A REUTERS headline regarding the EU’s ‘Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism‘ provides a snapshot of we should expect over the next few years in relation to sustainable development (SD) goals.
Since the early 1970s, SD has been pushed as an ideological no-brainer by the fanatical green lobby – a consensual and unquestioned ideal that we must all strive for and also suffer for if necessary (£4.5trillion estimated cost of Net Zero, anyone?)
The familiar message has been relentlessly drummed into us: man-made impacts on the environment and the destructive effects of our love of free-market capitalism and consumerism are now at crisis point. There is no alternative but to change our thoughtless and self-centred ways of thinking and behaving if we care about the planet, our fellow human beings and, ultimately, our own survival.
Symbolised by the dominant presence of environmental lobby groups in formal politics, the saturation media coverage offered to green influencers such as Greta Thunberg, and the whinging, virtue signalling rhetoric from left-wing think tanks, academia and the entertainment business, means the green agenda now has an enormous sway in forcing the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals over the line.
Under the banner of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, the UN, EU, national governments, NGOs and local authorities all sing from the same song sheet.
‘Business as it was’ is now a moral crime and firms, producers and organisations have been corralled, threatened, and incentivised to comply with the same objective – to report, analyse, quantify and monitor their environmental status and to remedy it where applicable.
Carbon and resource accounting tools such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) have been hugely important to these endeavours, offering spurious scientific credibility, ‘making the invisible tangible’, and utilising ‘the quantitative good’ as SD moral compass.
LCA is arguably the single biggest influence on reporting, monitoring, and benchmarking SD and enshrining it across all sectors of society.
Described as ‘the systematic method used to quantify the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product or service’s life cycle – from resource extraction, manufacturing, distribution, and use, to disposal or recycling – LCA examines the complete picture. The goal is to identify hotspots where environmental harm occurs and to provide a foundation for making more sustainable choices’.
The main areas assessed during an LCA procedure include:
· greenhouse gas emissions;
· energy and water consumption;
· resource depletion;
· waste generation;
· ecosystem and human health impacts.
LCA analysis involves a detailed calculation of the energy and resources that are utilised along the supply chain of a product or service.
As well as providing a useful ‘input-output’ model by which businesses can streamline their costs, maximise efficiency, and increase productivity, an LCA study can also provide a broader understanding of the cumulative environmental impacts of businesses and organisations, which can be cross-referenced across sectors and used as a proxy for understanding current and future trends.
As companies come increasingly under the requirements of Environmental and Social Governance (ESG), LCA is one of the main tools by which firms can prove compliance with SD and demonstrate that they are organisations ‘that manage their impacts on, risks related to, and opportunities arising from environmental, social, and governance issues’.
The success of this methodology for the political aspirations of the SD movement is in being able to capture the complexity of different elements of environmental impacts i.e. units, measurements, and percentages and their interrelationships. These foundations provide the basis for the next stage of the SD agenda, which will involve us directly as individuals.
Up until now, LCA has been used primarily from an ‘upstream’ perspective i.e. monitoring and auditing waste, energy, and resources used by businesses, producers, and organisations. A switch from macro-environmental accounting systems will at some point soon transition into a central feature of the so-called ‘triple lock’ of digital ID, programmed money, and 15-minute, or smart, cities.
While you might argue that the Government has seemingly responded to the public backlash on digital ID, this stance should not be taken at face value. Governments, technocrats and globalist organisations have long held ambitions to obtain and utilise data on our personal carbon profiles, to track our use of resources, and to monitor and predict individual energy behaviours, mobility and consumption habits.
The triple lock will elevate the current scenario into a three-dimensional digital system, eventually incorporating data on health, finances, property, employment, criminal records etc. Our carbon footprint will be the focal point of this approach, offering a comprehensive and unprecedented system of control based on ‘measure’, ‘predict’, and ‘correct’.
LCA will be the foundation upon which all of this is built. All products and services will eventually be assigned a QR code or a chip which holds the results of a comprehensive audit on the environmental life cycle of that product or service.
In the brave new world of digital ID and a cashless society, our purchasing decisions will have to negotiate the triple lock of digital ID, programmed money, and 15-minute cities infrastructure making this a ‘decision-making architecture’ and the primary arbiter of our consumption choices.
Firstly, digital ID will verify your identity and whether you are in fact eligible to participate in any economic transactions. Your programmable currency will then clarify the status of your allocated carbon quota and what goods and services are available to you.
If you are over your allocated quota, the transaction will be declined, or you will be offered the chance to pay a higher carbon tax rate.
Finally, the 15-minute city infrastructure will provide a ‘place and space’ dimension, tracking your mobility status (mileage) through surveillance cameras and road sensors – similar to Ulez – and restricting access if you have exceeded your designated allowance.
The Club of Rome would have drooled over the technological sophistication lacking from their Limits to Growth report from 1972. The fledgling green movement of that time were able only to make predictions, suggestions and recommendations to prevent mankind from participating in its own destruction.
Very shortly, ‘doing the right thing’ will not be a choice, but will be coded into the system itself – a prerequisite to engage in society in the first place.
