"Academic tunneling" - love the self conscious, meaningless jargon. that's abut all the circular economy discussion has produced.

Phil, why do you think the concept of academic tunneling is meaningless? Just like academic blindness, when willful it undermines paradigm evolution at la Thomas Kuhn and hence, the growth of knowledge, and it leads you towards ALTERNATIVE ACADEMIC FACTS.

Do you have a view on the question here Is the 2023 circular economy push PERFECT academic tunneling under SILENCE?.

If you think Yes, then why you think that way, if you think No, then why you think that way.

If you have no view on the answer, then that is fine, let's leave it here.

Dear Lucio

Very interesting what you say

"Keep in mind that the environmental market failure associated to the traditional market that go uncorrected by going circular economy MEANS now that under CIRCULAR ECONOMY THINKING we formally have a life under a PERMANENT MARKET FAILURE that is profitable for those polluting and for those cleaning after them"

At first view you are right, but other that preserving our resources for future generations, as is the definition of sustainability, the society has a gain that is a shadow price, since it does not have a market value, at least for our generation

I would define it as how much the actual generation is willing to pay to sustain future needs of its descendents

Lucio Muñoz

Academic tunneling is undefined jargon.

As I mentioned in previous discussions, "circular economy" is a fictional concept. If "academic tunneling" refers to excessive academic analysis expecting a fictional concept to obtain reality - it is meaningless to all but the academics engaged in Waiting for Godot. "Praying" is right - to the enviro god.

Academics know nothing of the reality and happily proceed with invalid/ unvalidated assumptions offering as Nolberto does the typical pompous, virtue signaling completely ignorant of the relevant reality.

Environmental marketing and sustainability are little to nothing more than marketing concepts.

Lucio Muñoz

My viewpoint and comments are based on reality - having been involved in solid waste policy for a major global consumer product company for decades and served two terms on the solid waste commission of a major US city.

Phil, what is academic tunneling to you? Are you familiar with the concept of COGNITIVE TUNNELING?

No Lucio. I am familiar with neither. Can you define, please?

I do not know in which previous discussion you have been Phil, but that was not with me as this is a new question and you were the first to comment, where I noticed you may not be familiar with the concept given your comment.

Academic tunneling is the tendency researchers have to leave out relevant aspects supporting or undermining their research especially when under stress or pressure to produce academic outputs. It could be an error or lack of attention or time or due to knowledge gap. When it is due to a paradigm shift knowledge gap it can be normal academic blindness.

Willful academic tunneling is the decision to bypass past and current research that contradicts or undermines the approach being promoted or implemented or proposed or repackaged. This one requires willful academic blindness.

When there is academic tunneling you do not see the normal academic discourse as silence is the norm when challenged as engaging in a normal academic argument without valid academic arguments IS LIKE GOING TO COURT ARMED WITH ALTERNATIVE ACADEMIC FACTS, you better stay out of court.

The reason I asked the question is because since 1987 Brundtland Commmission Report(WCED) science has been moving away from TRADITIONAL ECONOMIC THINKING as this thinking has led to the SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL market failures the WCED pointed out and documented, and then AT the UNCSD 2012 the world agreed to move away from traditional economic thinking and move towards green market, green growth and green economy thinking..... Yet, in 2023 LIKE nothing has happened researchers TRYING TO KEEP THE OLD POLLUTION PRODUCTION ECONOMY RUNNING, at local and international level, are systematically pushing and promoting THE PROBLEM IN SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL TERMS THAT THE WCED 1987 pointed out AS THE SOLUTION, BUT THIS TIME CIRCULAR TRADITIONAL ECONOMIC THINKING.

As they are now pushing CIRCULAR ECONOMY Thinking like WCED 1987/Our Common Future AND UNCSD 2012/The Future We Want NEVER TOOK PLACE, and without thinking that going circular economy means MAKING THE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY FAILURE/ ENVIRONMENTAL MARKET FAILURE EMBEDDED IN TRADITIONAL MARKET THINKING permanent. That is willful academic tunneling.

Do you have a view on the core question here Phil? Is the 2023 circular economy push PERFECT academic tunneling under SILENCE?

Respectfully yours;

Lucio

Dear Nolberto, thank you for taking the time to comment.

As you may get from reading my views, I look at the issue from outside the box, whether is traditional market thinking a la Adam Smith with circularity by assumption based on externality neutrality assumptions and therefore, using a distorted market pricing mechanism or whether is the current circular economy supposedly without the externality neutrality assumption but still operating with a distorted market pricing. Both markets are pollution production markets as a externality cost externalization takes place you can tend to produce at the lowest market price possible.

If prices are distorted now in social and/or environmental terms/current generation and if prices will be distorted in the future/future generations in social and/or environmental terms, this means that now and in the future society will bare the cost of cleaning up after the pollution produced by polluters in the production process and bare the cost of the pollution produced by those businesses now in the business of cleaning after polluters while polluting.

Nolberto, where do you see that SOCIAL GAIN /shadow price that you mentioned?

KEEP IN MIND, we know now formally since WCED 1987 that social and/or environmental costs associated with production ARE REAL and because the traditional market model assumed then away since 1776 we got now the current social and/or environmental sustainability problems we have been trying to solve away from traditional market thinking since 1987,

Lucio Muñoz

Believe we've discussed (dwarf) green and circular marketing in the past.

Thanks for the clarification. I do not understand that any "science is moving away from traditional economic thinking". I'm unable to participate as I deal in the reality of what is possible. I was vaguely aware of the UN report and note it had no recognition in my industry.

Thanks for sharing your well-thought ideas.

I have tried to understand the economic and ecosystemic dimensions of circularity in material+energetic flow.

Even the technically near-perfect circularity does not benefit ecosystem if the total (overall) flow of matter and energy in the economic circuits are not contained.

For circularity to function as positive factor for ecosystem integrity there must be a constant strive for the progressive reduction of the volume of all circulating matter and energy items.

Dipak, good day, Green market circularity would reduce the circulating matter when taking, making and reusing as it would reflect the environmental cost associated with market activity as green markets are environmental pollution reduction markets where pollution reduction is a profit making opportunity as that would allow green producers to tend to produce at the lowest green market price possible.

The circular traditional economy and the linear or broken circularity traditional economy of Adam Smith by assumption are both environmental pollution production markets, which as externality cost externalization takes place they are able to produce at the lowest economic cost possible.

However, the world avoided the shift from perfect traditional market thinking to perfect green market thinking since UNCSD 2012/Rio -20/The Future We Want as you may know, and they went the way of dwarf green markets a la environmental externality management markets;

And now 2023 out of no where, the problem documented by WCED 1987/Our Common Future, distorted traditional market prices and their embedded social and/or environmental market failures driving social and/environmental problems, is being sold as the solution by just making it CIRCULAR,,,, A SHIFT FROM LINEAR ENVIRONMEMNTAL POLLUTION PRODUCTION THINKING to CIRCULAR ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION PRODUCTION THINKKING, with no link to transitioning to environmentally clean markets one day as now the social and/or environmental market failure is MADE permanent.

Thank you for commenting

Respectfully yours

Lucio

Dear Lucio

Thank you for your answer, and accept my apology for not answering your begfore; I thought I have done it. Here is my answer.

I am not an economist, therefore, aspects on what you argue may be unknown to me. However, you use the expression ‘neutral assumption’, which for me signals which is the purpose of circular economy. Your ideas outside the box are valuable, since they may treat a different approach. By the way, I have done and do the same in several opportunities, and the use of shadow pieces is one of them.

Your third paragraph accurately defines the situation I am referring to.

I am an engineer with field experience in large projects, and that happens to be working in Operation Research, in energy and environment issues for decades. My first book on these last issues was published in 2003.

It is not a secret that most countries ignore the cost of externalities, like depletion of natural resources, or wrecking good agricultural land by building landfills under the pretext that they do not have a market value. In other words, we are putting our dust under the carpet.

The silent effect of these costs is conveniently ignored, because they decrease the GDP (Do you remember the Chinese experience of about a decade ago, when they tried to incorporate this cost in the GDP?

It was so devastating that they cancelled de issue, and decide to ignore it.

Applying circular economy, and thus, reducing depletion of natural resources and valuable land, is basic for our descendants.

I suggest reading, if you have not done it yet, that open-eyed document “Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future”, written e i 1985, and when circular economy was a sentence not invented yet but strongly hinted.

When I solved a MCDM situation on any subject, the shadow-prices always appear. That shadow price, as you probably know, indicates the limit a society or an individual is willing to pay to get an additional unit of a scarce resource.

When I say that it is gain, yes, it is, but not from the present-day society, but for the future. In other words, they may express how much we need to increase our costs to save those resources for future generations. Fortunately, in different areas it already started decades ago.

Take for instance the case when our refrigeration equipment used Freon-12 a highly contaminant halogen that produced the Ozon Layer Hole, high in the atmosphere. Nobody considered the cost of this externality, until the environmentalists, those precursors of the circular economy, alerted about it, provoking extense and costly research to find substitutes, as we have today. It has a cost, but a gain for future generations.

When we recycle paper, iron, plastic, glass, tires, metals, waste cooking oils, waste water, even waste food, as is done in some countries, when used as a fuel, we are doing circular economy. We are assuming the higher cost, as we must

I hope this explanation will satisfy your legitimate question

Norberto, thank you for replying. As traditional markets, circular or not, tend to maximize social and environment cost externalization to be able to produce at the lowest cost possible to maximize profits, the harm being accumulated as economies grow will leave future generation worse off specially if the gap between actual cost.and assigned cost is maximized. Both the traditional economy of Adam Smith and the circular economy thinking of today are pollution production markets as market prices reflect only economic costs plus profit margins.

Thank you for commenting!

Respectfully yours;

Lucio

It should have said "lowest cost possible " to maximize profits and " economic costs plus profit margin".

I will correct it when I get home as my phone does not allow me edit.

Lucio

Excellent, concise and unfortunatelly true your comment.

I have to agree with you.

But what do we have to do?

Phil, good day. Does your industry adheres to the sustainable development goals, any of the 12? If yes, WCED 1987 COVERS your industry. Remember, academic blindness can be normal if because normal academic tunneling key aspects we should consider are left out, specially if there are paradigm shift knowledge gaps. But for example, academics at the UN pushing for CIRCULAR ECONOMIC thinking knowing that DOING that or SHOULD know that doing that means going back to square one to 1987, from linear pollution production market back to circular pollution production market.

Those academics/professionals can only push circular thinking as the solution of problems generated by linear thinking or circular by Adam Smith's neutrality assumptions thinking by USING ACADEMIC TUNELLING in silence as CIRCULAR ECONOMIC THINKING just as linear economic thinking IS NOT EXTERNALITY FRIENDLY, be it social and/or environmental externality, the reason why the WCED 1987 came out with SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT THINKING in the first place and leave traditional economic thinking behind.

But in 2023 the old pollution based economy of Adam Smith is back, but rebranded as circular, something that sounds good until you realized that going circular means that the market failure, social and/or environmental, under which linearity operates is now PERMANENT under circularity.

Let's leave here then Phil, your industry falls outside the sustainable development goals.

Respectfully yours;

Lucio