Professor Andrew Balmford (90 Nobel-Laureate, University of Cambridge) and numerous colleagues re the cost of the loss of wild nature (2002): “On the eve of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it is timely to assess progress over the 10 years since its predecessor in Rio de Janeiro. Loss and degradation of remaining natural habitats has continued largely unabated. However, evidence has been accumulating that such systems generate marked economic benefits, which the available data suggest exceed those obtained from continued habitat conversion. We estimate that the overall benefit:cost ratio of an effective global program for the conservation of remaining wild nature is at least 100:1… In 1997, Costanza et al. published a synthesis (3) of over 100 attempts to value ecosystem goods and services using a range of techniques including hedonic pricing, contingent valuation and replacement cost methods (4). Using case studies to derive average values per hectare for each of
17 services across 16 biomes and then extrapolating to the globe by multiplying by each biome’s area, the Costanza team estimated the aggregated annual value of nature’s services (updated to 2000 US $) to lie in the range $18 – 61 trillion (1012), around a rough average of ~$38 trillion. These figures are of similar size to global Gross National Product (GNP), but have been criticised by some in the economic community… In advocating greatly increased funding for the maintenance of natural ecosystems, we are not arguing against development. Given forecast increases in the human population of over three billion by 2050 (38) and the fact that some 1.2 billion people still live on less than a dollar a day (39), development is clearly essential. However, current development trajectories are self-evidently not delivering human benefits in the way that they should: income disparity worldwide is increasing and most countries are not on track to meet the United Nation’s goals for human development and poverty eradication by 2015 (39). Our findings show one compelling reason why this is the case – our relentless conversion and degradation of remaining natural habitats is eroding overall human welfare for short-term private gain. In these circumstances, retaining as much as possible of what remains of wild nature through a judicious combination of sustainable use, conservation, and, where necessary, compensation for resulting opportunity costs (as called for at Rio [40]) makes overwhelming economic as well as moral sense” (Andrew Balmford, Aaron Bruner, Philip Cooper, Robert Costanza, Stephen Farber, Rhys E. Green, Martin Jenkins, Paul Jefferiss, Valma Jessamy, Joah Madden, Kat Munro, Norman Myers, Shahid Naeem, Jouni Paavola, Matthew Rayment, Sergio Rosendo, Joan Roughgarden, Kate Trumper, R. Kerry Turner , “Economic reasons for conserving wild nature”, Science, Vol 297, Issue 5583, 9 August 2002: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/297/5583/950 ).
[Editor: We must not destroy what we cannot replace. Individual species and ecosystems are priceless although speciescidal and ecocidal One Percenters can measure how they value them in terms of personal profit from their destruction. Wild nature has evolved over the last circa 1 million years in a context of atmospheric CO2 concentrations ranging from about 180 ppm CO2 (in successive, circa 100,000-year recurrent periods of glaciation) to a maximum of about 300 ppm CO2 (interglacial periods). The atmospheric CO2 concentration is now 405 ppm CO2 and increasing at 3 ppm CO2 per year. The species extinction rate is now 100-1,000 times greater than normal, this giving rise to the term Anthropocene to describe the present era and the speciescide and ecocide, leading to omnicide and terracide. By way of example, coral reefs are hugely important ocean ecosystems, they started bleaching worldwide when the atmospheric CO2 reached 320 ppm CO2, are endangered at the current 405 ppm CO2 and are essentially doomed in 15 years’ time at the 450 ppm CO2 predicted from the current increase at 3 ppm CO2 per year. Assuming a damage-related Carbon Price in USD of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent (Dr Chris Hope, 90-Nobel-Laureate University of Cambridge), the World has a Carbon Debt of $360 trillion that is increasing at $13 trillion per year, and, for example, Australia, a world-leader in annual per capita greenhouse (GHG) gas pollution, has a Carbon Debt of $7.5 trillion that is increasing at $400 billion per year and at $40,000 per head per year for under-30 year old Australians (see “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/ .
It is now too late to avoid a catastrophic plus 2 degrees Centigrade (2C) temperature rise (see “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed and "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming ) . Further, the Carbon Debt we are passing on to future generations is inescapable – thus, for example, coastal cities will drown if sea walls are not built. However an Annual Wealth Tax applied selectively to the rich will help meet this Carbon Debt and also serve as a retrospective Carbon Tax on wealth generated in a Carbon Economy (see (see Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm and “1% ON 1%: one percent annual wealth tax on One Percenters”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/1-on-1 ].
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