature rewards the system that doesn’t just sip energy politely but chugs it like it’s happy hour at the thermodynamic bar.

This is not about wasteful gluttony. It’s about winning. Systems don’t evolve to be dainty and careful. They evolve to outcompete. To do more with what they have, and then go get more. They evolve to survive by overachieving.

New Zealand, if it wants to be more than a lovely footnote in someone else’s spreadsheet, must start thinking like a system that wants to win. To do that, it must pursue two intertwined goals: increase the efficiency of its energy use and increase the total energy available. Efficiency, after all, is the low-hanging fruit you nibble before dinner. But it doesn’t make a feast.

No one is saying we shouldn’t be efficient. Smarter appliances, tighter buildings, cleaner transport; tick all the boxes. But you don’t win a race by walking more neatly. You win by running faster. Efficiency is the tidy walk. Increasing available energy is the sprint. And if New Zealand wants to sprint, it can’t do it with a self-imposed Parisian ankle bracelet.

Ah, the Paris Accord. That well-intentioned social contract with the atmosphere. The warm blanket that threatens to become a straitjacket. The world’s big players find ways around its constraints. China burns coal with one hand and builds solar panels with the other. The US hedges, dances, and invests in every energy source under the sun (and several beneath the ground). Meanwhile, New Zealand stands like a pious monk at a barbecue, refusing to touch the steak.

We are told that solar and wind will save us. Lovely sentiment. But we are not Arizona. We are not the Gobi Desert. We are a land of clouds, volcanic steam, and passive-aggressive rain. Solar is polite here. Wind is erratic. Hydroelectricity has served us well, but the easy dams are built, and the rivers are already grumpy. Geothermal is the introverted cousin: reliable but never at the party. Nuclear? We flinch. The moment it’s mentioned, someone brings up Chernobyl and starts humming Kumbaya.

What we need is an unapologetic conversation about energy abundance. That includes nuclear. It includes new hydro schemes. It might even include clean coal or gas with carbon capture, if the tech checks out. Not because we want to burn the planet. But because we want to power the nation.

As Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen reminded anyone who would listen, economies run on low-entropy energy. Not money, not vibes, not committees. When the energy runs out, the economy goes on a silent retreat. Harold Morowitz and Ilya Prigogine chimed in with the science of flow: energy moves, structures form. Stop the flow, the dance ends.

Odum knew that more energy means more complexity, more possibility, more levers to pull. A richer economy. A more connected society. More factories, more data centres, more exports, more books published, more lights left on while you forget to turn them off. But with more energy flow comes more waste. It happens. Like crumbs at a good dinner.

And here’s the trick. The goal is not zero waste. The goal is maximum useful work. You don’t shame the lion for not eating every bone. You praise it for catching the antelope. This is why Odum stressed balance. Waste is not the enemy; stagnation is.

Of course, energy abundance without control is like giving a toddler a blowtorch. Systems can burn themselves down. As James Kay observed, what matters is not just throughput, but purposeful, self-regulating throughput. In other words, don’t just burn more. Burn better.

Prigogine added another layer. He showed that order emerges in systems that are far from equilibrium. Stability is not some tepid balance: it’s a dynamic structure dancing on the edge. Systems like New Zealand in a globalising world need more energy to stabilise at a higher level of complexity. If you want to be a jazz quartet and not a kazoo solo, you need more input.

Imagine New Zealand as an organism. Right now, it’s a well-fed possum. Nice fur. Modest metabolism. Hangs out a lot. But what if it wanted to evolve into something faster, stronger, more ambitious? It would need more energy. It would need to take some risks. It might have to give up a little fur.

Trade-offs are part of the game. But to stand still is to fall behind. As Jeremy England’s work suggests, matter itself tends to self-organise in ways that increase energy absorption and dissipation. Nature, it seems, plays favourites. It favours the energetic hustlers.

New Zealand must become one of them. It must outcompete by out-powering. Not wastefully, but decisively. That means lifting restrictions on energy production. That means investing in next-generation energy tech, whether it wears a green halo or not. And that might mean taking a polite step back from the Paris Accord, not out of malice, but out of necessity. Because here’s the truth wrapped in a solar-powered bow: being the greenest in the room means nothing if the room goes dark.

This is not a call for recklessness. It is a call for strategy, for courage, for systems thinking. It is a plea to stop treating energy like a vice and start treating it like oxygen. Odum would say: maximise your power. Prigogine might add: increase your gradients. And Lotka, with his early 20th-century monocle of doom, might remind us: energy is destiny.

New Zealand has a choice. It can sip, or it can surge. It can admire its restraint from the bottom of the heap, or it can build something magnificent. It can stay efficient and small, or become powerful and wise. But it cannot do nothing. Because the systems that do nothing are the ones that fade. And we are not here to fade. We are here to outcompete. Preferably with the lights on.