The first thermodynamic law states that energy can not be created nor destroyed and the second that entropy (loss of usable energy) will increase (hot coffee gets cold). How come then can we have complex systems like societies you ask if everything degrades and heading for a possible universal heat death?
Ask Blum and Shrödinger and they will explain to you that all living beings can live far away from equiliburim by sucking energy from the environment and giving useless energy back). They are as nobel laurate Prigogine say dissipative structures. And we are all imperalists and the more complex an organism or social structure becomes the more energy it consumes the more useless energy it leaves behind.
Another quite important thing that together with the laws of nature have a big impact on our and our fellow species life is the number of planets we have at our disposal. We are living on one finite planet called Earth, a materially closed system where the sun will presumably produce usable energy for us for billions of years.
Human societies with its technosphere and other ecosystems are subsystems functioning within this bigger materially closed system. On planet Earth a long time ago on a planet far far different from what we are now inhabiting the effects of our species living were mostly spread and felt locally.
However our human societies have grown in size, complexity and impact and we have especially since the beginning of the industrial revolution started to overwhelm the planet, the biosphere we all depend on, by sucking up more negative entropy and leaving disorder (entropy) in the dust of what some predominately white folks have called development.
Today we can more easily see that we are a part of this system called Earth and that we an affect on each other, whether or not we acknowledge it or not, locally, regionally and globally. CO2 emissions is a famous example. On spaceship Earth development has become a zero sum game, and that thing some called development, became others misery. If we all affect each other and the planet we all depend on, tangled up in the web of life, would it be much to ask if all of us took our fair share of responsibility in protecting our delicate spaceship and our survival at the same time?
Together with the thermodynamics laws a finite planet (materially closed) creates limits. Limits that affect everything from the complex process that lets leaves that create oxygen and energy to complex structures like human societies, everything! Limits are scary as they reminds us of the biggest limit of them all. Death! Limits however is also what connects us human beings and the rest of the biosphere in what is called LIFE!
FOOT NOTE
Even though material is not officially abiding the laws of thermodynamics (Roegen are probably right about the 4th law of thermodynamics) we can see the degradation of material with our own eyes and Einsteins himself equated matter with energy (E=mc2) even though matter on a massive scale only been produced once by the Big Bang. Einstein was right you can turn energy into matter
