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 divide up a pie they already know the total of

They don’t just add up the totals.  They divide up a pie they already know the total of, measuring the system from both inside and out.  That forces them into doing what is needed to explain the difference.    

That’s how “entropy” was discovered, for example.  How entropy is defined is as the losses one needs to account for, given that the law of energy conservation makes it clear there are no actual losses in nature.

Another example would be business models, where adding up all the costs (inside info) and sales (outside info) needs to both predict and demonstrate a “net-energy” or “profit” for the system to be sustainable in practice.  Otherwise the business won’t have sufficient resources to remain stable, and wouldn’t have resources to use for its own growth or maintenance.

LCA is done without a functional outside boundary to push against, though.  It needs one 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 the problem for a while.   I got deeply enough into LCA theory, in reading Trelor, to find I’d need help with other details of the theory.

far below average energy consumption, for what seemed like above average energy uses

To write it up I need to correctly narrow down the difference for individual cases where LCA seems to estimate far below average energy consumption, for what seemed like above average energy uses (building buildings).   I’m still looking for someone to help do that.   A compact outline of the approach I think might work is on my “DollarShadow” research notes page.

I would also then use the whole system LCA measure as part of a total balance account (TBA).  That makes it possible to include the time dimension and other impact factors and compensations, critical to balanced decision making.  I’ve sketched out my general approach in my 4Dsustainability model.

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 slowing down critical responses could apply to a global system is the key.

It’s just a larger scale version of turning in your homework after the grades are handed out.   The response is too late and your system fails.

Compare that idea of a general inability to understand our choices, with the world’s present quandary over how to grow the economy and shrink our impacts at the same time, as our financial system is teetering on the verge of collapse…  That’s a failing grade in our learning task it seems to me.

I’ve been watching closely for years 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 implication of a whole system accounting) it would be better to do that according to our own choice of methods.

If we leave it to nature, which of our values gets discarded will be done her way, and out of our control.   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,