On the LCA list Simon asked: Are there any tangible examples of where something meaningful was created (not necessarily materially produced) by humans undertaking a “whole systems accounting” approach? I had offered the obscure example of one of my proud little examples, a whole system account of money exchange in a 1985 paper for SGSR proving that learning lags would be a limit for economic growth, and later the following. P.S.
Simon,
Perhaps better examples of “whole systems accounting” would be the more common ways that the whole systems are accounted for. One is energy budgets the way the physicists do it, like for the climate models. They don’t just add up the totals, but divide up a pie they already know the total of, measuring the system from both inside and out and doing what is needed to explain the difference. How entropy is defined is an example too, as the losses one needs to account for, given that the law of energy conservation makes it clear there are no actual losses . Another example would be business models, where adding up all the costs (inside info) and incomes (outside info) needs to both predict and demonstrate a profit in practice, or the business won’t have a net energy return and won’t be able to apply that net energy to its own growth.
LCA is done without a functional outside boundary to push against to validate it’s inside accounts of whole business impacts , as the above examples do. I discovered that gap in LCA because I used the physics approach for energy budgets along with a statistical finding that for economies, average spending should consume average amounts of energy (measuring ‘average’ as global fuel use divided by global GDP) . Why I didn’t write up my studies showing LCA seemed to estimate below average energy consumption for what seemed like above average energy uses (building buildings), is that I got deep enough into Trelor to find I’d need help with the details of LCA to correctly narrow down the difference for individual cases. I’m still looking for someone to help do that. A compact outline the approach I think might work is at. www.synapse9.com/design/dollarshadow.htm I would also then use the whole system LCA measure as part of a total balance account (TBA) to include the time dimension and other impact factors and compensations critical to good decision making as I’ve sketched out in my 4Dsustainability approach.
As to my application of whole system accounts to the money system, I’d be glad to answer questions (and find out what needs to be better explained in that 1985 paper). That learning lags beyond the time needed for response could apply to a global system is a leap of insight. It’s like not turning in your homework before the grades are handed out, though, and seems to be a good explanation for what is going on all around us. Compare a general inability to understand the choices, with the world’s present quandary over how to multiply and divide our impacts at the same time as our financial system is collapsing… That’s a failing grade in our learning task it seems to me.
I’ve been watching closely as our whole “just out of time” learning curve was falling behind. My simple opinion is that knowing there will be an end of growth (the clear physics of the whole system accounting) it would be better to do that according to our own choice of values than leave it to nature which of our values to discard her way. Of course, it’s not as simple as that, but that’s at least a simple principle that could be used to help us think about our real choices.
Best,