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TODAY Thursday 29 May 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Thursday 29 May 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Quantification
The confusion of quantity and quality, said E.F. Schumacher, is the great heresy of our times. A mania for calculation gets in the way of our ability to assess real worth. The best of life lies outside the grid.
To many environmentalists, the core of ecology implies a rejection of the necessary reductionism of numbers. To an ecosystem, as to an ecologist, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. A big part of environmentalism consists of people who are attracted to the movement precisely because it is based in ethics and morality that resist quantification. Sometimes this passion for "values" can seem silly or hypocritical, as when trust fund children organize conferences that decry materialism. But sometimes the environmentalist insistence on pursuing a course of action simply because it's the right thing to do is attractive and persuasive and, therefore, the source of practical political power. Freeman Dyson recently wrote that the essentially ethical character of environmentalism was what made it the only viable ideological counterweight to the reign of the global market.
When environmental hazards present a threat to human health, the polls reveal, the American public does not want to hear arguments about cost/benefit ratios. As industry lobbyists have learned over recent years -- and as is evident in the current dustup over new rules for the Clean Air Act -- fighting environmental health regulations on the grounds that they place disproportionate financial burdens on corporations doesn't much cut it as a public relations strategy. People want government to safeguard family health and that's that.
But on environmental issues that can't be cast as a question of human health, surveys and focus groups demonstrate a strong popular tendency to favor a "balanced" approach to meeting the competing claims of economic development and environmental protection. And it is demonstrable that people will strike a balance closer to the environmentalist point of view when that point of view is accompanied by muscular language that talks of hardheaded, quantifiable economic benefit.
In that context, the emergence of an economic category called "ecosystem services" is important and welcome. Ecosystem services are comprised of two kinds of economic value. First is the value to humans -- actual and potential -- of goods that are sustainably produced from within the ecosystem: the value of wild plants as sources of food seeds and pharmaceuticals, for example. Second is the value of goods and services that would have to be purchased if the ecosystem were not there. If you get rid of a floodplain, for example, you should calculate the ensuing costs of building dams and levees. If you drain a wetland or contaminate an aquifer, you should calculate the costs of the water-treatment facilities you're going to have to build.
These two lines of analysis can run far, from climate to recreation to raw materials to genetic vigor. In a landmark study recently published in the journal Nature, an international team headed by Robert Costanza of the University of Maryland attempted to put a price tag on the aggregate value of ecosystem services. Everyone on Costanza's team agrees that any figure is a rough estimate at best, but they also agreed that a median-guess figure of $33 trillion is eminently defensible and probably low. When you compare that figure with the $18 trillion annual gross national products of all the countries of the world, you get some idea of both the dimensions of the analysis and the worth of our natural inheritance.
I'm glad for the environmentalists who regard nature as something too precious for ultimately abstract and empty calculations. Nothing changes inside many heads and hearts if ecosystem services are worth $5 trillion or $500 trillion. But let's salute the emergence of ecosystem services as a category in a category-crazed world, and let's thank Dr. Costanza and colleagues for meeting our culture and our people on their own terms. More on this subject next week.
TODAY ON THE SITE
New readers might want to learn about our Archives. Though we're little more than a month old, we've already cached a goodly number of interesting articles that you can access from the bottom of the pages of our current features. There are Op-Eds by Bill McKibben and Terry Tempest Williams, Capitol Hill Spy stories by Hibernicus and Marty Strange, and a Work-in-Progress by J Baldwin. Not quite gone, certainly not forgotten.
5/28: Over the Top
5/27: Solar Hippies
5/23: Spiffy Cars, Clunker Bikes
5/22: Petroleum Heresy
5/21: We Irish
5/20: Shallow Backpackers
5/19: Songbirds
5/16: Fat, Fat, Fat
5/15: Our Forthright Administration
5/14: Coral Reefs of the Sahara
5/13: (Life Before) Death and Taxes
5/12: Kids
5/09: Free Trade and Hormones
5/08: Sherry Boehlert, Republican
5/07: Fort Davis, West Texas
5/06: Europe (yawn)
5/05: Divorce, Mothers, Equality
5/02: Killer Grannies and the Highway Bill
5/01: China
4/30: Pity the Mangrove
4/29: Grizzlies off Battery Park
4/28: Mighty Monsanto
4/25: Growth
4/24: Refrigerator Wars
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway