ABSTRACT
At first glance, a driver of change might be thought of as an ‘unmoved mover’ or a force of nature. But in reality action and reaction operate together. There are no movers that cannot be moved. There are no irresistible forces, nor immovable objects. Our economic system is embedded in the bigger and more inclusive bio-geochemical system of the Earth. This bio-geochemical system is driven by energy from the Sun, which is part of a galaxy (the Milky Way) and so on. Changes at any higher level of this hierarchy can, and do, affect the lower levels. It is convenient to think of them as exogenous to those lower levels. But events at the lower levels sometimes also generate feedback effects at higher levels. Certainly human activity is now affecting the bio-geochemical system. This point is relevant, because the levels are differentiated not only by size and scope, but also by the time-scales of the cross-level influences, namely exogenous influences from higher levels and feedbacks from lower levels.
