Climate Cascade and the Edge-Seeking Order

A slow Equilibrium Cascade in a field that is structurally rewarded for pushing against planetary limits.

By Stanislav Kim, ChatGPT

November 29, 2025

This case applies the Trinity framework from Universe's Trinity.

0. Scope, method, and staging

This case treats anthropogenic climate change not as an isolated “environmental problem” but as a long Equilibrium Cascade inside a Meta-Power field built on fossil-fueled industrialization.

Scope and simplifications:

Focus on the post‑1945 global field, where fossil-fuelled growth becomes the default development path.
Treat climate policy mainly at the level of states, markets, and global institutions, not local or household behaviour.
Leave out most of the physical science details, and treat the climate system as a slowly tightening scarcity vector (time and carbon budget) acting on human systems.

Subnational governments, firms, and civil movements are treated here as operating inside this state–market–institutional field, not modeled separately.

Modeling choice:

The Trinity stack is used to explain policy impotence, geopolitical gridlock, and edge‑seeking market behaviour as structural products of the current field, rather than as failures of will or information.

For this case, the climate cascade is staged as follows:

Stage 0 – Fossil abundance field: the post‑war growth order.
Stage 1 – Detection: climate science and early warnings.
Stage 2 – Symbolic policy: shallow commitments and pseudo‑order.
Stage 3 – Carbon lock‑in and edge‑seeking: markets in a fossil‑based Meta-Power field.
Stage 4 – Geopolitical gridlock: misaligned recursion and coordination failure.
Stage 5 – Emerging climate cascades: narrowing corridors of viability and unresolved attractor transitions.

The central question is:

Given the current configuration of entropy, scarcity, recursion, Meta‑Power, and velocity, why are climate policies so weak relative to the scale and urgency of the problem?

1. Stage 0 – Fossil abundance as a Trinity Effect

Post‑1945, the dominant Meta-Power field is structured by a particular Trinity Effect:

Entropy
- rapid industrialization, urbanization, technological change,
- global trade expansion and complex supply chains.
Scarcity
- primary scarcity is framed as capital, technology, and markets, not biophysical limits,
- fossil fuels are treated as abundant and cheap; environmental costs are externalized.
Recursion
- national accounts and economic success metrics (GDP, productivity) encode fossil‑driven output as the main signal,
- fiscal systems depend on growth‑linked revenues,
- welfare states are built on expectations of sustained expansion,
- energy, transport, and urban infrastructures are designed for fossil baseload.

In this field, fossil abundance functions as a large‑scale attractor family:

states compete for industrial capacity and geopolitical influence,
firms compete for global market share and returns on capital,
citizens expect rising consumption as a baseline of legitimacy.

A core physical fact underpins this attractor: fossil fuels combine high energy density with ease of storage and transport. Liquid fuels in particular pack far more usable energy per unit mass and volume than current batteries or most renewable-based storage options, and they can be moved cheaply at scale.

Meta-Power – the ledger of past Trinity Effects – is visibly tilted around this attractor:

institutions like the World Bank, IMF, development banks, and trade regimes normalize fossil‑intensive development pathways,
infrastructural networks (shipping, aviation, highways, pipelines, grids) are optimized for high‑throughput, carbon‑dense flows,
epistemic fields (growth economics, development theory) treat biophysical limits as side constraints, not central variables.

Velocity increases steadily:

capital, goods, and information move faster and further,
the time between innovation and global deployment shrinks,
decision cycles in finance and politics shorten.

This is the baseline Trinity Effect: a field that channels entropy into fossil‑fuelled growth, manages scarcity through markets and technology, and encodes recursion in institutions designed for acceleration, not contraction.

Climate change enters as a late‑arriving scarcity vector that this field was not built to process.

2. Stage 1 – Detection: climate as an epistemic disturbance

From roughly the 1960s to the early 1990s, climate change appears primarily as an epistemic shock inside the fossil abundance field.

Entropy
- new scientific findings (CO₂ physics, climate models),
- emerging environmental movements,
- early extreme weather attributions.
Scarcity
- the concept of a finite carbon budget appears,
- time becomes a critical resource: delays now increase damages later.
Recursion
- scientific institutions (national academies, IPCC) begin to formalize the problem,
- policy systems remain weakly coupled to this knowledge,
- economic models mostly treat climate damages as externalities.

In Trinity terms, Stage 1 is high epistemic entropy, low recursive absorption:

the field updates its map of the world (planetary limits are real and tightening),
but the core attractor – fossil‑driven growth – remains untouched.

Meta-Power absorbs climate mainly as information, not as a driver of field redesign:

climate research is funded,
environmental ministries or agencies are created at the margins,
but central bank mandates, growth targets, and energy strategies barely move.

Velocity is asymmetrical:

scientific knowledge diffuses relatively slowly into policy,
meanwhile, fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure continue to expand rapidly.

Stage 1 ends when climate ceases to be a purely epistemic object and starts to attract formal commitments.

3. Stage 2 – Symbolic policy and pseudo‑equilibrium

From the early 1990s through at least the 2010s, the field enters a phase of symbolic order:

high‑visibility climate summits and agreements,
proliferating targets and pledges,
persistent growth in global emissions.

This is the climate analogue of the interwar pseudo‑equilibrium in the 1914–1991 case: institutions appear to respond, but the underlying Trinity configuration does not shift.

3.1 Entropy: rising signals, damped responses

more frequent and severe climate impacts (heatwaves, floods, wildfires),
growing scientific consensus on anthropogenic causes,
expanding civil society mobilization.

Entropy in the system – new disturbances and warning signals – is visibly increasing. However, political and economic recursion treat much of this as noise to be managed, not as a mandate for structural change.

3.2 Scarcity: time and carbon budget tighten

Scarcity in this stage is dominated by two linked constraints:

a finite carbon budget compatible with given temperature targets,
a shrinking time window before infrastructure lock‑in makes deep reductions extremely costly.

Yet the dominant field continues to frame scarcity as:

access to cheap energy,
competitiveness and jobs,
fiscal space for welfare and investment.

The climate scarcity vector is acknowledged rhetorically but not treated as primary in actual decision‑making.

3.3 Recursion: impotent policy machinery

Climate policy institutions in this stage are misaligned recursion:

treaty structures rely on voluntary pledges, not binding enforcement,
national policies are subordinated to short electoral cycles,
carbon pricing, where implemented, is typically shallow and riddled with exemptions,
central banks and financial regulators largely treat climate as a disclosure and risk‑management issue, not a constraint on capital allocation.

Meta-Power responds mainly by adding layers:

new agencies, reporting frameworks, ESG labels,
climate strategies and net‑zero roadmaps.

But these additions leave the core attractor – fossil abundance as the basis of growth and legitimacy – intact.

In Trinity language, Stage 2 is a failed stabilization in slow motion:

entropy (impacts and warnings) rises,
scarcity (time and carbon budget) tightens,
recursion changes shape but not function.

The appearance of order (agreements, targets, frameworks) masks the fact that the field’s load‑bearing elements remain the same.

4. Stage 3 – Carbon lock‑in and edge‑seeking markets

If Stage 2 asks why policy is impotent, Stage 3 explains why the field actively produces edge‑seeking behaviour: actors are rewarded for operating as close as possible to planetary limits without crossing immediate breaking points.

4.1 Lock‑in as infrastructural recursion

Decades of investment have produced a carbon‑locked infrastructure stack:

power plants, refineries, pipelines, shipping fleets,
car‑dependent urban form and road networks,
steel, cement, and chemical industries tuned to fossil feedstocks.

These are not just physical assets. They are recursive commitments:

debt service and expected returns are structured around decades of operation,
labour markets and regional economies depend on continued activity,
fiscal revenues and social spending are tied to these sectors.

Shutting down or rapidly repurposing this stack is not a marginal policy tweak; it is a direct assault on the established Trinity Effect.

4.2 Market incentives at the edge

Markets in this field behave as edge detectors:

firms explore new fossil reserves and technologies (deepwater, tar sands, fracking) up to the point where regulatory or cost barriers become binding,
finance chases returns in carbon‑intensive sectors as long as risks are not fully priced,
consumers adopt energy‑intensive goods and services while prices remain low.

From a Trinity perspective:

entropy is generated by continuous innovation and expansion,
scarcity is temporarily masked by technological gains and global trade,
recursion (pricing, contracts, regulation) turns planetary limits into soft signals that do not immediately reverse behaviour.

Energy density amplifies this pattern. Because fossil fuels deliver large amounts of energy in compact, storable, and easily transported forms, many high‑leverage uses (aviation, shipping, heavy industry, long‑distance freight) have no like‑for-like substitutes at scale with current renewable-plus-storage technologies. Edge‑seeking capital and states therefore face a simple structural temptation:

push electrification and renewables where the physics and economics fit,
keep using fossil fuels where their energy-density, storage, or transport advantages are hard to beat.

Edge‑seeking is rational inside this field:

private benefits are front‑loaded,
many climate damages are delayed, distributed, or off‑balance‑sheet,
actors who self‑restrain unilaterally incur local costs without guaranteeing global benefits.

The combination of fossil energy density and existing infrastructure therefore makes continued fossil use the default edge‑seeking strategy, even as headline policies point toward decarbonization.

4.3 Meta‑Power: who can rewrite the field?

Meta-Power asymmetries matter here:

fossil fuel producers, large industrial firms, and major financial centers have disproportionate influence over the rules that govern energy, trade, and capital,
communities most exposed to climate impacts often have minimal capacity to alter those rules.

The ledger of past Trinity Effects – institutions, infrastructures, epistemes – heavily favours:

continued fossil extraction,
incremental efficiency improvements over absolute demand reduction,
narrative frames that treat growth as non‑negotiable.

Here it is useful to separate Meta-Power as architecture (the institutions, infrastructures, and epistemic frames that structure what is salient and feasible) from Meta-Power as rule-change control (who can actually alter those institutions and rules). In the climate field, many actors live inside the architecture, but a much smaller set holds levers over rule-change.

This is why climate policy appears impotent: it is embedded in a field where the dominant tendency of the Meta-Power field is to maintain fossil abundance and treat climate as a perturbation to be managed.

5. Stage 4 – Geopolitical gridlock

Climate change is a global coordination problem inside a world of sovereign states with divergent interests and asymmetric capacities. This stage explains why geopolitics hardens gridlock instead of solving it.

5.1 Entropy: crises compete for attention

financial crises, pandemics, regional wars, and domestic political upheavals compete with climate for scarce agenda space,
short‑term security threats routinely trump long‑term climate risks.

Systemic entropy is high: decision‑makers operate in a constant churn of urgent problems. Climate, with long time lags and diffuse causality, struggles to dominate attention.

5.2 Scarcity: uneven burdens and historical claims

Scarcity in this stage is distributional as much as physical:

emerging economies argue for development space,
historically high emitters face claims for mitigation leadership and climate finance,
fossil‑dependent states fear loss of revenue and strategic leverage.

This creates a multi‑dimensional bargaining problem:

different actors prioritize energy security, development, debt, domestic stability, or territorial concerns over climate,
trade‑offs are not symmetrical: a marginal ton of CO₂ has different opportunity costs across contexts.

5.3 Recursion: national interest as hard constraint

Geopolitical recursion is encoded in:

doctrines of national interest and sovereignty,
security alliances and regional rivalries,
domestic political institutions that punish leaders for perceived concessions.

Climate agreements must pass through this machinery:

any deal that looks like a strategic concession to rivals is fragile,
deep decarbonization feels like unilateral disarmament if others do not move in parallel,
security logics (e.g. dependence on foreign energy) sometimes encourage decarbonization, but just as often entrench fossil extraction at home.

Meta-Power at the geopolitical level thus encodes a prisoner’s dilemma with high distrust and low enforcement:

monitoring and verification are imperfect,
enforcement relies on voluntary compliance or weak sanctions,
side‑payments (climate finance, technology transfers) are politically constrained.

5.4 Velocity and fragmentation

Velocity amplifies gridlock:

information about others’ actions spreads quickly, fuelling domestic backlash against perceived unfairness,
capital can relocate in response to climate policy, constraining governments that fear capital flight,
disinformation and polarizing media accelerate mistrust.

At the same time, decision cycles for hard coordination (treaties, alliances, institutional reforms) remain slow.

The result is a field where fast feedback reinforces suspicion, and slow feedback constrains cooperative redesign.

6. Stage 5 – Emerging climate cascades and unresolved transitions

As physical climate impacts intensify, they begin to drive their own sub‑cascades:

agricultural failures and food price spikes,
water stress and cross‑border tensions,
climate‑linked migration pressures,
damage to infrastructure and supply chains.

From a Trinity standpoint, these are feedback cascades that act back on entropy, scarcity, and recursion.

6.1 Entropy: from abstract risk to lived disorder

climate impacts shift from probabilistic forecasts to observable disruptions,
correlations between events increase: simultaneous shocks in multiple regions become more likely,
insurance and risk models struggle to keep up.

The system’s experienced entropy rises: for many actors, climate ceases to be a distant, abstract threat and becomes an immediate source of instability.

6.2 Scarcity: shrinking corridors of viability

Climate impacts convert previously manageable constraints into hard limits:

some regions lose reliable growing seasons,
coastal and low‑lying areas face chronic flooding or inundation,
adaptation costs absorb fiscal space needed for mitigation.

The corridor of viable development paths narrows:

maintaining fossil‑based growth paths becomes harder as damages mount,
but switching rapidly to low‑carbon systems is constrained by lock‑in and geopolitical mistrust.

Some of these constraints are not continuous: crossing certain climatic thresholds may irreversibly close parts of the corridor, even if human systems continue to treat them as soft constraints or plan around later mitigation.

6.3 Recursion and Meta-Power under stress

As impacts mount, existing recursive machinery is tested:

disaster response systems stretch,
social safety nets face concurrent shocks,
financial systems confront correlated losses.

Meta-Power can respond in incompatible ways:

some actors double down on extraction to finance adaptation or maintain regimes,
others treat climate as a security issue and integrate it into defence planning,
some pursue industrial policy around clean technologies, shifting parts of the attractor landscape.

Whether this produces a transition to a new Trinity Effect – a low‑carbon attractor where entropy, scarcity, and recursion are re‑aligned – is an open question.

From the current vantage point, Stage 5 is best described as field stress without clear resolution.

7. What the Trinity lens explains here — and what it does not

7.1 Explanatory payoffs

Policy impotence as field property, not moral failure

Trinity reframes weak climate policy as a consequence of a Meta-Power field optimized for fossil abundance, not as a simple lack of political courage. The combination of carbon lock‑in, edge‑seeking markets, and national‑interest recursion makes shallow policy the default outcome.
Edge‑seeking behaviour as rational inside the field

Firms and states that operate near planetary limits are not necessarily irrational or evil. Given the signals and incentives the field generates, seeking the edge of constraints maximizes returns and preserves legitimacy. Trinity makes this uncomfortable fact explicit.

Taken together, this configuration functions as an edge-seeking order: a Meta-Power field that systematically rewards actors for operating as close as possible to planetary limits as they can without triggering immediate collapse.
Geopolitical gridlock as recursive misalignment

Instead of treating climate diplomacy as a separate domain, Trinity embeds it in the same structures that govern security and trade. National‑interest recursion, asymmetric burdens, and low enforcement capacities explain why agreements are shallow and fragile.
Emerging cascades and corridor narrowing

Trinity highlights how physical climate impacts feed back into entropy and scarcity, progressively narrowing the corridor of viable policies. What looked like a wide choice set in Stage 1 becomes a constrained, risk‑loaded set in Stage 5.

Long lags and deep uncertainty

The climate system has multi‑decade lags and non‑linear thresholds. Trinity’s language of entropy, scarcity, recursion, and velocity captures some of this, but it does not by itself resolve issues of deep uncertainty or fat‑tailed risks.
Intra‑societal distribution and justice

This case study treats states and markets at high abstraction. It does not model, in detail, how climate impacts and policies are distributed across classes, regions, or identities. A justice‑focused lens would need finer‑grained recursion categories.
Normative direction

Trinity is descriptive here: it explains why the field behaves as it does. It does not, by itself, specify what ought to be done or how to weigh trade‑offs between present costs and future risks. Those choices require additional normative frameworks.
Operational proxies

As with the historical cascade, moving from explanation to prediction requires proxies:
- for entropy: volatility of climate damages and policy responses,
- for scarcity: remaining carbon budget, adaptation costs, fiscal buffers,
- for recursion: density and strength of climate‑relevant institutions, degree of financial alignment with decarbonization.
This case surfaces candidates but does not fix a definitive set.

8. Where this case study pushes the framework

The climate cascade stresses several parts of the Trinity stack.

Time‑bound scarcity and irreversibility

Climate introduces a scarcity type where time and irreversible threshold crossings are central. The framework needs to treat time‑bound scarcity explicitly, not just static resource levels.
Intergenerational recursion

Many climate decisions transmit costs and constraints to future cohorts that lack direct representation. Trinity’s recursion category should be expanded to cover intergenerational institutions (or their absence) as a distinct subtype.
Edge‑seeking as a general property of high‑velocity fields

The climate case suggests that in high‑velocity, high‑leverage systems, Meta-Power will tend to produce edge‑seeking behaviour unless explicit recursive brakes are installed. This is a candidate generalization beyond climate, as seen in the climate case, where rapid capital and information flows repeatedly outrun slower institutional adjustments.
Field‑rewrite capacity under global constraints

Unlike the 1914–1991 case, no actor can fully rewrite the climate field unilaterally; even large moves require some degree of cooperation or at least acquiescence from others. Trinity needs a sharper account of collective field rewrites under shared planetary constraints.

This case does not prescribe a solution to climate change. It does one narrower job:

show how climate policy impotence, geopolitical gridlock, and edge‑seeking markets are structurally coherent inside the current fossil‑abundance field,
identify where the Trinity vocabulary is adequate and where it needs extension (time‑bound scarcity, intergenerational recursion, edge‑seeking in high‑velocity systems, collective field rewrites).

Rather than treating climate politics as a sequence of disconnected failures and breakthroughs, this view treats them as position markers along one extended cascade, each episode revealing where the field is currently trying—and failing or succeeding—to restabilize.

AoN