Earth, Inc. Sliding Into Bankruptcy

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/30/1544/

Earth, Inc. Sliding Into Bankruptcy
by Stephen Leahy

Build a shrimp farm in Thailand by cutting down mangrove forests and you will net about 8,000 dollars per hectare. Meanwhile, the destruction of the forest and pollution from the farm will result in a loss of ecosystems worth 35,000 dollars/ha per year. Many leading development institutions and policy-makers still fail to understand that this ruthless exploitation for short-term profits could trigger an Enron-like collapse of “Earth, Inc.”, experts say.

For example, the World Bank and other economic development agencies would happily loan a shrimp farmer 100,000 dollars to clear more mangroves.

All economies depend on the natural capital lying within nature’s lands, waters, forests, and reefs, but humans have often treated them as if they had little value or were inexhaustible.

“Up till now, humans have been exploiting natural capital to maximize production of food, timber, oil and minerals at the expense of soil, water and biodiversity,” said Janet Ranganathan, director of people and ecosystems at the Washington-based World Resources Institute.

“Usually only a few people benefit from this exploitation,” Ranganathan, who co-authored a new report called “Restoring Nature’s Capital: An Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services“, told IPS.

Worse still is that this approach to nature is extremely destructive and short-sighted, she said.

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[marmar]

1. A difficult but important read.....

that's almost too painful to deal with. :cry: Heaven help us all..... K&R

[silverweb]

2. Bookmarked.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. The tragedy of the commons

Effective government is the only vehicle to make our economic choices consistent with good stewardship of the commons.

[MasonJar]

4. And what is exceedingly important is that the good old USA is the

leading gang banger in the race to ruin the planet. Once again next week at the G8 conference in Germany, the Bush administration is geared up to squash any climate initiative. Their crazy mantra that such actions will hurt the US economy is equivocation or stupidity because the real world is the world of the future which is the one which preserves resources. Oil is not the future. The auto industry in the US is flailing because of its incredible perverseness in the face of success by Toyota and Honda and so on.

[OneBlueSky]

5. humans may not be the only ones who do it, but we've sure as hell perfected . . .

the science of fouling our own nest (i.e. shitting where we live) . . .

in every case, corporate (and individual) profits trump protecting the planet . . . our only home . . . the body that gives us life . . .

destroying that which sustains us is both the height of arrogance and the nadir of depravity . . . we deserve what's coming to us . . .

the Earth (God bless her) will survive and recover . . . we, however, will not . . .

[Blue_Tires]

6. k+r

[Blue_Tires]

7. another kick