THE CRITICAL RELEVANCY OF THERMOECONOMIC THINKING

Orthodox Economic theory Dismisses Scarcity and Environmental Damage either as “externalities” or as issues that can be overcome by Technological Advance. We live in a finite world that is undergoing enormous environmental stress. Continued growth at a scale experienced by the USA during the last 120 years is simply impossible with populations such as those of China and India. THERE ARE LIMITS TO CONTINUOUS GROWTH.

THERMOECONOMICS IS THE NAME GIVEN TO A TYPE OF HETERODOX ECONOMIC THEORY THAT ATTEMPTS TO EXPLICITLY APPLY THE PRINCIPLES OF THERMODYNAMICS TO ECONOMICS. The term "thermoeconomics" was coined in 1962 by American engineer Myron Tribus, and developed by the statistician and economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. Thermoeconomics can be thought of as the statistical physics of economic value. Thermoeconomics is based on the proposition that the role of energy in biological evolution should be defined and understood through the second law of thermodynamics but in terms of such economic criteria as productivity, efficiency, and especially the costs and benefits (or profitability) of the various mechanisms for capturing and utilizing available energy to build biomass and do work. AS A RESULT, THERMOECONOMICS ARE OFTEN DISCUSSED IN THE FIELD OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS, WHICH ITSELF IS RELATED TO THE FIELDS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

In Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt (George Allen & Unwin 1926), Frederick Soddy turned his attention to the role of energy in economic systems. He criticized the focus on monetary flows in economics, arguing that real wealth was derived from the use of energy to transform materials into physical goods and services. Soddy's economic writings were largely ignored in his time, but would later be applied to the development of bioeconomics and ecological economics in the late 20th century.

Thermoeconomists claim that human economic systems can be modeled as thermodynamic systems. Then, based on this premise, they attempt to develop theoretical economic analogs of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. In addition, the thermodynamic quantity exergy, i.e. measure of the useful work energy of a system, is the most important measure of value. In thermodynamics, thermal systems exchange heat, work, and or mass with their surroundings; in this direction, relations between the energy associated with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services can be determined.

Thermoeconomists argue that economic systems always involve matter, energy, entropy, and information. Moreover, the aim of many economic activities is to achieve a certain structure. In this manner, thermoeconomics attempts to apply the theories in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, in which structure formations called dissipative structures form, and information theory, in which information entropy is a central construct, to the modeling of economic activities in which the natural flows of energy and materials function to create scarce resources. In thermodynamic terminology, human economic activity may be described as a Dissipative system, which flourishes by transforming and exchanging resources, goods, and services. These processes involve complex networks of flows of energy and materials.

Scientists have speculated on different aspects of energy accounting for some time as to how it might relate to alternatives in social systems. Many variations of energy accounting are in use now, as this issue relates to current (price system) economics directly, as well as projected models in possible Non-market economics systems.

Exergy analysis is performed in the field of industrial ecology to use energy more efficiently. The term exergy, was coined by Zoran Rant in 1956, but the concept was developed by J. Willard Gibbs. In recent decades, utilization of exergy has spread outside of physics and engineering to the fields of industrial ecology, ecological economics, systems ecology, and energetics.

Current Economic Theory MUST recognize that is built on top of a Natural System that is the Real Source of All Wealth. Money_by Itself_is only "valuable" in the Sustainable Sense, if it has a Resource Base to obtain its Energy and its Natural Inputs.

Reference: Futurenamics