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I read the New York Times article linked above about three weeks ago, and it addresses environmental economics very poignantly. Because natural resources are "free", people often overlook their value. Nature provides many services that even the best man-made machines couldn't compete with. For example, it would cost us about fourteen trillion dollars per year to recreate all of the air-cleaning and water-purifying functions that rainforests offer at significantly less productivity levels. By this statistic alone the environment is invaluable, and yet the destruction of our planet continues.
Natural devastation is especially prevalent in poverty-ridden, economically unstable areas. Haiti certainly falls under this description. The coral reefs that surround the island are in awful shape because of overfishing, a direct result of terribly impoverished people trying to make an honest living. These people represent a portion of the 70% of people that are poorer than the bottom 5% of Americans. Their living standards are absolutely on par with those of people living in the early 1800s. To them, the environment has monetary value, but not in the sense of protecting it. They see it as a form of livelihood, as opposed to the functions it provides for society as a whole. In order to help people to see the economic worth of the environment it is necessary to equalize the living standards of people around the world.
A few scattered thoughts on your well-developed blog post:
ReplyDelete1.) Check out this link (let me know if you cannot access it) http://my.rochester.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp
2.) Richer is cleaner. As we become richer as a nation, we end up having a cleaner environment. This has been shown in the data.
3.) We can get cleanER air and cleanER water, NOT clean air and clean water. We want to ask what clean air and clean water means? We think at the margin in this instance. We can discuss this thought more in person or over email.
4.) Your last paragraph may indicate nicely why richer is cleaner.
5.) Are natural resources truly "free"? Maybe they are "free" to one group or person, but certainly NOT to society as a whole.
6.) Are there any cases in which man-made phenomena and machines can replace nature's natural processes? I have some thoughts on this we can discuss as well.