The 6th BioPhysical Economics Meeting
As important partner of CANUSSEE 2015 conference, BioPhysical Economics attended all plenaries and held a series of biophysical economics sessions during the conference period. The sessions topics include: Biophysical and Ecological Macroeconomics, The principles of Systems Science in Biophysical and Ecological Economics, Biophysical Economics- Systems Science, Biophysical Economics-Measurement, Biophysical Economics and Energy Return on Investment (EROI), Energy’s role in the economy, Modeling for Biophysical and Ecological Economics, Maximum Power and Atwood’s Machine. Sessions are attended by not only biophysical economics researchers, but also ecology researchers, economist, and others who are interested in this field. Distinguished researchers have presented their researches about BioPhysical Economics and all were followed by heated discussion. Interesting questions were being held all the time, and great ideas were bursting out all the time. Even coffee break time or lunch time are usually used by the lively discussion.
Of particular note was what should be called a “happening” that occurred on Saturday evening after the last formal presentation. The word “happening” -referred to a good event that was not planned, a musical event, a political rally or a party that occurred spontaneously when a group of people coalesced for no particular reason or for some other reason and the event just evolved. In our case some 20 or 25 people were left in the room where the last set of the day biophysical economics papers had been given. On the schedule was a meeting of the Ecological Economics group, and some of us were discussing whether we should go to that. One member of the group suggested that we have our own meeting, and those there quickly agreed. Charlie Hall served as moderator but the discussion was very fluid.
The first question was how people felt about meeting with Ecological Economics vs just ourselves. The straw vote was two for our own separate meeting and most of the remainder for continuing to meet with Ecological Economics. We think the general sense was that BioPhysical Economics should retain its own identity but retain ties to ecological economics. The second topic discussed was whether we should remain a disorganization (as we have been since our first meeting in Syracuse in 2008?? ) or should become a formalization. There was a sense that although we did not want to become too organized, with large dues and a lot of bureaucracy, that we it would be a good idea to become more organized than we were – to become something in between. The best name put forth was the “Association of BioPhysical Economists” and that is where it stands now. Other possibilities would be welcome. Further discussion ensued about how to generate the right kind of organization, and Jessica Lambert said she would look into it as she had experience.
This new structure required some formalization, and rather quickly we decided we needed a secretary. Ke Wang enthusiastically volunteered, and he was soon joined by Ram Poudel. The first assignment was to take the 60 or so new names we had written down on pieces of yellow lined paper and type them into a list serve. The second suggestion was to generate a web page, with definitions, official statements about who we were and so on. Again Ke Wang enthusiastically volunteered, but since he had relatively little experience with the finer points of making a web page, Harry William Fischer volunteered as well, and Jun Yan in China will help too. The next day Charlie provided an initial concept diagram which was modified by Jessica and others. The Diagram was then given to Ke and specific subsequent tasks were assigned by Jessica.
Anyway at the end of the hour long session BioPhysical Economics had been transformed from anon organization with an uncertain future to enough of an organization to have a good chance of surviving well into the future, with the enthusiastic support of many.