NEWS RELEASE                                   JULY 2009

New Metric Will Impact Environmental, Energy and Health Decisions

Quality Enhanced Life Days (QELD) would seem to have little to do with greenhouse gas decisions, but it actually will be a tool for much more rational decision-making relative to environmental, energy, health, and, in fact, every political decision.

Bob McIlvaine of the McIlvaine Company explains that QELD is just a label for a tool that human beings intuitively use to make any choice.  Every decision ultimately is made to improve some combination of life quantity and quality either for the individual or for his children or for others.

The health industry has long used a term called Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY).  The problem is that an inmate of a jail could have a full QALY.  Very few individuals would elect to live 95 years without leaving their property.  They would rather live 80 years and endure the risk of communicable disease and traffic accidents.  This life enhancement value of quality over quantity becomes the basis for QELD.

Every decision ultimately can be measured in QELD.  Arming the tankers passing Somalia could result in an oil spill.  The impact of life quality reduction for people affected by the spill can be compared to the avoidance of life quality reduction for hostages.

Global warming can result in disease, starvation, and dislocation. Each of these can be quantified based on QELD. Even species reduction can be measured in QELD. People would perceive that the loss of the polar bear was more important than the loss of a parasitic mosquito species.  Saving the life of a dog is more important than saving a cow. This difference can be measured in QELD because it is the impact on people which is significant in the decision making.

All factors can be normalized. Here are some examples:

Category                                            QELD per ton

Mercury in air                                           1 million

SO₂                                                                  10

Nitrogen in water                                             10

Methane                                                          2.3

CO₂                                                                                     0.1

Water depletion in deficit area                        0.001

Landfill depletion U.S.                                   0.0001

Small amounts of mercury in the environment can cause large reductions in life quantity and quality. On the other hand one extra ton of waste in an environmentally safe landfill is not likely to have a significant life quality impact.

This new tool has been incorporated into the Sustainability Universal Rating System.  More information on this system is found at: http://www.mcilvainecompany.com/SURS/subscriber/Default.htm