Real profit is rare. Here is why

How long did it take Earth to create fossil fuels? 

What was the cost in time and energy? The millions of years of decay, pressure, breakdown. If we humans were to artificially reproduce this cycle, what would it cost us today?

What are all the actions that we humans had to create to find, extract, transport, refine and use all the variations of fossil fuels?

What does it cost for us to do all of this?

Finally, what does it cost to manage the post-use of all the fossil fuel products?

Plastics breakdown, increased CO2 in the atmosphere, the pollution from creating the products?

Apply this all-in-accounting metric to almost everything in our consumer society, and we might begin to understand that it is actually money stolen from the past and future.

Real profit, which happens after the all-in-accounting has been considered, is rare.

All-in-accounting insists that we account for the entirety of the supply chain and do not consider the gifts of Earth and nature free. We are learning fast that they are not and never have been.

Great financial fortune has been made by extracting from Earth, off the backs of humans and animals, considering these aspects to be free or nearly free. Neglecting the cost in the externalities, such as the after-tax of our actions. The downriver pollution, the air and water contamination, and addictions to our products and services.

In our considering Earth and nature as free to take from we have increased our ability to objectify Earth and nature. To forget that we are Nature. And Earth is our home.

The bill for our lack of all-in-accounting is coming due. Many of us can feel this happening. It is unlikely to be paid by those who profited the most. 

If we want a world with a future we need a new accounting model. One that takes everything into consideration, starting with the whole.

It sounds difficult, almost impossible. It comes at a cost. Including the cost of great financial gain for the few off the backs of the many.

In restoring all-in-accounting, we create true profit and wealth for Earth and all her creatures.

How to do this is one of the many models we explore at the Syntropic Enterprise Masterclass.

February 20th 2020

Photo taken February 20th, 2020