The transition to what Marx termed a new metabolism with nature means that the system of production must be one subject to conscious planning rather than just a self-organized response to market demand. Advocacy of conscious planning in kind has been a preoccupation of mine for almost forty years now and is most prominently expressed in Towards a New Socialism[1]. In this article, I will look at some of the computer engineering and computer algorithm problems that I had researched to provide the background to that book and how I have now returned to them to address the issue of environmental planning.