A small team of researchers is woken up by their notification inboxes exploding: their mundane and unexciting report might have just stared an economic war between multiple regions and communities. In a world with tightly-controlled carbon budgets, the production, use and recycling of every product is a subject of LCA, or a LifeCycle Assessment. A bad result might change the design, or move the production to another region, with potential political consequences. How will the researchers deal with their newly acquired (in)fame? Will they trust their analysis, buckle under pressure, or decide to play politics?
Raw Research Notes #
What we have then - whether in terms of Carbon Credits, LCAs or other aspects - is a question how to structure a system to make sense and be unhackable.
One solution would be maximum transparency and treating the whole LCA process: the knowledge base, algorithms, specific decisions as a wiki, where everybody can look into and comment. How much can we offload on citizen scientists and citizen economists, however?
This will also lead to faction wars, both in terms of ideology and economics. Every decision will have consequences - and even without layers of red tape and sleazy CEOs people can be rallied to vote against something important. What if the calculations show that - for example - India should not produce steel, which could be picked up by another, much smaller country? The sheer population and number of votes can out-weight it! Will they then vote on a flawed calculation method, led by a demagogue?
The bribes don’t need to be financial. They can be prestige, acceptance by a faction, or whatever else.
This prompt ties in with the Miners, The Moonshot and many others.
Let’s look for a story in it though:
Let’s imagine a group of LCA scientists who just published just another analysis, being abruptly woken by their notification inboxes exploding. They were just launched on the front lines of a faction war, where their report was the “last straw” and might now contribute do a huge societal change, removing whole sectors of economy from one region of the world into another. Do they trust their work? Will they buckle under pressure? It’s a good opportunity to walk the reader through how the LCA process looks like.
Consider the world to be more anarchist, less hierarchical, where a lot of decisions are consensus-based and a subject of public debate, flames and online brigading. The scientists behind this report are now celebrities, widely known, whether they want it or not. If you want to cite a book with similar themes, you can go with LX Beckett’s “Gamechanger” or “Dealbreaker”, where the popular support for eco-policies is one of the most important plots of both novels.
Let’s remember that more and more LCA processes are not just about energy and material, but are trying to count-in the uncountable, the effects on human happiness and labour practices. Yes, we could move the industry to China, but the general economic effect will produce X more tons of CO2, even if the factories will be more efficient.
Original notes:
- If they aren’t careful, they could become like the economists of the past centuries, worshiping a mathematical model and a paradigm, instead of continuously testing it.
- Struggles of morality are ongoing in solarpunk
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_assessment
- We can throw in the https://globalcarbonreward.org/ and let’s say, “good faith”, non-blockchain carbon counting systems. We WILL need one.
