Metabolic Balance

The destructive nature of capitalism calls for comprehensive measures. In doing so, it is crucial not to pit environmental policy against social policy. The article proposes a building block for a post-capitalist economy that introduces an ecological unit of account (Ecu) based on planetary boundaries to systemically limit environmental destruction

To this end, the simulation displays emissions in relation to the 9 planetary boundaries, along with the corresponding shadow prices and the overall trend of the ECU. You can enter your own test data into the form to test the price function.

Summary The simulation shows that the pricing algorithm can use shadow prices to group several borders into a single unit. In doing so, several borders can be scaled down jointly to meet various targets. The key factor here is a reduction or limitation of the overall budget. The scenario in which the capacity of a single boundary is no longer fully utilised has not yet been taken into account. The algorithm needs to be adapted to address this. Open questions: How many price fluctuations are acceptable or desirable? What rate of reduction is appropriate to both protect the environment and prevent social upheaval? The source code is available on Github