Socialism and communism have for their symbolic color, the color red. Environmentalism/ecologism/capitalism have for their symbolic color, the color green. None of these ideologies have yet addressed the concept of a mass balance economics.
Environmentalism is focused upon profiting from reducing resource extraction, ecologists, or "Greens" are closest to finding the essence of mass balance in the realm of economic theory but are tragically thwarted. The cooptation of the concept of "Green" by capital, a process familiar to most of us as "Greenwashing", i.e. one up ten down, speak no evil... necessitates the abstraction of a truly functional sustainability theory from the "Green" demesne. The color BLUE was chosen as it reflects the color of water, the planet's dominant mass transfer agent. In addition, blue is the color of most trace element fertilizers, the essence of a mass balance economy.
The principal of mass balance in economics expects to incorporate a mineral transfer system that maintains the potential of biotic resources, sustaining, primarily, the Southern Hemisphere's capacity to accumulate a modern civil form. Separating the energetic (green) economy from the mineral (blue) economy allows the maintenance of the conditions of production of capital (but not really). What really occurs is the perpetuation of human social forms to extract energy containing resources from the biosphere without reduction of biomass.
Lumber, food, sugar, medicines and many chemicals all come from living sources. Rarely are the mineral components that comprise these organisms the specific commodity. With the expanding practice of composting and the insistence upon exporting more finished goods and fewer raw materials, the mechanisms for implementing a global mass balance are evolving.
There are several strategies for mass balance accounting; it seems, however, that to some extent, increasing the level of specificity increases the complexity and difficulty. Complex and difficult systems do not work. The solution to this conundrum lies in the properties of life in general.
First, bulk phytomass tends to include a healthy composition of all necessary elements. Second, of these elements, only about five are difficult for living things to manage. The elements Boron, Sulfur, and Phosphorus are required by living things well above their native substrate concentrations. In any ecosystem these elements must be bioaccumulated to reach functional levels. This is also why it is important for us to manage them as assiduously as we manage energy economics. The elements Iron and Molybdenum typically occur in concentrations above what most living processes require them in.
Of these five elements the most highly concentrated is Boron which is typically concentrated 300 times above background levels. Sulfur is concentrated 100 times above background levels and phosphorus is required by macroscopic life concentrated 30 fold. If the material transfer of elements occurs through the exchange of compost against ecosystem extracts, a perpetuation of the reproduction of those resources can be attained. The basis of value of the transfer is grounded in the boron composition, which requires legitimization, by the presence of the elements sulfur and phosphorus, but without excessive levels of either iron or molybdenum.
In addition, compost, which contains unsafe levels of heavy metals or xenobiotics, must be retained for local use and cannot qualify as a mass balance agent. Mined elemental resources that can be formulated to match the typical element fingerprint of the region of exchange, in the form of trace element fertilizers can replace composts. It is essential, though, that these mined elements originate within the nation-state receiving the extracted product.
This process if implemented only during exchange across political boundaries eliminates the usurpation of life from one political entity by another. The reduction of planetary biological potential has reached the point where it impacts at the global level. Not only is the planetary erosion in the irreversible loss of species diversity, but also in adverse effects upon weather and climate. Since the impact of exchange is global its solution should also be.
In the age of computers this blue exchange can be managed over the Internet or a similar structure. The other option is through the publishing of a blue currency, though this could get confusing. In local systems, a blue currency could potentially work. With the use of the computer, higher levels of ecological rationality could be implemented as the system evolves at the international level.
What is immediately apparent with this system is that there is no withdrawal from technology. Instead, the direction of the current civil form is maintained, but without the need for regulatory or governmental restrictions, which only burden society with a superfluous expense (which at this time IS absolutely necessary and not really enough). The concept of species diversity is valorized by a Blue Economic when the purpose of mass balance is realized.
The capability of an ecosystem to assimilate mineral nutrients is a function of species diversity. Too little diversity and the minerals wind up eroding away. Too much applied nutrient and species diversity will be reduced along with a large portion of the application. Species diversity helps maintain the fecundity of a productive system.
To manage a monocrop system requires the application of superfluous mineral elements. In such a system, a catchment system such as a functioning wetland that can be harvested as raw biomass to retrieve lost minerals could render the system sustainable. The extant agricultural forms cannot hope to achieve sustainability simply as a consequence of the export of crops. The obnoxious level of nutrient erosion that occurs in any monocrop system even undermines cyclic mass balance systems incorporating post consumer composts.
The first thing in adopting a mass-balance economic form (Cebogatur) is learning something about mass transfer in an ecosystem; something discussed in the essay on ecology. The purpose of species diversity in an ecosystem is to optimize the retention of mineral nutrients, mainly the rare ones, through division of labor. Microorganisms participate in this mineral economy, but only with the mineral mass present. Microorganisms cannot create or destroy minerals, though they can take them out of circulation temporarily. The more important players in sustainability are the macroscopic species, us included.
We need to structure our material behavior to enable the biosphere to persist. Currently, our social form structures our material behavior to manifest our physical infrastructure, but has no concern for the implementation or maintenance of the biosphere's structure. In the past, this was not a concern. Today, our social imprint upon the biosphere is larger and more oppressive than it has ever been.
The traditional ideals of employing government to regulate the exploitative nature of our implementation institutions, otherwise known as economy and finance, result only in greater and greater levels of patriarchal dominance. This form of social throttling has tended to result in classism to an obnoxious extent with no real solutions, as the presence of crisis is what guarantees the regulating class its authority. Both Democracy and Socialism are examples of this crisis appeasing patriarchy.
In a world faced with a resource crisis, the management of that crisis cannot be exploited by a money intensive form, but instead requires a more dispersed and locally accountable operation. Blue economics, or Cebogatur accomplishes this dispersal of responsibility. Government remains to ensure that the institutional forms are followed. In fact, the ostensible purpose of democracy is only actualized by a form where the day to day activity remains in the hands of the people.
The fact remains that in a world where recycling of tangibles is already occurring, the recycling of the most important of intangibles, the potential to reproduce living things, must also be recycled. Nature has evolved over billions of years to recycle this potential. Our activities upon the planet have grossly undermined this natural process. It is our responsibility as members of the planet's biological community, to conform to the purposes of life.
In this endeavor, the advances of our institutional forms are necessary to realize what our role in the biotic community even is. We do not have an evolved sense of smell as most animals do, so our means of perceiving the communicative relations of nature are peripheral at best. Only through instrumentation and calculation can we obtain awareness. The institutionalization of our knowledge is now necessary to implement the sustainability of any anthropocentrically oriented social form. The institutionalization of this knowledge, for now, is the adoption of Cebogatur.