Economics and Environment

Constanza:
      Constanza looked into the value of ecosystems, and how ecosystem functions are a natural capital source.  The article examined how people attempt to place values on nature and ecosystems, mostly by solely seeing them as categories of services and supply and demand curves.  The given estimate was $33 trillion.  However, this estimate does not consider how much nature plays a role in our lives beyond the economic value.  Ecosystems deserve to exist independent of human need or want, and they deserve the respect and care that every organism also needs.  Humans are not the sole inhabitants of this planet, and the sooner we realize this, the easier life will be.  When other life forms are allowed to live and exist in harmony and symbiosis with us, our own life will improve.

Wackernagel:
     Wackernagel discussed how much humans depend on nature.  The major focus of this article was on the ecological footprint of populations, specifically the national footprint.  In some cases, most notably in the U.S., the national footprint exceeds what is available for this nation.  This excessive use of resources and excess in waste production forces other nations to compensate for this usage.

Daly (whole book):
     Daly's book was neck-deep in economic jargon, making it difficult for me to wade through.  The beginning and ending arguments (the flow from North -> South, and the influence of religion) were easier for me to grasp, in contrast to the formulas and theories presented in the middle of the book.  The economic flow from North to South has been documented across different disciplines with different interested parties taking note of different angles of this flow.  For the purposes of this book, Daly focused on how this economic flow puts the South at an extreme disadvantage.

Daly also discussed how the economy interacts with the ecosystem, and how models focus more on either the economy or the ecosystem and usually not on both equally.  Daly discussed the pre-analytic vision of the economy as a subsystem of the ecosystem.  Nature really doesn't care too much if, through a hurricane for example, it destroys the economic center of a country (such as what happened in Belize for years until they moved the capitol city inland).  Another example of the economy being a subsystem of the ecosystem is that the economy is often shaped by resources, such as oil/natural gas/coal, that are natural products of the earth.  Again, nature does not depend on economics, but economics on the ecosystem.

In terms of ethicosocial limits, he outlined four different options: (1) desirability of growth, financed by geological capital, is limited by the cost to future generations, (2) desirability of growth, financed by the takeover of habitats, is limited by extinction or restriction of species, (3) desirability of growth is limited by self-canceling effects on welfare, (4) desirability of growth is limited by corrosive effects on moral standards.

The GNP (gross national product) is a distorted measure based on the value of some services + the value of throughput + the value of change in accumulated stocks and funds.  This is not a good test of overall wealth, but it is what has been used to measure this, via economics, for years.

The Plimsoll Line is the absolute optimal scale of a load, or a load that does not result in a sinking ecosystem.  This is built on allocation, distribution and scale.  Scale refers to the size of the economy relative to the ecosystem.  Welfare is the service of want satisfaction.  Often nations do not realize that their natural capital, or ability to satisfy population welfare, is based on a source that is taken for granted.  This allows some nations to prosper and others to fall into the debt of other nations.  However, nations need to realize that the natural capital comes in both renewable and non-renewable resources.

Finally, the book discusses family planning and religion in relation to environmental challenges.  Population pressures weigh on natural resources, reducing what might already be a limited source.  In addition, religion could help environmental causes, since their sources often insist that God has credited them with sustaining and maintaining the environment.