On the Inadequacy of "IPAT"
This article was previously published at Deep Transformation Network. Image in public domain.
If you don’t know what IPAT is about, you may want to first read this article: A Brief History of "IPAT" (Impact= Population x Affluence x Technology) - MAHB (stanford.edu)
The IPAT formula has had its day. But those days are well behind us.
There are undoubtedly many weaknesses in IPAT, but the chief one which comes to mind for me is that it has no place in its formula for the matter of economic externalities (a topic which I have written about here: The Externalizing Machine. IPAT evaluated ecological and environmental 'impacts' (harms) in proportion to Population, Affluence and Technology, but did so in such a way which took a historical snapshot of affluence and technology in 1970, the year in which IPAT was first formulated. Â It froze conditions of Technology in relation to Affluence in historical time: 1970. But economic externalities are the most fundamental feature determining what kinds of Technologies a society would employ in its economy, and thus how Affluence would manifest itself in the Population, and therefore the aggregate of Impacts (harms).
Likely, the reason IPAT has no place within its structure for a consideration of negative economic externalities is that the dominant cultural ideology has long told us that these are both necessary and inevitable, and cannot be remedied by design or by government policies. That they essentially "cannot" be remedied by government policy has largely proven true politically, but that hardly makes it true as a matter of design -- by which I mean that it is technically feasible to meet all of a Population's legitimate material needs at a vastly reduced Impact (harms) -- but that would not be as profitable for businesses, corporations and billionaires. So the design of all things is driven by profit as a motivation, rather than harm reduction.
The IPAT formula contributes to obscuring all of this. It's time we fully move on to other ways of defining the what, why and how of Impacts (harms), ones which do not tend to obscure fully unnecessary and avoidable economic externalities from the equation.Â
Just to be clear, I am not allowing for a simple equation of Impacts (harms) with economic externalities here. That's because it is implicit in the very notion of economic externalities that what has been externalized could be internalized (returned to the space within the bounds of the economy, made to exist as the paid cost of doing business). Yes, historically, most "Impacts" have been externalized -- because that was simply convenient to Business. And it was convenient to Business that the Population tended to perceive the commons as a dumping ground for wastes and an extraction site for 'resources'.Â
Reading this now many days later, I realized I did not make my thinking especially clear in this brief article. And part of the reason for this is that my thinking here was not fully developed--more incipient than developed.
Then, and now, I had/have a problem with the very notion of affluence as some sort of simple calculation ... and technology as something readily quantified or characterized. That is, I'm looking at these two from within an eco-cultural ethos. I'm capable of looking at these the way an economist or a systems scientist without such an ethos would understand these. But there is an ethic, an ethics, in my lens on these topics. I'm trying here to reveal a perspective in which technology is not a set and established entity -- and nor is affluence. And these two are bound together complexly, as concepts.
Affluence is related to prosperity, as a concept. And it is my view is that the 'normal' way of thinking of economists and systems scientists not working within an eco-cultural ethical framework (ethos) appears highly distorted to those attempting to make sense from within such an ethos.
Even the idea of wealth looks very differently from within an informed eco-cultural ethos. You see, there's nothing at all wrong or errant about pursuing genuine prosperity and wealth within nature's own pattern. It's a good thing! And once we understand this in our hearts, so to speak, the mechanical and formulaic calculations are seen in a very different light. From the perspective of the eco-cultural ethos I speak from within, negative externalities are a violation of sound sense so severe, so totally irrational, that knowing this must be the light in which we look at the IPAT formula. The IPAT formula lacks an ethos at its heart, because it really doesn't understand either affluence or technology. It reduces these to simple conceptual objects. They are not.
I've never liked IPAT because I didn't see the point of naming affluence and technology as factors in per capita impact. It seems to me it IS appropriate to say that the impact of humanity and the economy is population X per capita impact--and per capita impact is influenced by affluence level and technology, among other things. The other problem is that you can come up with an average per capita impact but it varies greatly, with some having thousands of times the impact of others.
On externalizing, I think it's wrong that internalizing costs would reduce the profitability of business. I think in most or maybe all cases it would completely eliminate any profit. Wasn't there a study that said so?