Earthlings: You are Here

If you have ever shopped in a large mall or hiked in a park for the first time and feel lost? A welcome sight is one of those “You Are Here” kiosks.

Here is a good kiosk to inform us where are in our quest to live happy, long, and productive lives. We want to be in a place that when we exit this planet, our children have better opportunities for their lives.

It is tough to figure out where we are. Earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, humans for a small fraction of that, and most humans have only had a handful of decades to figure this place out.

We know so little about this place. When the great quake in 1906 struck San Francisco, we did not even understand plate tectonics. The earth quaked and we didn’t know why. Amazing.

Now, more than a century later, we do not understand how economic and ecological shifts effect our lives. The kiosk above provides the context of where we are in the waves of our economic system and how those economic waves are wearing down the ecological systems.

Economic Ecosystems

As the kiosk shows, the economic ecosystems have emerged from the Ecological Ecosystem that Earth built. Humans obtained goods by hunting and gathering, our first “value of use” economic goods.

The domestication of plants and animals created Agricultural Ecosystems. When people had a surplus of food they traded and “value in exchange” economic goods were instituted.

For the next several thousands of years this became the foundation of the economic ecosystems. We developed Business Ecosystems that led to E-Commerce Ecosystems. But we are still only using “value of use” and “value in exchange’ as the two legs of our economic stool. As Adam Smith explained in 1776 in his “Wealth of Nations”.

Ecological Ecosystems

Humans and their economic system are highly dependent on the original Ecological Ecosystem. But since our economic ecosystem does not have a measurement for the Ecological Ecosystem, it value is mostly absent

Ecological Function in Decline

During this great economic advancement, the ecological function of Earth has quietly declined. Our highly interconnected socioeconomic system enables us to ramp up our “value of use” and “value in exchange” activities. Deliver-to and deliver-from is a few keystrokes away. This brings us to the Red “You are Here” Dot on the Earthly kiosk.

We are Here

We got to the Red Dot by adding new production protocols to our economic system. Domesticating plants and animals, adding transportation and trade routes, digitizing information, and connected people via the internet. Each of these protocols were enough to expand the economic ecosystem into a $100 trillion dollar consumption machine. The only thing governing the consumption of the Earth’s resources is the amount of money that is printed. Everything else is why down the list.

Once the economic consumption machine is gassed by money, it consumes.

We Want to Get to the Green Dot

The Red Dot is almost in free fall on the Ecological Function slide. We need to add new protocols to the economic system to expand the economy into the EcoCommerce Ecosystem by adding “value for existence” to the economic stool. The two-legged stool is precarious for any use for any amount of time.

Natural Capital Accounting Protocol

To incorporate the trillions of dollars of value provided by the living component of the Ecological Ecosystem, we need a natural capital accounting protocol based on an NCU-like system. Natural capital units are a geospatial accounting model that is able to incorporate the entirety of global natural capital and the full suite of provisional, regulating, supporting, and cultural resources.

Three-Legged Stool

The NCU is the accounting and transaction unit for “value for existence”. It provides the stability for our “value of use” and “value in exchange” needs.

Our economic and ecological systems are highly unstable. The notion that “value for existence” is a stabilizing force is more than just rational, it is a requirement. It is becoming obvious that our ability to consume the Earth’s resources is accelerating. We need to add a third leg to our socio-economic ecological stool. And soon.

Tim Gieseke is referred to as the “Adam Smith of EcoCommerce” and has written three books on how to add an ecological dimension to the economy.