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CHAPTER 17: VIVANTARY RESPONSIBLITY AND EMERGY ACCOUNTING
Citation:
Franz, E. H. AND D E. Campbell. CHAPTER 17: VIVANTARY RESPONSIBLITY AND EMERGY ACCOUNTING. Emergy Synthesis 3: Theory and Applications of the Emergy Methodology: Proceedings of the 3rd Biennial Emergy Analysis Research Conference, Gainsville, FL, January 29 - 31, 2004. Brown, et al (ed.), Center for Environmental Policy, Gainsville, FL, 229-233, (2005).
Impact/Purpose:
To discuss a recently coined term, vivantary responsibility, a specific referent for specialized duty of care for the environment
Description:
Ecosystem processes represented by manifold material cycles and energy flows are a necessary condition of life on Earth. Though our species is embedded in a matrix of ecosystem processes mediated by networks involving millions of other species, human activities per se account for an ever increasing fraction of matter and energy budgets at every scale. Human agency is now apparent in processes ranging from the global increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to the regional acidification of lakes and streams, to local changes in the organic matter contents of soils.
Human agency implies human responsibility. In the context of ecosystems, that responsibility must be directed to the living network comprised of many millions of other living species on the planet, the planetary life support system. The recently coined term, vivantary responsibility, is a specific referent for exactly this specialized duty of care.
For vivantary responsibility to be realized in practice, it must be coupled to an appropriate measure of value in ecosystems. Energy System Theory (EST) identifies such a value with energy as the basis for selection. The differential between competing networks in units of emjoules determines survival, just as a temperature differential directs the flow of heat. Since the future states of ecosystems and human life are linked inextricably to human agency and to vivantary responsibility, we posit that the maximum power principle, as the basis for emergy accounting, gives a general criterion for judging the impacts of human activities on the planet that is consistent with our vivantary duties.