{"id":2898,"date":"2014-04-08T09:05:16","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T14:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2898"},"modified":"2015-11-30T10:51:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T15:51:35","slug":"easy-intro-scope-4-use-interpretation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/easy-intro-scope-4-use-interpretation\/","title":{"rendered":"Easy Intro, “scope 4” use & interpretation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s the whole problem:<\/em><\/h3>\n

Scope-4 impact measures add up the total environmental inputs resulting from\u00a0business, personal, or policy choices. That’s so we can compare different choices, and make the better one. \u00a0 Sounds like what\u00a0sustainability\u00a0metrics\u00a0should do<\/span>! <\/em><\/p>\n

Standard\u00a0sustainability metrics, however, collect impact information by\u00a0where<\/span>\u00a0they occur,
\nnot by\u00a0what\u00a0choices<\/span> cause them…<\/em><\/h4>\n

So our whole metric system needs to be rethought. \u00a0 \u00a0Today if a business decision involves employing six new machines and six new people, all that is counted are the impacts of the machines. \u00a0 The impacts of hiring the people or paying the investors or the government…\u00a0aren’t counted. \u00a0 Nature\u00a0sees all the kinds of impacts incurred by business decisions exactly\u00a0the same way, though! \u00a0 \u00a0It was our accounting\u00a0community, going back centuries it actually seems, that decided\u00a0to\u00a0count one and not the other. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The omitted impacts are actually not hard to\u00a0scientifically estimate for scale. \u00a0 That’s what Scope-4 accounting does.\u00a0\u00a0 As you work with it you find more and more ways having the numbers right results in big\u00a0changes the terms of discussion. \u00a0 \u00a0 The core scientific issue then, is having a metric that does not associate environmental impacts of business with the choices that cause them, but with the locations where the information is collected. \u00a0 That inconsistency\u00a0may be as fundamental to economic\u00a0accounting\u00a0as to have originated in how business records were kept in ancient times on clay tablets.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The [ e = mc^2 ] LAW OF SUSTAINABILITY<\/h3>\n

ln(e) \/ ln($) \u00a0= \u00a0c<\/h3>\n

It says our growing earth impacts<\/strong><\/span> and growing earth\u00a0economy <\/strong><\/span>are\u00a0directly coupled.<\/p>\n

The natural constant observed, [c<\/strong>],<\/strong>\u00a0is\u00a0the coupling of GDP and Energy use, as a <\/em>measure of everything physical the economy does.<\/em><\/span> \u00a0 It’s expressed as a\u00a0ratio of their growth rates (here as a ratio of their natural logs). That coupling has been a\u00a0constant [0.6<\/strong>] for a long time. You see it clearly in the figure below, showing a\u00a040 year official world record for the economy’s growing Energy use and GDP.<\/p>\n

It says that our increasing use of energy for\u00a0altering the planet to make money grows only a little slower than GDP, at 0.6 times the growth rate of GDP, AND<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0that this direct coupling\u00a0has not shown any tendency to change over time<\/em><\/span>! \u00a0 People imagine that ‘efficiency’ changes the coupling, but even with growing efficiency\u00a0the ratio\u00a0has actually quite constant. You’d need\u00a0global efficiency in energy use to double every ~20 years like GDP generally has to really make a difference, so having\u00a0growing value in a steady GDP is far more possible.<\/p>\n

Of course, like e=mc^2, it’s not possible to tell quite where the natural constant observed comes from. \u00a0That’s a big part of the scientific interest. \u00a0 Natural constants are emergent properties of the system, seemingly here a natural rate of societal innovation and\u00a0adaptation, like a “natural learning speed”. \u00a0 The benefit of the constant\u00a0is giving us\u00a0a better way to measure inclusive sustainability, using the\u00a0mathematical implication that:<\/p>\n

— \u00a0average\u00a0shares of GDP pay for and are responsible for causing
\naverage\u00a0shares of GDP earth impacts \u00a0—<\/em><\/h4>\n
\"World<\/a>
The world economy grows as a whole, nob acting at all like the parts…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The power of this rule the direct coupling between\u00a0responsibility for shares of\u00a0Earth Impacts<\/em><\/strong> and shares of Earth GDP<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0 \u00a0It’s a measure that combines all the impacts of\u00a0extracting energy and all the impacts caused by using energy, i.e. everything the economy does, with financial earnings from the economy. \u00a0 When the data is aggregated correctly, it allows a\u00a0complete accounting of the GDP impacts, and\u00a0“closed accounting” for shares of responsibility for them. \u00a0So that for whole supply chains, one can measure their share of\u00a0exhausting all our resources, forest and species loss, paving over productive land, etc. \u00a0\u00a0Delivering goods for an\u00a0average dollar of GDP causes an average\u00a0share of the whole\u00a0economy’s impacts<\/em><\/span>.
\n.<\/p>\n

Scope 4 CO2 assessment<\/h3>\n

The science for applying\u00a0this constant natural coupling of money and GDP\u00a0impacts was published in 2011 in a research paper “Systems Energy Assessment” found at the\u00a0SEA resource site<\/a>. \u00a0More detailed research notes are in the article\u00a0<\/em>What\u2019s \u201cScope 4\u2033<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0 The physics is sufficiently general and inclusive that the same technique can be comfortably use globally, to assign responsibility for all impacts of GDP on the earth, and have a way to “internalize all externalities” that can start and remain valid as it is incrementally improved, as in\u00a0“A World SDG<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The SEA research study pie chart, 5 time the true impact causation found compared with standard method.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0Discussion:<\/em><\/h4>\n

The real tragedy is that this bias in our business impact\u00a0metrics assigns\u00a0TOTAL responsibility for environmental impacts to the people who are paid to do them, who\u00a0would not do them unless they were requested and paid for by someone else.<\/p>\n

So then ZERO responsibility is assigned to the people choosing to request and pay for the impacts, communicating their requests for them by the transfer of money.<\/h4>\n

In criminal law, as when paying to have a crime committed, requesting and paying for it\u00a0is considered the principle direct\u00a0cause of the crime. \u00a0The person paid to\u00a0do it\u00a0may be penalized equally or not. \u00a0 \u00a0As far as physically causing economic externalities, in the court of environmental responsibility, it really should be decided the same sophisticated way.<\/p>\n

What Scope-4 accounting does, then, is start from the complete list of things a decision pays for. \u00a0 It could become a tremendously long list, with\u00a0lots of\u00a0things only known from the money spent rather than from exactly how the service was provided. \u00a0 So for those you need to do research on what default assumption to make in case in case more detailed information does not become available. \u00a0 \u00a0I’m still waiting for people to study it themselves and compare results, but I think the proof is completely convincing that absent other information the necessary default assumption is not “zero” but “average”.<\/p>\n

Elementary technique:<\/h4>\n