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Emergy Evaluation of the United States, U.S. Education, Educational Attainment and the National Financial System from 1950 through 2016
Citation:
Campbell, Dan, H. Walker, AND H. Lu. Emergy Evaluation of the United States, U.S. Education, Educational Attainment and the National Financial System from 1950 through 2016. Emergy Synthesis 10. The 10th Biennial Emergy Research Conference, Gainesville, FL, January 24 - 27, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
This paper updates the highly significant work of Campbell et al. 2014, by adding five additional years of data. In addition, it will update and further develop the application of educational attainment in the assessment of the emergy contributed by people to GDP. This method allows the work of people and the work of nature to be expressed independently so that double entry bookkeeping entries in combined emergy-money accounts can be balanced. In addition, this study will incorporate the U.S. financial system in our quantification of the U.S. national system from 1950 to 2016. Taken as a whole this work provides the means to accurately determine the relative contributions of the environment, energy and material resources and humans service to support society.
Description:
Past work quantifying the emergy basis for the U.S. economy, the U.S. education system and the educational attainment of the population through 2011 is brought up to date with the most recent data available from the U.S. Statistical Abstracts as well as other critical information sources. In addition, the U.S. financial system is quantified from 1950 to 2016 and this information is added to the characterization of the national system as a way to better understand the choices in the application of money to facilitate national material and energy flows that have determined the past history of the national system, e.g., the Great Recession of 2008 and the subsequent recovery to the present state of the system (circa 2016), and that may also influence its future. The emergy base for the U.S. national system is re-characterized to include the emergy contributed by people through their knowledge and experience on an equal basis with the emergy of energy, material and other information inputs. The proposal that the portion of the total knowledge in educational attainment delivered by the active workforce be considered as part of the emergy basis for a nation is new and if accepted it will require carrying out emergy analyses of education systems in many nations. Establishing an emergy basis for the work of people, for which money is paid, provides the information needed to bring closure on the combined emergy-money income statements and balance sheets used in environmental accounting. More comprehensive accounting can help inform borrowing for future investments in energy, material, and education infrastructure to build more inclusive access to real wealth.