Recover, repair, reuse, remanufacture, recycle, reshare - References and quotes Philosophy 2021 REFERENCES AND QUOTES DECOUPLING DEBUNKED – EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY Recycling requires new material and energy. Laws of thermodynamics in the way of circular economy, limits to circularity. Recycling is downcycling, plastic bottles for example. Circularity is compromised when size of input and waste flows caused by economy compared to the size of the primary source and primary sinks made available by the ecological processes (biosphere). 45 Recycling requires new material and energy. Laws of thermodynamics in the way of circular economy, limits to circularity. Recycling is downcycling, plastic bottles for example. Circularity is compromised when size of input and waste flows caused by economy compared to the size of the primary source and primary sinks made available by the ecological processes (biosphere). 46 Circular economy cannot grow. “If economic growth means an increase in the size of the economy compared to its environment, then it means that growing economies will sooner or later reach the limits of circularity.” Recycling rates are low. Problems with recycling. 47 I ENERGY AND ECONOMIC MYTHS Mechanistic aspiration of economics made economists forget about natural resources. 350 When economists forgot natural resources they also forgot waste. 356, 357 Waste as a physical phenomenon. Chemically, nuclearly and physically (carbon dioxide). 357 we must cure ourselves of the morbid craving for extravagant gadgetry”, get rid of fashion, make durable more durable and repairable, stop the empty infinite regress “circumdrome of the shaving machine”, “We must come to realize that an important prerequisite for a good life is a substantial amount of leisure spent in an intelligent manner” 378 I THE ENTROPY LAW AND THE ECONOMIC PROCESS IN RETROSPECT degrading material and problems of recycling 7 The upshot is that material vital for technology will sooner rather than later become extremely scares in the available form, not 7. Low entropy is value. Scarcity is steadily increases. Good shit of hydra – flux of enjoyment of life. 8 Solow’s unenlightened quote 12 Capitalist system thrashes in the claws of the entropy law. not 23, 13 Technology efficient lever but mineral bonanza the source for economic growth 13 Technology fetish. Said the same thing in the 70s. 14 I ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS Figure 2.1, from empty to full world. Need for a change in preanalytic vision (preanalytic cognitive act that provides raw material for analytic effort), a paradigmshift – Schumpeter. “vision is the pattern or shape of the reality in question that the right hemisphere of the brain abstracts from experience and then sends to the lefte hemisphere for analysis.” Omitted from preanalytic vision cannot be recaptured by subsequent analysis – See DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST on preanalytic visions COMMON CAUSE – THE CASE FOR WORKING WITH OUR CULTURAL VALUES Correcting vision requires new vision. Schumpeter - changes in vision “may reenter the history of every established science each time somebody teaches us to se things in a light of which the source is not to be found in the facts, methods, and results of the preexisting state of the science”. Kuhn, revolutionary science vs normal science. 23 Georgescu-Roegen, stock-flow and fund-service, box 4-1 71, 72 Abiotic resources 77 Biotic resources complexity. Value vs ignorance and uncertainty. Biotic – sentient creatures. Abiotic – metal. Biotic resources - complex in 2 ways. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER. 93 Structure and functions. Structural eleemtns act together to create something greater than the whole - ecosystem functions. E.g energy transfer, nutrient cycling, gas regulation, climate reacgulation, water cycle. Variability, ignorance and uncertainty important when analyzing ecosystem. We don’t understand how ecosystem function emerge from the complex interaction of ecosystem structure. Fotnot 2 Thresholds. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on boundaries 94 Uncertainty of renewable biotic resources, not knowing growth rates and exact population. Carrying capacity. 98 Figure 6. 1Critical depensation, carrying capacity and maximum sustainable yield. 99 Fishing under Q. Lower population means fewer fish competing for available food, shelter and breeding grounds leading to increased growth rates and fertility. Harvesting above and under sustainable yield curve. Maximum sustainable yield. 100 Critical depensation and sustainable yield vs uncertainty. Maximum sustainable yield will vary dramatically. Great uncertainty regarding critical depensation. 101 Population breaking down to harvest and ecological mechanism poorly understood. Same for fish as plants. Removal of ecosystem structure can greatly affect ecosystem function. See 94 102 Ecosystem function that has value to human = ecosystem service. Examples Cassowary bird box 6-3. Unaware of services provided, ozone for example. 103 Intact ecosystems are funds that provide ecosystems services. See 71, 72 Nature can renew itself, regenerate. See DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST, MEASURING REGENERATIVE ECONOMICS: 10 PRINCIPLES AND MEASURES UNDERGIRDING SYSTEMIC ECONOMIC HEALTH. Note 9 on fluorocarbons and James Lovelock (Gaiahypothesis). 104 “In review, the structural elements of an ecosystem are stocks of biotic and abiotic resources (minerals, water, trees, other plants and animals), which when combine together generate ecosystem functions, or services” 106, 107 Destroying biological stocks destroys funds. Forest to timber. Soil moisturizer. “The relationship between natural capital stock-flow and fund-service resources illustrates one of the most important concepts in ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS: It is impossible to create something from nothing; all economic production requires a flow of natural resources generated by a stock of natural capital. This flow comes from structural components of ecosystems, and the biotic stock are also funds that produce ecosystem services. Therefore, an excessive rate of flow extracted from a stock affects not only the stock and its ability to provide a flow in the future, but also the fund to which the stock contributes and the services that fund provides. Even abiotic stocks (i.e, elements and fossil fuels) can only be extracted and consumed at some cost to the ecosystem. In other words, production requires inputs of ecosystem structure. Ecosystems structure generates ecosystem function, which in turn provides services. All economic production thus as an impact on ecosystem services, and because this impact is unavoidable, it is completely internal to the economic process” Problems of wastes – the other end of economic process’s impact on environment, dictated by laws of thermodynamics, things will not disappear and more disorder will be produced. Much of the waste can be assimilated but only absorbed at a fixed rate but created in any rate. Waste absorption capacity. Damaging ecosystem structure and function can damage the ability to absorb waste. 107 Waste absorption capacity. Our ecosystems have o evolutionary experience of manmade chemicals. 108 Humans depend on the ability of plants to capture solar energy in 2 ways: 1. Direct energy 2. Life-supportinng functions generated by the ecosystems. Economic production require natural resources. Economic production generates waste. 109 8 classes of goods and services provided by nature. Market failures and abiotic resources. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER 58 185 Market failures and biotic resources. Economic incentives will lead us to deplete our renewable resources (biotic resources). See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER 66, DANA (DONELLA) MEADOWS LECTURE: SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS on fisheries 201 Problem of money as substitute for any resource. See MYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖ, DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST 202 Growth rates of natural resources vs interest rate. Goodbye golden goose and fecundity of money. 207 NPV, interest rates and disappearing biodiversity. E.g. blue fin tuna. 208 For any species that is relatively inexpensive to harvest (perhaps due to technology) it will make economic sense to drive it to extinction if interest rate of alternative investments is higher than the growth rate of the species. 210 Including ecosystem services in calculating optimal harvest 211 Problem of externalities and limited knowledge and capacity for internalizing. 212 Green Golden Rule 213 I MEASURING REGENERATIVE ECONOMICS: 10 PRINCIPLES AND MEASURES UNDERGIRDING SYSTEMIC ECONOMIC HEALTH“…vitality requires balance and integration of sizes that combine the best of both worlds, i.e., large and small, resilient and efficient, diverse and focused.” “Today's challenge, therefore, is to build integrated enterprise networks that connect small, medium, and large elements in common-cause and in service to the health of the whole. This challenge is also seen in such diverse fields as politics, healthcare, education, and urban planning.” 18 8. Promote mutually-beneficial relationships and common-cause values. “Fath [44] has shown using network analysis that ecosystems exhibit overall positive levels of mutual benefit when considering the effects of all direct and indirect relations.” “Robust ecosystems display a greater number of mutualistic relations than competitive ones. A healthy economy should also display a greater degree of mutualism.” 21 Summary of regenerative economics, “While innovative ideas and diverse individual enterprise are important to regeneration, economic behavior is also heavily shaped by a host of less traditional factors measured by the Regenerative Economy Principles (REP) above including: Robust cross-scale circulation of money, information, and resources (REP#1); Adequate investment in human, social, physical, economic, and environmental capital (REP #2); Emphasis on building capacities using renewable resources within a circular economy in which wastes become useful byproducts (REP #3, 4, 9) A diverse and balanced economy with small, medium, and large organizations exhibiting a balance of efficiency and redundancy (REP #5, 6, 7); Systemic benefits from the complex interdependence of network interactions (REP #8); Processes for learning effectively as a society in the face of mounting evidence and pressures, including science, government, corporations, and politics (rep #10).” 24 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST Power of eye and picture in changing world view See THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION: THE RACE TO GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN A WORLD IN CRISIS Lakoff on metaphors 152 19 Paul Samuelson and origin of circular flow 22 Schumpeter and preanalytic vision, Mannheim and worldview, Goffman and framing See FINDING FRAMES: NEW WAYS TO ENGAGE THE UK PUBLIC IN GLOBAL POVERTY 68, Prosperity on sacred canopy without growth 221, “map is not territory”, Korzybski “All models are wrong, but some are useful”, George Box 24 Have to replace a frame with a new one See COMMON CAUSE – THE CASE FOR WORKING WITH OUR CULTURAL VALUES 44 FINDING FRAMES: NEW WAYS TO ENGAGE THE UK PUBLIC IN GLOBAL POVERTY 82, visual framing 26 Art of articulating an new goal, help politicians and economists who lacks the imagination and words to envision a better goal for the world. People, even economists, have thought about different goals, e.g Sismondi, Rushkin, Gandhi, Schumacher, Max-Neef, Sen. The doughnut of Raworth 40 Earth’s life giving systems under stress. Climate change, land conversion, nitrogen and phosphorus loading and biodiversity loss. 49 what are not included in the models is important, Sterman 60 Economy exists in biosphere. Pysiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill remembered importance of resources for economy but focused on other. Henry George and taxing of land. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS, Herman Daly and changing the paradigm - economy, an open subsystem of the closed Earth system. Empty to full world. 1776, less than 1 billion people and economy 300 times smaller. 1948, less than 3 billion people and economy 10 times smaller. Energy and economy See 215 TURNING POINT: THE END OF EXPONENTIAL GROWTH?, SUSTAINABILITY ECONOMICS: WHERE DO WE STAND? on exergy into useful work as the driver of growth on technical efficiency, useful work and growth. 65 Limits to growth and World 3 was right. Disperse and circulate value rather than concentrate. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on Success to the successful, Sustainable systems, THE SCIENCE OF FLOW SAYS EXTREME INEQUALITY CAUSES ECONOMIC COLLAPSE https://evonomics.com/science-flow-says-extreme-inequality-causes-economic-collapse/, MEASURING REGENERATIVE ECONOMICS: 10 PRINCIPLES AND MEASURES UNDERGIRDING SYSTEMIC ECONOMIC HEALTH. Tomorrows economy: “An economy that is distributive by design is one whose dynamics tend to disperse and circulate value as it is created, rather than concentrating it in ever-fewer hands. An economy that is regenerative by design is one in which people become full participants in regenerating Earth’s life-giving cycles so that we thrive within planetary boundaries.” Leave mechanic metaphors and embrace economy-as-organism. Economy as a garden and we are the gardeners. 132 Economics, not about finding laws but designing. Degenerative linear economy. “And the reason why even the world’s richest countries are still making us all feel the burn is because the last two hundred years of industrial activity have been based upon a linear industrial system whose design is inherently degenerative. The essence of that industrial system is the cradle-to-grave manufacturing supply chain of take, make, use, lose: extract Earth’s minerals, metals, biomass and fossil fuels; manufacture them into products; sell those on to consumers who – probably sooner rather than later will throw them ‘away’.” “But its design is fundamentally flawed because it runs counter to the living world, which thrives by continually recycling life’s building block such as carbon, oxygen, water, nitrogen and phosphorus. Industrial activity has broken these natural cycles apart, depleting nature’s sources and dumping too much waste in her sinks. Extracting oil, coal and gas from under land and sea, burning them, and dumping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Turning nitrogen and phosphorus into fertilizer, then offloading the effluent – from agricultural run-off and sewage – into lakes and oceans. Uprooting forests to mine metals and minerals which, once packed into consumer gadgets, well be cast onto e-waste dumpsites, with toxic chemicals leaching out into the soil, water and air.” Quotas, tiered pricing and taxes don’t do enough because of problem in setting required level to bring down environmental impacts of the economy. See COLONIALISM IN THE ANTROPOCENE: THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF THE MONEY-ENERGY-TECHNOLOGY COMPLEX 15 MYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖ 63, 64 176 Instead work with paradigm/mindset and the goal of the system. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on setting goals John Tillman Lyle, “Eventually a one-way system destroys the landscape on which it depends. The clock is always running and the flows always approaching the time when they can flow no more. In its very essence, this is a degenerative system, devouring its own sources of sustenance”. Change from degenerative to regenerative design. Responses from business when approaching the limits: 1. do nothing, 2. do what pays. 3. do fair share 177 self-determined fair share rarely does the job and fair share often slips into taking fair share. Competing for limited resources ends up transgressing the limits. 4. Do no harm. “Being less bad is not being good, it is being bad just less so” Aim/goal of doing more good. 5. Be generous, be good and start giving. Kate Raworth, “because only generous design can bring us back below the Doughnut’s ecological ceiling.” See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on setting goals Generous regenerative design to get us back within limits. Janine Benyus and biomimicry. Learn from nature. 180 Circular economy can be seen as good start though towards regenerative design. Biological and technological nutrients. See THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on circular economy. DECOUPLING DEBUNKED – EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY 182 Example of coffee beans on how to utilize biological nutrients better. Technical nutrients. Design for repair, reuse, refurbishment and last in the order, recycle. Recycling start doing it. 85 % of phones were not recycled. Nothing is 100 % recyclable. Look at Japan, close (98%) but no cigar. Cyclical economy instead of circular economy! See THE ENTROPY LAW AND THE ECONOMIC PROCESS IN RETROSPECT on economic process as entropic, THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on circular economy, DECOUPLING DEBUNKED – EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY Wealth of people, biosphere and knowledge dissipate. 183 The whole system have to be regenerative. The industrial regenerative design have to fit within a regenerative design, sharing the same purpose. See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER on goals of subsystem 84, 85 187 Redefine companies living purpose/goal. 193 I THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER Two-stock system. A renewable stock constrained by a nonrenewable stock - an Oil Economy. See ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS on market failures and abiotic resources 185, 58 All physical entities are constrained by nature, consumes material, energy and produces waste. “Any physical, growing system is going to run into some kind of constraint, sooner or later.” Constraint is “a balancing feedback loop that in some way shifts the dominance of the reinforcing loop driving the growth behavior, either by strengthening the outflow of by weakening the inflow:” Growth in constrained environment – the limits to growth archetype. “No real physical system can grow forever.” “In physical, exponentially growing systems, there must be a least on reinforcing loop driving the growth and at least on balancing loop constraining the growth, because no physical system can grow forever in a finite environment” Resource-constrained systems – pollution-constrained systems. 59 “The limits on a growing system may be temporary or permanent. The system may find ways to get around them for a short while or a long while, but eventually there must come some kind of accommodation, the system adjusting to the constraint, or the constraint to the system, or both to each other. In that accommodation come some interesting dynamics. Whether the constraining balancing loops originate from a renewable or nonrenewable resource makes some difference, not in whether growth can continue forever, but in how growth is likely to end.” 60 The depletion of nonrenewables through growth system. “A quantity growing exponentially toward a constraint or limit reaches that limit in a surprisingly short time”. Little added time to develop alternatives independent of amount of nonrenewable resource. Figure 39. See PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH 63 Local limits will become global limits for growth. 65 The economic fall will be great after the production peak of an economy based on non-renewables. “Unless, perhaps, the economy can learn to operate entirely from renewable resources” Two-stock systems, renewable stock constrained by a renewable stock—a fishing economy, a fishing economy. See ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS on market failures and biotic resources 201, DANA (DONELLA) MEADOWS LECTURE: SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS on fisheries 66 Turning renewable into nonrenewable through technical efficiency “Nonrenewable resources are stock-limited. The entire stock is available at once, and can be extracted at any rate (limited mainly by extraction capital). But since the stock is not renewed, the faster the extraction rate, the shorter the lifetime of the resource” “Renewable resources are flow-limited. They can support extraction or harvest indefinitely, but only at a finite flow rate equal to their generation rate. If they are extracted faster than they regenerate, they may eventually be driven below a critical threshold and become, for all practical purposes, nonrenewable.” Renewable-resource cycles but now we can through technology and efficiency drive resource population to extinction. Possible behaviors of renewable resource system: 1. overshoot and adjustment to a sustainable equilibrium 71 Overshoot followed by collapse of the resource and the industry dependent on the resource. Outcome depends of 2 things: 1. Threshold 2. Rapidity and effectiveness of the balancing feedback. Consequence: 1. Equilibrium 2. Oscillation 3. resource and industry collapses 72 Resilience, self-organization and hierarchy make systems work well. 75 Resilience 76 Self-organization. 79 “Life started with single-cell bacteria, not with elephants. The original purpose of a hierarchy is always to help its originating subsystems do their jobs better. This is something, unfortunately, that both the higher and the lower levels of a greatly articulated hierarchy easily can forget. Therefore, many systems are not meeting our goals because of malfunctioning hierarchies.” 84 “When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting behavior is called suboptimization. Just as damaging as suboptimization, of course, is the problem of too much central control. If the brain controlled each cell so tightly that the cell could not perform its self-maintenance functions, the whole organism could die.” 85 Layers of limits. We don’t like limits. All inputs are limited, therefore all outputs, are limited! 100 Problem with GNP as a goal. Robert F Kennedy. Doesn’t measure distribution equity “An expensive second home for a rich family makes the GNP go up more than an inexpensive basic home for a poor family”. “It measure effort rather than achievement, gross production and consumption rather than efficiency”. 139 “If you define the goal of a society as GNP, that society will do its best to produce GNP. It will not produce welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency unless you define a goal and regularly measure and report the state of welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency. The world would be a different place if instead of competing to have the highest per capita GNP, nations competed to have the highest per capita stocks of wealth with the lowest throughput, or the lowest infant mortality, or the greatest political freedom, or the cleanest environment, or the smallest gap between the rich and the poor.” 140 Corporations trying to weaken feedback loops. 154 Paradigms, “The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big unstated assumptions, constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about how the world works.” 162, 163 Examples of paradigmatic assumptions/ideas of our modern culture: money measures something real, growth is good, natures resources are the property of humans. “Paradigms are the sources of systems. From them, from shared social agreements about the nature of reality, come system goals and information flows, feedbacks, stocks, flows, and everything else about systems.” 163 Kuhn and changing paradigms. Transcending paradigms. “your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension” 164 I PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH The workings of company and problems of profit. Reasons firms seek profit: 1. investment in maintenance and improvements. 2. Pay creditors 3. Return to shareholders. Investment need to improve efficiency or productivity. Cost-minimization is important to companies, “The driver for efficiency is essentially the profit motive: the need to increase the difference between revenues from sales and the costs associated with the so-called factor inputs: capital, labour and material resources.” Cost minimization has a cost. Focus on minimizing labour or material resources depends on their price. Labour productivity is declining, from 4 - 5% 1960 to 0,5 % 2015, See TURNING POINT: THE END OF EXPONENTIAL GROWTH? on useful work. Increasing labour productivity means “same quantity of goods and services with fewer people, the cycle creates a downward pressure on employment that’s only relieved if output increases.” “Efficiency quite literally drives growth forwards. By reducing labour (and resource) inputs, efficiency brings down the cost of goods over time. This has the effect of stimulating demand and promoting growth. Far from acting to reduce the throughput of goods, technological progress serves to increase production output by reducing factor costs.” Rebound effect. Physical limit to efficiency. 130 Schumpeter, creative destruction and novelty, Capitalist climate of competition of companies. We have to stop the "the structural reliance of the system itself on continued growth." "Quality is sacrificed relentlessly to volume throughput. The throwaway society is not so much a consequence of consumer greed as a structural prerequisite for survival. Novelty has become a conscript to and an agent for economic expansion." Social logic of goods, cathexis. Things as religions. Things as storage of memories and feelings. Pay for social distinction. 134 I SUSTAINABILITY ECONOMICS: WHERE DO WE STAND? Production causing substances toxic to humans and nature 282, 283 “Since human activity now competes with natural processes in terms of materials fluxes, especially with regard to the most toxic metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, etc.) and the most environmentally harmful chemicals (e.g. pesticides, chlorinated hydrocarbons), it is not toomuch of an exaggeration to say that most environmental problems are attributable to materials consumption and disposal.” 287 How economic textbooks portrayed economic activity as a closed loop. “In contrast to the closed perpetual motion machine described above, the real economy is essentially a large-scale materials processing system, largely powered (for the present) by machines using fossil fuels that were created and stored in the earth's crust hundreds of millions of years ago. Virtually none of the materials consumed by the economy are recycled at present. The basic engine of economic growth in a massproduction manufacturing economy is the positive feedback cycle, shown in Fig. 11. In brief, the impetus to growth arises from the fact that demand for a product tends to increase as (real) prices fall. This phenomenon is called the ‘price elasticity’ of demand. Falling prices, in turn, result from exploiting economies of scale in manufacturing. Thus, firms can reduce costs, cut prices, increase sales and maximize profits (and grow) by increasing the scale of production. So ever greater consumption of resources is, ipso facto, a driver of growth in this paradigm: consumption (leading to investment and technological progress) drives growth, just as growth and technological progress drives consumption.” 292 I ON THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH Empty to full world. “Human society (in the technosphere) gathers and concentrates material and energy forms required for its maintenance and reproduction from the context, and to achieve this result it heavily relies on non-renewable energy sources (linearization of flows) (Giampietro et al., 2012). The current level of productivity of production factors (labor, capital, land) is obtained by altering the pace and density of the flows naturally occurring in the biosphere in managed ecosystems (human land-uses). In doing so, society can express structures and functions (associated with a given rate of positive entropy generation) that would otherwise not be possible (if relying on the negative flux generated by natural processes) (Smil, 2015).” Boosted agriculture through fossil fuel. “Went from low external input to high external input in agriculture with the industrial revolution. While the former relied on nutrient recycling through a complex network of interactions among ecological fund elements (thus guaranteeing soil health, biodiversity, healthy aquifers, etc.), the latter is based on linearization of flows through the use of fossil energy (stressing ecological fund elements).” The price of linearization is the liquidation of ecological funds. Linearization of energy. 149 Figure 8, metabolic flows within biosphere and technosphere 151 “Indeed, there are limits to recycling and technological fixes in the technosphere for two basic reasons:
1. According to the first principle of thermodynamics energy cannot be produced. We cannot increase the size of primary energy sources, but only learn how to use them better.
2. According to the second principle of thermodynamics irreversible processes alter the qualitative characteristics of material flows. Recycling can be done, but only to a certain extent and at a certain cost, and only if the corresponding primary resources are available. Hence, the amount of primary waste outflows of an economy can be reduced by recycling (provided the inputs required by the recycling process itself do not exceed the waste outflow recycled), but a continuous production of wastes is unavoidable.” 152, 153 “Internal recycling is important, but when analyzing the pressure on the environment exerted by the metabolic pattern of a social-ecological system, what really matters is the relation between the size of the primary flows required by the technosphere and the size of the primary sources and primary sinks made available by the biosphere.” Cornucopians vs neoMaltusians. “In the last two centuries the huge gap between the density and pace of flows inside the technosphere and the density and pace associated with ecological processes in the biosphere has been filled by non-renewable stock exploitation (stock-flow supply), rather than by sustainably managing useful ecological funds (fund-flow supply). Indeed, at present, the loop is far from being closed for most primary flows (notably energy and food) and the mismatch is ‘solved’ by depleting stocks of primary resources (fossil energy, minerals) and filling sinks (GHG in the atmosphere, pollutants and wastes in the hydro and geospheres).” 153 The problem with Ellen MacArthur Foundation and their view on circular economy, is that you can’t increase economy without increasing the consumption of natural resources, simply by recycling. You can’t recycle products at zero biophysical cost. “On the contrary, the bioeconomics of Georgescu-Roegen emphasizes that the economic process is entropic and that therefore it entails a continuous consumption of resources that must be counterbalanced by the work of nature to remain stable. In this original narrative, the industrial revolution is considered a unique event that made it possible to break away from the external ecological constraints associated with the limited pace and density of flow throughput found in pre-industrial economies. This breaking away was only possible because of the plundering of non-renewable fossil energy resources that enabled a dramatic acceleration of the pace and density of economic throughputs through a linearization of previously circular processes.” Economy will slow down when biological processes are introduced. 154 I TURNING POINT: THE END OF EXPONENTIAL GROWTH? Running up against limits. We are running out of a number of high quality resources (topsoil, fresh water, fish, virgin forests, oil and gas, and toxic waste assimilation) There are no substitutes. All product and services are dependent on energy. 1191 I MYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖ Machine as an expression of unequal transfer of resources. The railroad as a distribution problem of society. 45 Technology as redistribution of time and space. 46 Technological development as a zero-sum game of time and space 47 The essence of the machine, the conditions for its existence is inequitable exchange relations 49 Machine as fetish. Early economists as Ricardo hid the real dimensions of trade, the transfer of time, space and energy in the idea exchange value. 50 I TOWARDS A CIRCULAR ECONOMY - BUSINESS RATIONALE FOR AN ACCELERATED TRANSITION Concept of circular economy. Design out waste. Products designed for disassembly and reuse. Sets a part from disposal and recycling- Recycling loses energy and labour. Circular economy differentiate between consumable and durable component of product. The use of renewable energy. In circular economy consumer becomes user. Power of the inner circle. Power of circling longer. Power of cascaded use. Power of pure circles. Also doesn’t hurt human beings and ecosystems. 7 Principles of circular economy. 1. Design out waste. 2. Build resilience through diversity. Learn from natural systems 3. Rely on energy from renewable sources. 22 4. Think in system 5. Waste is food. Biological nutrients in products and materials non-toxic so it can go back to nature. Eco-effictiveness (and the idea of economic holds grips of even circular economy See THE CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY AND DECOUPLING: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH on circular economy. DECOUPLING DEBUNKED – EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY) 23 Figure 6 – the circular economy 24 Origins of circular economy. Regenerative design. Performance Economy. Cradle to cradle. Biomimicry. Many of them using mother nature as inspiration. 26, 27 Figure 15. What is needed for a circular economy. 58 I DANA (DONELLA) MEADOWS LECTURE: SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS Limits to growth archetype. E.g. Fisheries. 09.49 This system is going to crash. 10.00 Even distribution and price and fish. 12.37 However with uneven distribution rich can pay whatever. What actually is happening with fisheries. 13.03 Price could stop but it isn’t. Uneven income distribution stops it. 14.14 Villains: 1. Desire for growth. E.g. Fisheries 14.51 2. Technology 15.20 3. Market 15.33 The villains are taught by our culture to be the saviors/super heroes 15.46 Balancing/negative loops, potlatch, equal education, taxes 22.38 World3 big model of same thing, growth ethic trying to make more, a lot of successful to the successful 26.13 The reason for Limits to growth exactly the same as for the fisheries. 27.03 LIMITS! Beyond the limits 28.14 The system can be changed! 29.05 Sustainable system: 1. Meaningful, moral, satisfying goal – sense of enough 2. Feedback loops balanced 3. Clean, clear, fast, compelling information flow 4. Protection of resource base, including resilience, self-organizing and evolution 5. Social equity 29.36 I A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL240. Social accounting. “Naturally, present procedures require improvement: for example, in calculating "revealed preference" (the values of individuals and communities as "revealed" to economists by the amount people are willing and/or can afford to pay for or against a given development), imagination, sensitivity and commonsense are required in order to avoid the imposition on poor neighbourhoods or sparsely inhabited countryside of nuclear power stations, reservoirs, motorways, airports, and the like; and in calculating the "social time preference rate" (an indication of society's regard for the future) for a given project, a very low discount should be given, since it is easier to do than undo, and we must assume that unless we botch things completely many more generations will follow us who will not thank us for exhausting resources or blighting the landscape”
241. “Furthermore, accounting decisions should be made in the light of stock economics: in other words, we must judge the health of our economy not by flow or throughput, since this inevitably leads to waste, resource depletion and environmental disruption, but by the distribution, quality and variety of the stock.” 12
To encouragement Next encouragement