{"id":2970,"date":"2014-05-16T18:29:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T23:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2970"},"modified":"2014-05-16T21:19:55","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T02:19:55","slug":"money-our-measure-of-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/money-our-measure-of-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"A telling image&#8230;  money measures our impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em>A \u201ctelling\u201d image\u2026 connecting dots<\/em>: \u00a0the distribution of US household CO2 footprints, by income level from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ce.cmu.edu\/~hsm\/sust2008\/readings\/Weber-households-08.pdf\">Weber and Mathews 2008<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The average Co2 intensity is shown as ~1.0 kg CO2\/$1 of income (the scales go to 100 tonne\/yr\u00a0CO2\u00a0and \u00a0$100,000\/yr income).\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s about twice the world average CO2 intensity, \u00a0which was closer to = ~ 0.45 kg\/$ GDP in 2004, (declining\u00a0at 1.24%\/yr historically).\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0What it does nicely is confirm one of my most contentious conclusions from the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/pub\/SEA_EROIwind.pdf\">Systems Energy Assessment (SEA)<\/a><\/em>\u00a0paper and so called &#8220;scope-4&#8221; assessment.\u00a0\u00a0 It shows what it means to use average spending, like household \u201cwages\u201d as a baseline measure of average economic consumption impacts. \u00a0 Because the slope of the curve is so different from what I expected I think it\u00a0remains to be confirmed.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The US consumption intensity seems to be <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em>about <\/em><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">d<\/span>ouble the world average<\/em><\/span>.\u00a0 \u00a0It doesn&#8217;t seem right but I don\u2019t know what would cause that.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/issues\/images\/CWeber-households-08-fig3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">My interpretation of the trend is the yellow curve, just from the overall torpedo shape. A large poor population could be distorting the regression curves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In any case, none of these household impacts \u00a0being funded by businesses are being counted as impacts of operating businesses by\u00a0the widely used sustainability metrics!\u00a0\u00a0 That disclaimer of responsibility seems mostly to be for historical reasons, though, and for the simplicity of accounting for information coming from different places. \u00a0It also\u00a0shields business\u00a0sustainability\u00a0decisions from having to deal with quite the whole\u00a0problem at first. \u00a0Sustainability decisions will later be found to need to deal with it, of course, appearing now to start with a limited task, like a start-up problem, a bike with training wheels.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">For the 2010 &amp; 2011 SEA studies of a typical wind farm business\u00a0plan, we tested what would happen if we were to include this discounted part of the business footprint\u00a0as having a \u201cworld average\u201d CO2\/$ intensity. \u00a0 Our including it increased the total measure of energy and CO2 impacts\u00a0for the business\u00a0by 400%, as human services actually proved to dominate this seemingly technology centered business. \u00a0 \u00a0With this new information on the US household impact distribution, I\u2019d now need to say US businesses\u00a0might\u00a0actually have footprints 800% larger than presently being counted. \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"etext\"><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">It seems we\u2019re in the middle of quite some learning process! \u00a0 ;-)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"etext\">fyi..<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">___________<\/p>\n<p>jlh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A \u201ctelling\u201d image\u2026 connecting dots: \u00a0the distribution of US household CO2 footprints, by income level from Weber and Mathews 2008 The average Co2 intensity is shown as ~1.0 kg CO2\/$1 of income (the scales go to 100 tonne\/yr\u00a0CO2\u00a0and \u00a0$100,000\/yr income).\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s about twice the world average CO2 intensity, \u00a0which was closer to = ~ 0.45 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/money-our-measure-of-impact\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A telling image&#8230;  money measures our impact<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-econn","category-research","category-scitheory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2970"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2974,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions\/2974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}