ENviRON
It’s starting to feel as though they either took the worst scandals of modern history and weaponised them, or that those were training runs. And in this regard, I specifically refer to the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008, and the collapse of ENRON in 2001.
And this article relates to the latter, but it also provides clues as to future incentive structures, which could easily be exploited by a ruthless, greedy elite.
Let’s start with this note on ‘Ecosystem Service Valuation’, courtesy of the same Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, that penned the report on the Ecosystem Approach reviewed yesterday.
To start off with, we’re told that ‘other benefits from ecosystems important to human wellbeing do not have a market value‘, and then continues ‘Valuation techniques on their own will not provide sufficient understanding to make ‘wise’ decisions about managing natural resources‘ hinting that the entire exercise is pointless. Why? Because a panel will judge regardless of evidence. That’s where stakeholder management comes in.
Anyway, given that we’re still not even past the overview, it’s an impressive start.
I’m going to skip a bit as page 2 adds ‘Some benefits arising such as recreational opportunities from improving a garden are less straightforward to determine‘. Do try to contain yourself - stop laughing, this is a note for UK Parliamentarians. No, really.
Though I could comment on other parts, let’s skip to box 2 - ‘The Total Economic Value (TEV) conceptual framework views ecosystem goods and services as the flows of benefits to humans. Values are assessed through the ways in which ecosystem services support people’s own consumption (use values) and provide intangible human benefits (non-use values)‘. Already right here, there’s somewhat of a problem, because there is absolutely no way for the state or any central organ to determine what you, nor anyone for that matter, derive benefit from. I might walk through a park in a city on a daily basis, but what if it’s a shortcut to the underground - how do you propose valuing that? And what if I have a 1% likelihood of being robbed in the process, upon a late return?
The use values largely outline classic value extraction, but with a dash of ‘ecological process support’ added, which is pure guesswork, because we simply don’t understand the complexities of the chaotic system within which we live. Observe the Navier-Stokes clip again, and realise that we can’t even predict in which direction an ant will travel five seconds from now.
Yet, central planners ‘know’ how to place biodiversity in an equilibrium, and predict the climate 5 decades from now. Uhuh, sure thing.
But - by far - the worse atrocities hide in the ‘non-use values’. I mean, this could be a segment on a comedy show, in fact, should be considered as such - ‘altruistic values, derived from knowing that others can enjoy the goods and services from ecosystems‘. I wouldn’t even be able to place a value on my personal ‘enjoyment’ of nature, much less have any realistic hope of guessing that of others. Next follows - ‘bequest values, associated with knowing that ecosystems are passed on intact to future generations‘, which essentially describes a level of hypothetical future value, a concept to which I will return soon. Then comes ‘existence values, arising from the knowledge the ecosystem and its services continue to exist‘, and ‘option values… possible but unforeseen future uses, such as a species with possible pharmaceutical applications‘.
I thought I told you to stop laughing.
Setting aside the pharmaceutical link, they are now suggesting that they can value what they cannot predict. This is absolutely mind-boggling, primarily because this is a legit UK House of Parliament note.
‘most commentators agree that its application to ecosystem services should be regarded as a complementary, rather than sole, component in decisionmaking. However, valuation can be used to…‘ and then drag in the only point which matters - ‘Justify the need for financial resources to sustain, restore or enhance ecosystem services.‘
In other words, this somewhat appears an effort at keeping two sets of books, though their argument obviously will be that it solely relates to justification related to the spending of taxpayer money. Oh, and which commentators, incidentally?
I suppose I should also include the prior bullet point, ‘The costs and benefits for different stakeholders from how an ecosystem is managed.‘, because this then begs the question - which stakeholder is prioritised?
We follow on with - ‘It is neither practicable nor necessary to produce an economic valuation study for every policy decision and methods have been developed to make the best use of existing benefit valuation studies within decision-making.‘
In other words, they do realise how utterly idiotic it would be to produce valution studies for every input component, because it would ultimately create the need for an infinitely large quantity of reports. But their solution is no better, because said existing benefit valuation studies will relate to the assessed locations only, and those areas may easily be different to the one currently in question. Ie, the state of equilibrium relating to biodiversity for a plot of land receiving a lot of rain will differ to one receiving less, or, say, whether a single river flows through said plot of land, versus five small streams.
In other words, they seek to employ approximations, the question from which is begged - what’s the threshold of acceptable differences relating to the reference case? If the number is large, then we’re back to pure guesswork, if it’s small, then prepare for an insanely large database, because there are a lot of potential input factors relating to location alone. In short, this isn’t science, it’s scientism.
Here’s your holy bible on biodiversity scientism, it contains an approximation, apply and hope for the best.
Next (in box 2) follows ‘… Values for the many ecosystem services that are not directly traded in markets must be derived through… Revealed preference… Stated preference… Deliberative and participatory valuation methods‘, the latter of which include ‘group-based deliberative monetary valuation and citizens’ juries.‘
It’s quack science. Through and through quack science.
‘The scale and relative importance of ecosystem services to society has yet to be fully determined. There is scientific uncertainty about how ecosystem interactions should be categorised and defined, as reflected by the lack of agreement on definitions of ecosystem services‘
How nice of you to admit this being the case. It’s quack science.
‘understanding of spatial characteristics and societal values is as important as knowing the structure and dynamics of ecological processes‘
And they can’t detemine any of those either. Quack science.
‘Critics of valuation question whether the true future economic consequences of the loss of any ecosystem service provision can be anticipated with any confidence. The capacity to deliver an ecosystem service exists independently of whether its benefits are used.’
The answer here of course that it is utterly impossible to know. Even, say, should we for a split second possess perfect knowledge of every single one of these invented metrics, a flock of seagulls dropping poos on a field in Vietnam will instantly change this, first at a local scale, then regional, and then finally global. A butterfly, and all. And that’s also on the expectation of said metrics, or indicators, are perfect to begin with.
’However, humans will value benefits from ecosystem services differently in different places at different times. These values vary significantly with people’s awareness of background issues, cultural norms and status.’
Oh great, now even further chaos is compounding the existing.
’Furthermore, it is widely recognised that valuation of ecosystem services is highly context specific and should be guided by the perspectives and requirements of the beneficiaries within these contexts.‘
Yeah definitely highly contextual… but with whose interests should it be guided exactly? Which of the stakeholders take preference?
Anyway, do realise that they didn’t actually comment on the issue at hand. The critics will just have to pretend their question was answered behind a wall of intellectually dishonest verbiage.
‘The values attached to benefits from ecosystem services are subjective and variable over time, space and issue.‘
Do you get it? They do not know. They cannot know. They will never know.
It’s quack science.
‘Consequently, the use of some methods remains contentious.‘
Yeah, or more specifically - all methods outside classic accounting.
‘Wherever possible, valuation should be spatially and temporally explicit at scales meaningful for policy, as the ecosystem services giving rise to benefits are specific to areas and occur over differing time scales‘
Predicting the unpredictable. Quack science.
Look, the entire document is bad. Terrifyingly bad. I could go through virtually every single sentence, but I have a life, so I will pick just a few -
‘The role of economic analysis in environmental policy is to determine where a change in practices or policies may be in the wider public interest.‘
Define ‘wider public interest’, please. Define who takes said decision. Define who’s prioritised. Define who will accept the blame, should this go wrong. Define maximum levels of sentencing, and let us know who will judge the case. Define the appeals process… oh wait, this is called a legal framework, and we already have one of those.
Except, of course, I bet those who make key decisions won’t have to face the music if things go awry, and neither do I wish to take the chance to ever find out.
‘However, no single approach, such as valuation, is likely to provide sufficient understanding of the relationships between services and how best to manage their interaction. A whole toolbox of approaches will be needed, such as participatory methods (POSTnote 377), to provide a wider array of inputs and understandings of the numerous and diverse values held by stakeholders in decision-making.‘
And we’re back to the core issues - the management, and the stakeholders. Who get to manage, oh right, the stakeholders, correct?
And those stakeholders will circumvent democracy for sure. If that wouldn’t be the case, why the need to change the system?
Now, consider this - ‘Compensation could also be provided in the form of the recreation or restoration of habitat elsewhere to deliver ecosystem services… methodologies for offsetting ecosystem services have yet to be developed‘
What this essentially means is that you could hypothetically derive benefit from buying a depleted patch of land in the third world, plant a few bushes, and request compensation. And no doubt said benefit would be requested paid in very real money.
‘Other habitats in Britain, such as ancient woodland or chalk grassland are so rare, unique or locally specific that valuation is not applicable and recreation of compensatory habitat is not possible within relevant time scales‘
And that interestingly marks the first time any period is considered. Which timeframe?
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The second quasi-scientific paper follows on from the above. Once we have a method of valuation (or don’t, as the case is), we can then balance a whole new layer of fraud on top of it - ‘Natural Capital Accounting‘. Compound fraud.
World, meet Enron 2.0, or rather Environ as I titled this article.
Now, if the above paper was bad…
Kicking off with the overview - ‘Better understanding of the mechanisms that link ecological systems to human wellbeing are required to assess both the value of benefits from natural resource systems and the expenditure required to maintain the capacity to supply benefits‘
Better understanding? You mean any understanding? Apart from the expenditure part.
‘If the gap … could be determined, environmental accounting could then be used to calculate how far economies are from being within environmental limits.‘
It can’t. Ever. Never in a billion years. And even sticking a trillion lightweight IoT sensors up in the sky measuring air flows still won’t allow you to predict the path of a tornado.
Except, of course, that this isn’t about the prediction.
It’s about the continuous surveillance, targeting you.
Look, it’s more of the same quack science, so I see no need to be anywhere near as in-depth as in the above note. Box 1 in short outlines ecosystems, their components, how these relate and hence function, thereby establishing an equilibrium of biodiversity. And with that established, they carry on - ‘although this relationship is not always straightforward‘. A better phrase here would be ‘will never, ever, ever, ever in a trillion billion million quadrillion years be determinable’.
It’s all about justifying that sweet, sweet global surveillance.
The first part which is of genuine interest is this one -
‘The Globe International Commission on Land Use Change and Ecosystems recently produced a Natural Capital Action Plan for the ‘Parliamentarians and Biodiversity’ session at the tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).’
It’s GLOBE - for whom you did not vote, it’s their action plan - for which you did not vote, and it’s the Convention on Biological Diversity, for which you did not vote.
I told you. Repeatedly, in fact. All of this is about the Convention on Biological Diversity.
And here’s their most recent targets.
’This recommended that a ministerial position should be created within finance ministries or treasury departments for managing natural capital. In addition, such ministries should develop a comprehensive set of natural capital accounts accompanied by a report that outlines which policy choices would be affected by integrating the true value of ecosystem services into policy decisions‘
So, yeah, Al Gore’s unelected technocrats at GLOBE demands your government create a new ministerial position, which should immediately start valuing all the assets the foundation class seek to profit from to the tune of billions.
Sorry, not the foundation class - silly me - it’s the stakeholders, of course.
‘It also recommended an inter-departmental Ministerial Committee on Natural Capital to oversee these accounts, advised by an expert technical advisory group.’
Oh right, there’s the reference to those experts again. Yes, those who provided us with the ‘best available science’ during the scamdemic. Them.
’Individual government departments should be tasked with developing natural capital inventories of natural capital assets for which they are responsible, with external auditors of government expenditure, (such as the National Audit Office [NAO] in the UK case), to issue public reports on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of government policies on natural capital issue‘
Ah right, there’s a reference to the enforcement mechanism - essentially, the officers of those government departments who do not follow ‘the best available science’ will be held accountable - much like doctors who refused to parrot the narrative during the scamdemic. You know, all those fired ones.
And to ensure we get the ‘correct’ results, we get ‘external auditors’ to review, none of whom will engage in grand larceny, of course.
And all this information will be released to the public, so that they can sue the state should the numbers not add up, all for sakes of biodiversity and environmental justice.
‘The development of national-scale accounting and performance assessment for natural capital stocks and flows will need to be consistent with conventional national income accounting, the principles of the underlying ecology and be measured consistently over time. Any accounting framework needs to describe the stock and flow of natural capital, to allow accounting and analysis of the interactions between the economy and the environment. With some forms of natural capital, such as forests, the flow of benefits (timber) needs to be exploited at a rate which the overall stock (the forest) is maintained over time to avoid damaging the ecological infrastructure that supports it.’
Sustainable resource accounting, in short. Someone - a stakeholder - will be allowed to derive benefit from a resource, providing utilising said is sustainable. So that could be fresh water, or lumber, or venison… or potentially, carbon credits derived from the natural carbon sequestration of forests. Don’t for a second believe that this isn’t on the table.
’The present value of a stock of natural capital incorporates a measure of the future flows of benefits that it can generate.‘
Ie, ‘hypothetical future value’. Check. We will return to this soon.
‘Ecosystem services are a conceptual device that is helpful in understanding the transformations that link humans to natural capital by making a distinction between the natural capital assets that give rise to a flow of benefits and a particular aspect of human well-being‘
Ie, natural capital, giving rise to a flow of benefits linked through humans to health.
‘accounting frameworks require at least three things: the definition and measurement of quantities; the aggregation or adding-up of those quantities; and, weights for the individual elements in the aggregation index…‘
Yeah, the ‘science’ is about to come undone again…
‘defining the size of the system, including definition of which and how many natural capital stocks are relevant to any given ecosystem service‘
The size of the system will also come down to the spatial dimentions chosen by stakeho-…. wait, hang on, which drives the other again?
‘weighting these stocks appropriately, to allow an accounting price to be estimated for each of them; and,‘
Who sets the weights? What is meant by appropriately? Does this have a spatial and/or temporal scale? Why associate with an accounting price?
‘estimating the growth (or decline) in stocks and the conditions for the flows of ecosystem services from these stocks (on the basis of modelling).‘
Oh great. A model which will estimate the unknowable, on basis of values we cannot possibly comprehend, using weights we have no input over, and a management process entirely beholden to the stakeholders.
I mean, Black-Scholes is absolute child’s play here. It’s the best available (quack) science.
And from box 2 - ‘As such, valuations are attached to the benefits arising from the flow of natural capital rather than to the stock of natural capital itself.‘
And now we’re back to assigning some level of hypothetical future value to an equation there is no common consensus surrounding, nor we have any realistic grasp of measuring whatsoever.
‘The scale and relative importance of ecosystem services to society at the local and global scales has yet to be fully determined.‘
Ie, we have absolutely no idea whatsoever.
‘There is also a lack of integrated measurement and accounting tools to evaluate the contribution of ecosystem services to national incomes. However, the European Environment Agency has suggested a ‘Common International Classification for Ecosystem Services’ (CICES) could be developed‘
More on CICES in a bit.
And finally - ‘Further work is also required to clarify the assumptions underlying valuation classification systems and to develop consistent definitions and a universally accepted ecosystem service typology‘
In other words, they do not have a clue.
Not a clue.
All of this is absolute quack science.
It’s a pious new-age religion, dressed up and pretending to be about the environment.
‘The levels of natural capital required to sustain benefits from ecosystem services within acceptable levels are yet to be determined‘
And to finish off - they don’t even understand the requirements for any - any - biodiversity equilibrium.
It’s all bullshit. Pardon my French. It’s bullshit, through and through.
Except that it isn’t
It’s attempted justification of horrors to come.
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On the question of Hypothetical Future Value, I bring you Enron.
Yes, really. The sort of accounting proposed is expressly what landed the executives of Enron in jail, though the sentences were far, far, far too lenient.
And on the topic of CICES -
That, too, is about ‘biodiversity in its broadest sense’. Ie, fraud.
Not that this will stop them from assigning value on your behalf to topics like the spiritual. Because, after all, to them you’re just another unit of biodiversity. Yes, we’ve finally reached the end station -
All animals are equal.
But some animals are more equal than others.
Thanks for your work on this Esc!