Talk:Regenerative economic theory

Ldemetri (talk) 02:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)LD

In speaking with Blaise today about ways to help keep the terminologies organized we identified at least four component catagories.

Economics. Placing true value on the original asset. Physics of Energy. Harnessing power from an infinite source. Engineering. Searching for the mechcanical advantage. Philosophy. The true value of personal well being.

There may be more, but we can start with these. Anyway, we wanted to get a feel for this discussion page. Please feel free to join in our exploration of regenerecon. Thank you!

Ldemetri (talk) 03:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Lewis

Working list of assumptions.

1. The future is electric. 2. All energy comes from the sun. 3. Money is a form of social energy. 4. Eventually the kWh will be established as a common monetary standard. 5. Human well being, has a value.

Bstoltenberg (talk) 14:04, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Regenerative Economics February 2009

“Regenerative Economics” intuitively sounds right but what does it mean? What does it mean to restore, renew or grow anew something that has been lost in economic terms? Economics values inputs to and outputs from commercial activity. Does it value the “free” services that are provided by our environment? When economics does values these services, does it do it correctly? When an economic process impairs or destroys the environments ability to provide service, does economics account for this loss?

I have always been amazed at capitalism’s ability to solve problems and deliver goods to where ever there is a market, not that it hasn’t gone astray in terms of the public good from time to time but it is the most “democratic” of economic systems that I know. You can look at capitalism as a big game and how it works depends on the rules (although there will be those that cheat). Regenerative economics would apply regenerative rules to the capitalism game. Regenerative rules would give incentive to restoring and renewing our spaceship earth. If services provided by the environment are appropriately valued, how would things change? Would a capitalist system knowingly destroy valuable capital assets? Would it destroy a water treatment plant, a food production factory or housing? Would not these capital assets be renewed, restored, regenerated to retain their economic value and service? These basic concepts would be applied to all things that affect the environment especially energy production, which is the life’s blood of our lifestyle and potentially one of the most damaging process to our environment.

Once environmental assets and services have been established as valuable and are accounted for in economic decision making, where does the “cash” flow (and it must flow otherwise you have good intentions but no incentive to follow through) to in compensation for benefits received? Usually there is an owner of an asset or provider of a service. Who owns environmental assets? If it is a wetland, then it could be the owner of that land. If it is the energy in a river, is it the city nearby, the county, the state, or the federal government? If it is the earth’s atmosphere, is it the central government, a global environmental body not yet in existence, government regulation combined with markets (carbon cap and trading), other?

April 2, 2009

Regenerative Economics is an economic system that works to regenerate capital assets such that there is no net depletion of assets. A capital asset is an asset that provides goods and services that are required for or contribute to our well being. (The rest gets hung on this definition and if it is incongruent with the definition, either it get changed or the definition gets changed/adjusted.)

April 5, 2009 As is accepted in standard economic theory, you either “regenerate” your capital assets or they become less able to provide income until they reach a point where they cannot produce a viable income stream. What sets Regenerative Economics apart from standard economic theory is that it takes into account and gives hard economic value to the principle or original capital assets—the earth and the sun. We cannot do much to affect the sun although we can value access to the sun in such areas where access can be influenced. Therefore, most of Regenerative Economics will focus on the earth and the goods and services it supplies.

Ldemetri (talk) 15:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Ldemetri

A few thoughts on how this conversation started. Blaise, Dale, and Lewis, collectively known as Midwest Sustainable Energy Contractors (MSEC), became involved with the building of the Future House USA (FHUSA) in Beijing China. The US Foundation called Learn Green was commissioned by the Ministry of Construction, to participate in a Future Community project, scheduled to have 10 homes built by 10 different countries. George and Helen (and their family) of Learn Green, were asked to build a house to represent the United States. They said yes, and enlisted the help of MSEC. George was told by the China side that their intention was for Learn Green to build a 'wooden structure' to serve as a 'demonstration' house...to create a 'guide' with which to augment the current Chinese residential home building process. They also said they fore saw building 100M new home in China during the next 10 years.

Two additionally important people to the project were Yong, and Yimin. Together with Blaise, George, and Lewis they began to analyze the scope of the project. Obviously, at the 100M homes scale, there would be no small detail. Toxicity, construction waste, power needed for that many homes, sewer, materials availability, energy efficiency, pollution...essentially everything would potentially became a big deal.

To digress a bit, when Blaise was studying for his Masters Degree, he worked part time at NREL. His assignment was to work on the foundation of the ZNE concept…Zero Net Energy. Blaise and Yong had both been participants in the Solar Decathalon, and were keyed into energy efficiency and sustainable power production technologies. That was few years ago, and he suggested that we may consider a ZNE design for FHUSA. NREL had updated the program and in a recent report the name had now expanded to become, ‘The Path To Zero Net Energy’. To cut to the chase, and after a robust discussion, that is what the FHUSA design team agreed on, and Learn Green approved the funding of such a project as well. After all, FHUSA was representing the United States.

Enter Reshaping the Built Environment and Herman Daly Essay on uneconomic growth. Wow. Blew our minds! George, Dale, Blaise, and myself could see his point so clearly. Without including the true value of the original asset, the laws of economics as we knew and trusted them, could leave one coming up short…dramatically short. This was before the ‘world economic downturn’. We knew that Prof Daly’s work was profound and that he was on to something, but we did not have a context of understanding as of then. But definitely the more we thought about it the more we saw our selves in an uneconomic growth cycle…George would call and say, I see it everywhere. We all were seeing it everywhere.

So much design work later, things were taking shape with FHUSA, and one day Blaise and I were talking about ‘what would be the economic ramification of creating more power than we could use?’ Now, this took us awhile to get to this thought because the challenge of harvesting site energy to power a modern lifestyle (very energy intensive) was so stiff, that it took us quite awhile to even be able to imagine harvesting more energy than we could use for the FHUSA lifestyle. We had no name for this ‘economic ramification’ so we made a long list which included, alternative economics, sustainable economics, restorative economics, and regenerative economics. That latter was lifted from and a book on design, appropriately called, regenerative design. We settled on regenerative economics as the best description for this (hypothetical) condition.

It was the typical story. Before we saw it, we never even considered the net positive condition. After we saw it, it was so clear to us…and low and behold, one day we realized that uneconomic growth was the opposite of regenerative economics. In fact we began to believe that regenerative economics was indeed the antidote for the uneconomic growth cycle. And again the more the team discussed it, the more we could see it clearly.

Being involved in energy efficiency one would often hear ‘we can not afford to do it right’. So we had known for awhile that the sustainable energy conversation was really about money. First cost construction methodology could never begin to show the long term value of sustainability, and life cycle costing that can show value by comparative analysis, but was, and still is seldom used in the mainstream contracting and construction process. So we started to think in terms of describing regenerative economics within the framework of the existing capital based economics that business people are familiar and comfortable with. Which brings us up to the definition that we now have listed on the Wiki site. Our basic platform of thought on which to continue to develop. So there is a brief (hehe) bit of background. I am sure more detail to this account will come into being as we push forward in exploration this very exciting Regenerative Economc Theory.......Thank you!

Ldemetri (talk) 13:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)Ldemetri

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Soddy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoeconomics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Accounting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecodynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Economics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth,_Virtual_Wealth_and_Debt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Power

Regenerative What?
Before starting to develop our understanding of this topic I see that some doubt exists about what is being regenerated. Some writers think that is our capital assets but according to how Adam Smith's explanation of the process of production, capital only deterioriates with time because it consists of man-made buildings, tools, machinery, etc., that wear our with time. Of course it can be cared for and its obsolescence overcome, but these capital aspects are not strictly part of the natural enviroment that is re-newed and falls within the regererative topic. It is only the natural resources that are included here, as Adam Smith calls Land, not Capital.

The renewal of our natural resources including the air we breathe, the ground on which our food and other plants and animals grow and all that appears to be a significan part of the first creation, are not Capital at all. Macrocompassion (talk) 16:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ECOL 4950- Senior Seminar
— Assignment last updated by Branchiobdellid (talk) 16:51, 3 November 2023 (UTC)