It
is popular in the media to bandy about the concept of environmental
offsets as a partial remedy to the emission of global heating
greenhouse gases. The concept is fundamentally in error. It entails
half-truths that disregard the phenomenal absolute increase values of
pollution increases versus an ideal zero addition of pollutants
state.
Value
theory in economics tends to be abstract and shaped rather like a
math formula while real physics are deleted as a sort of externality.
Because economic business methods are the basic anthropocene era
driver of human acceleration of global heating and because government
is not at all competent at ecological economic theory defective
models for remediation tend to use standard economic evaluative
criteria. I will clarify that a little.
One
may balance solve an algebra formula or a credit-deficit report with
abstract numerical additions and subtractions where appropriate-hence
the idea of offsets arises to 'solve' the quantification issues of
greenhouse gas emissions and global heating scalar field issues.
Physics and the process of entropy is not like that. While it is
possible to quantify many cosmological parameters not all of the
processes are reversible. The increase of entropy global and
Universally is one such irreversible process.
Entropy
is the increase of disorganization. Entropy is the process of a high
energy state reaching the lowest possible energy state universally.
Boyle's law of the equal distribution of gas particles is an
illustration of entropy. If the world started with an overall energy
rating of 100, entropy decreases that rating overtime as if it were a
battery running down that cannot be recharged.
As
a practical matter, energy locked into the form of matter (remember
Einstein's formula noting the convertibility of energy and mass-
e=mc2) breaks down over time and becomes eventually dust and after
that, over eons of Universal time, nothing more than isolated
particles floating in space (although some theorize a black hole
destiny, Hawking said Black holes leak out energy given enough time,
yet with no place to go beside the black hole they ought to return to
the black hole. Even so that may not go on forever since gravity
costs energy and needs to be paid for with entropy increase. So what
is less organized than a black hole when gravity dies is beyond me. I
don't think that a black hole would have the sort of field imbalance
after gravity switched off that is hypothesized for starting the phase
changing big bang , hyper-inflation and stellar-synthesis producing
elements and life).
When
entropy is added to the world through industrialization, mining,
logging etc it cannot be reversed. Because of the extreme ratio of
energy to mass the conversion of mass into fabrications can go on for
quite some time without turning the planet into dust unless in the
fusion or peer planetary collision field) so there is no immediate
need to panic about the irreversible increasing entropy. Even so it
is the case that the ecosphere stasis has an irreversible track
itself because of time and complexity. It is ironic that the increase
of complexity in some manufactures such as automobiles and housing
have brought the destruction of natural products that required
billions of years of evolution-13.3 billion for production. Human
intellectual development at the front tends to be mass produced
religiously by billions of consumers. Unfortunately the avant guard
of human intellectualism tends historically to be like that of naïve
kids building fires in a dry barn filled with hay.
There
is a need for change in value theory encompassing rational
comprehension of the dissimilarity between the physics of the
ecosphere as well as the inert mass of the planet and solar system
and standard economic formulai. One cannot just offset the addition
of greenhouse gases on one side of an ideal global warming equation
by subtracting from another. The physics ecosphere equation is worse
than a Möbius band with more than one side with twists; it
misrepresents the physical relations of entropy and the phenomenal
changes; irreversible changes, of human misdirected evolution.
God
has a purpose for an evolving world and social reality that is as
predetermined as the law of entropy. Life locally grows against the
general trend of disorganization, as did the complex increase of
elements follow the nuclear fusion destruction of stars, while the
Universal quantity of energy remains the same. Only forms of energy
and mass ultimately change to the lowest, simplest state
possible-energy isn't ever destroyed, and neither are human souls.
Human
souls are accountable to God at the day of Judgment. In the meantime
physical forms of life are accountable to the laws of entropy and
human misdirected evolution. Human also has the capacity to direct
evolution in positive directions locally. Even so there is inevitably
a coefficient of entropy increasing. The clever thing is to maximize
the increase of life inclusive of the entire ecosphere while
minimizing the rate of entropy increase overall.