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not steeped in the technical ins and outs of ecologically responsible evaluations,
some may hesitate to embrace an additional process that seems to demand:
1. Extra expense.
2. A faith in a set of detailed and qualified facts and study conclusions expressed
in scientific terms.
3. Willingness to expand focus and attention beyond a single ecologically important impact category such as global warming.
4. A willingness at the end of it all to accept a level of uncertainty that decisions
will actually yield ecologically superior decisions across multiple impact
categories.
5. Acceptance that LCA focusses primarily on environmental impacts and does
not take other important considerations such as cost and societal impacts into
consideration.
6. Cannot effect an order of magnitude change through available options.
7. That there may be no truly “good” decisions and “less bad” ones will only delay
the inevitable.
8. Acceptance of results that are not comparable with any other study document
of a similar product system.
9. Faith in imperfect models that are abstract and that cannot fully capture reality.
10. Comfort with nonintuitive, nonvisual, data-driven processes to provide insight.
These are all legitimate concerns that, if ignored, will hamper efforts to expand the
use of LCA and the design tools that it supports. New tools used to integrate LCA
data into the design process can mitigate some of the concerns but until there is a
fully automated and seamless interface, challenges to broad acceptance will continue to persist. Yale University’s Phillip Bernstein predicts that as workflows shift
to more cloud-based integrated data-centric models with a constellation of tools
accessing a common data feed, a greater number of firms will be able to directly
integrate LCA into architectural projects (Cays 2017).
6.3.1 The Attributional LCA Time Scale
Life cycle assessment provides foundational information leading to better predictions within a clearly defined time horizon and potential impacts within that temporal window. While nearly impossible to directly compare and evaluate all aggregate
risks associated with industrial product environmental impacts, it is possible to at
least see and compare two or more options in a study before deciding on which of
them to choose. Two different but legitimate approaches are available but serve different purposes. The ILCD handbook states that:
The attributional LCI model describes its actual or forecasted specific or average supply
chain plus its use and end-of-life value chain, all embedded into a static technosphere.
6 Addressing Resistance to a Fact-Based Approach
not steeped in the technical ins and outs of ecologically responsible evaluations,
some may hesitate to embrace an additional process that seems to demand:
1. Extra expense.
2. A faith in a set of detailed and qualified facts and study conclusions expressed
in scientific terms.
3. Willingness to expand focus and attention beyond a single ecologically important impact category such as global warming.
4. A willingness at the end of it all to accept a level of uncertainty that decisions
will actually yield ecologically superior decisions across multiple impact
categories.
5. Acceptance that LCA focusses primarily on environmental impacts and does
not take other important considerations such as cost and societal impacts into
consideration.
6. Cannot effect an order of magnitude change through available options.
7. That there may be no truly “good” decisions and “less bad” ones will only delay
the inevitable.
8. Acceptance of results that are not comparable with any other study document
of a similar product system.
9. Faith in imperfect models that are abstract and that cannot fully capture reality.
10. Comfort with nonintuitive, nonvisual, data-driven processes to provide insight.
These are all legitimate concerns that, if ignored, will hamper efforts to expand the
use of LCA and the design tools that it supports. New tools used to integrate LCA
data into the design process can mitigate some of the concerns but until there is a
fully automated and seamless interface, challenges to broad acceptance will continue to persist. Yale University’s Phillip Bernstein predicts that as workflows shift
to more cloud-based integrated data-centric models with a constellation of tools
accessing a common data feed, a greater number of firms will be able to directly
integrate LCA into architectural projects (Cays 2017).
6.3.1 The Attributional LCA Time Scale
Life cycle assessment provides foundational information leading to better predictions within a clearly defined time horizon and potential impacts within that temporal window. While nearly impossible to directly compare and evaluate all aggregate
risks associated with industrial product environmental impacts, it is possible to at
least see and compare two or more options in a study before deciding on which of
them to choose. Two different but legitimate approaches are available but serve different purposes. The ILCD handbook states that:
The attributional LCI model describes its actual or forecasted specific or average supply
chain plus its use and end-of-life value chain, all embedded into a static technosphere.
6 Addressing Resistance to a Fact-Based Approach