Environment, workplace, and employment: an introduction

International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 4-39

  Lawn, Philip ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

ecological sustainability; full employment; steady state economy; technological progress

Indexed keywords

EID: 33751319800     PISSN: 17418437     EISSN: 17418445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJEWE.2004.005601     Document Type: Article

References (77)

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10. A good example is [5].
11. For a description of what ecological economics involves see Lawn, P. (2002) ‘Grounding the ecological economics paradigm with ten core principles’, International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance, and Ecology, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.1–21.
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17. To understand what is meant by low and high entropy matter-energy, the importance of the first and second laws of thermodynamics must be revealed. The first law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy and matter. It declares that energy and matter can never be created or destroyed. The second law is the Entropy Law. It declares that whenever energy is used in physical transformation processes, the amount of usable or ‘available’ energy always declines. While the first law ensures the maintenance of a given quantity of energy and matter, the Entropy Law determines that which is usable. This is critical since, from a physical viewpoint, it is not the total quantity of matter-energy that is of primary concern, but the amount that exists in a readily available form. The best way to illustrate the relevance of these two laws is to provide a simple example. Consider a piece of coal. When it is burned, the matter-energy embodied within the coal is transformed into heat and ash. While the first law ensures the total amount of matter-energy in the heat and ashes equals that previously embodied in the piece of coal, the second law ensures the usable quantity of matter-energy does not. In other words, the dispersed heat and ashes can no longer be used in a way similar to the original piece of coal. To make matters worse, any attempt to reconcentrate the dispersed matter-energy, which requires the input of additional energy, results in more usable energy being expended than that reconcentrated. Hence, all physical transformation processes involve an irrevocable loss of available energy or what is sometimes referred to as a ‘net entropy deficit’. This enables one to understand the use of the term low entropy and to distinguish it from high entropy. Low entropy refers to a highly ordered physical structure embodying energy and matter in a readily available form, such as a piece of coal. Conversely, high entropy refers to a highly disordered and degraded physical structure embodying energy and matter that is, by itself, in an unusable or unavailable from, such as heat and ash. By definition, the matter-energy used in socio-economic processes can be considered low entropy resources whereas unusable by-products can be considered high entropy wastes.
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21. Production essentially involves the rearrangment of matter-energy while consumption involves its disarrangement.
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25. Dissipative structures are dynamic systems that draw in low entropy matter-energy from their parent system. In doing so, they exploit their capacity to change their physical form, to grow, and, potentially at least, to develop. Provided a dissipative structure is fulfilling its thermodynamic potential, it will tend toward a state of increasing order. But it can do so only at the expense of a much greater degree of increasing disorder of the parent system upon which it depends.
26. In the natural world, information exists as genetic information coded in the DNA molecule. In the anthropocentric world, information exists as knowledge encoded in various institutions and organisations.
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29. Many definitions of sustainable development have appeared since the term was first made popular by the World Commission for Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987. For the remainder of this paper, the following will be considered sustainable development: “A nation is achieving sustainable development if it undergoes a pattern of development that improves the total quality of life of every citizen, both now and into the future, without the rate of resource use exceeding the regenerative and waste assimilative capacities of the natural environment. It is also a nation that ensures the survival of the biosphere and all its evolving processes while also recognising, to some extent, the intrinsic value of sentient non-human beings”. (see Lawn, P. (forthcoming) ‘The policy-guiding value of sustainable development indicators: an introductory essay’, International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development.).
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32. A holon is a term made popular by Arthur Koestler, see [30], p.303.
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40. There are two things worthy of note here. First, uncancelled costs are often undervalued because many natural capital values escape market valuation. Second, uncancelled costs should reflect the highest of two classes of opportunity costs - the first being the cost of transforming an extracted unit of low entropy into physical goods in terms of alternative goods forgone (e.g., if an extracted unit of low entropy resource X is used to produce good A, it cannot be used to produce goods B, C, or D, etc.); the second in terms of the reduced capacity of natural capital to provide a future flow of low entropy resources that is required to produce physical goods in the future (e.g., if the extraction of a unit of low entropy resource X reduces the capacity of natural capital to provide a continuous flow of a unit of X over time, a unit of X will be unavailable to produce goods of any type in the future).
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43. The technical efficiency of production (E) can be written as the ratio of energy-matter embodied in physical goods (Q) to the energy-matter embodied in the low entropy resources used to produce them (R) - i.e., E = Q/R. While the value of E can be reduced by technological progress, E must be something less than a value of one.
44. Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. III. (Eds.) (1972) The Limits to Growth, New York: Universe Books.
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48. It is the self-organisational capacity of the Earth to maintain the conditions fit for life that has led Lovelock to develop his ‘Gaian hypothesis’ - an hyopthesis based on the notion that the Earth, or Gaia, behaves like an immense quasi-organism, see Lovelock, J. (1988) Ages of Gaia: A Biography of our Living Planet, New York: Norton & Company.
49. Blum, H. (1962) Times Arrow and Evolution, 3rd edition, Princeton: Harper Torchbook, p.61.
50. It has been estimated that for every one plant species lost, approximately fifteen animal species will follow, see Norton, B. (1986) ‘On the inherent danger of undervaluing species’, in B. Norton (Ed.) The Preservation of Species, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p.117.
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53. Of course, the mere preservation or ‘locking up’ of large and small ecosystems will not, by itself, ensure biodiversity maintenance. Given the interdependent relationships between systems of all types, individual ecosystems are not entirely self-supporting [48]. Their continued existence and the well-being of the biodiversity they contain is conditional upon the exchanges of both matter-energy with and between neighbouring and far-distant systems. This applies to systems of all kinds, whether they be relatively pristine, moderately disturbed, or totally refined. Above all else, maintaining biodiversity requires the exploitation of natural capital to be conducted on the principle of respecting the holistic integrity of geographical land and water resource units.
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61. Evidence provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows an alarmingly high rate of mental disorders amongst unemployed people relative to the remaining population. See ABS (1997) Mental Health and Well-being: Profile of Adults, Canberra: AGPS, Catalogue No. 4326.0.
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64. One method of determining if a nation’s current rate of resource throughput is more or less than the maximum sustainable rate is to compare its biocapacity with its ecological footprint. A country’s ecological footprint is the equivalent area of land required to generate the renewable resources capable of sustaining socio-economic activity at the current level. Nations with a biocapacity well in excess of their ecological footprint include Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Finland, Canada, and Colombia. A small number of nations have a negligible ecological surplus, while all others suffer from small to very large ecological deficits. For more on the ecological footprint and a summary of biocapacity-footprint comparisons for different countries see Wackernagel, M., Onisto, L., Bello, P., Callejas Linares, A., Susana Lopez Falfan, S., Mendez Garcia, J., Suarez Guerrero, A. I. and Suarez Guerrero, Ma.G. (1999) ‘National natural capital accounting with the ecological footprint concept’, Ecological Economics, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp.375–390.
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68. Because the compilation of a throughput account was a more difficult proposition, the annual consumption of energy was used as a proxy measure of resource throughput. Due to a lack of space and the extensive and unique nature of the study, a full explanation of the individual accounts, the items they comprise, data sources, and the methods of calculation can be found in [8].
69. A better indicator of the productivity of natural capital is a ratio of renewable energy consumption to the total renewable resource stock. This ratio has increased only marginally over the study period [8].
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76. Competitive advantage may not necessarily be gained at the international level because of the potential standards-lowering impact of globalisation forces. See [8] and Lawn, P. (2004) ‘Facilitating a higher level of sustainable income by restoring comparative advantage as the principle governing international trade’, ICFAI Journal of Applied Economics, Vol. 3, No. 1.
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