Next Steps

Abstract

The dynamic accounting framework presented in previous chapters naturally gives rise to a set of next steps necessary to expand systems of national accounts to encompass material and energy flows within our economies and exchanges with the biosphere. This final chapter briefly summarizes the book and highlights the need for additional data on both inter-sector flows and accumulation of manufactured capital and its embodied energy. We continue with a call to action, a list of several tasks that should be undertaken to modify national accounting. Finally, we note that moving forward on these issues will be politically difficult, but necessary, to adapt to the age of resource depletion.

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.[1,p. ix]

—Milton Friedman