Skip to main content
Read page text
page 36
Pink River Sky by Tiffany Lynch is invisible to our eyes. For example: • generations-old social practices that allow traditional people to coexist with the land • the integrity of sacred sites • complex ecological dependencies that we have not yet learned to see or measure And there is another, deeper problem. Underlying ecosystem services valuation is the belief that everything has a price; that there is a finite measure of the value of all things. There is no room for the infinite, the sacred, that which is beyond price. This is not a mere philosophical quibble; it has profound practical consequences. If we value a certain forest at $1 billion, then if we can make $1.1 billion by chopping it down, the implication is that we should do it. If we value the survival of a given species at $5 billion, then if we can make $6 billion by exterminating that species, we should do it. And if the value of all ecosystem services is $100 trillion, then if we can earn $200 trillion by liquidating Earth, we should do it. Does that sound preposterous? It would be, except that it is what we are doing already (though not purposely), abetted by the ideology of value. Monstrous consequences result whenever we put a price tag on life – especially when those assigning that price stand to gain financially from deciding what that price should be. Putting a price on Nature is a form of ‘othering’. It implies that Nature, first and foremost, exists for human use, that the ecosystem’s purpose is indeed ‘service’. This view of Nature is rapidly becoming obsolete. We are turning away from the Cartesian ambition to become the lords and masters of Nature. Less and less do we see Nature as a pile of instrumental stuff, generic building blocks to manipulate with blithe indifference to the consequences for other beings. We are instead recovering a sense of the sacredness of all life. Indeed, I am sure that it is this biophilia that motivates the well-meaning attempts to monetise ecosystem services. Unfortunately, by putting a finite number on these ‘services’ we reduce the infinite value of the sacred to a quantity. Invocations of ‘the sacred’ or ‘the infinite’ leave many people feeling uncomfortable and asking, shouldn’t we be making public policy based on science and not nebulous, quasi-religious notions like these? Indeed it is true: appeals to the sacred over the measurable are unscientific. Science has, at least since the time of Galileo, concerned itself with the measurable. Qualitative properties, said Galileo, are secondary, less real and not the province of science. David Hume articulated it thus: “Let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it contains nothing but sophistry and illusion.” The goal of science and anything (such as 34 Resurgence & Ecologist Januar y/Februar y 2013
page 37
economics) that pretends to that illustrious category has therefore been to measure, to quantify, and then to apply mathematical reasoning to the numbers obtained. To say that there are some things that inherently elude quantification offends this foundational principle. How do you make a science of human happiness (the ultimate goal of social engineering)? You measure it. You figure out the laws of happiness, make them into mathematical equations (a “felicific calculus”, in philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s words), and determine policy based on the total amount of measurable happiness (or “utility”) it will generate. Government will have been reduced to maths. Economics as a science understands society as the aggregated behaviour of millions of utilitymaximising individuals. Money is both the measure and the substance of utility, says economics; if, as the destruction of the planet suggests, it is an imperfect measure, then the solution is to repair its flaws, for example to incorporate ecosystem services into it. New York City bought land rights in the Catskills to protect its water supply. Farmers in Bolivia are paid to protect their watersheds, and loggers to cease clearcutting. Cap-and-trade systems for sulphur dioxide have curtailed acid rain. Learning from the failures (such as the dismal results of carbon credit trading) and carrying forth the successes, we might develop more and better ways to align money with ecology. For example: • We can use quota systems, green taxes or auctions to limit renewable resource use to the amount that can be sustainably replenished. • We can do the same to limit waste emissions to a rate that the rest of Nature can process. • We can pay countries like Congo, Ecuador and Brazil to preserve their rainforests, setting that amount at a level sufficient to offset the profits that would otherwise accrue for liquidating those resources. • We can pay farmers to practise regenerative agriculture. • We can cancel Third World debt in recognition that A lot is at stake here for economists and their way of thinking. ‘Ecosystem services’ can rescue economics. But what if the problem with measuring everything isn’t just that we haven’t measured enough? What if the problem is with measurement itself having exceeded its proper domain and usurped other ways of knowing and choosing? What is the alternative? Surely it is better to assign a finite value to ecosystems than it is to accord it no value whatsoever, as our present system does. Fortunately we do have another model besides an economic one. In the social realm, there are also things that we consider to be beyond price. If you kill someone, for instance, no amount of financial compensation is considered enough: a human life has an infinite value. We have, as it says in the US Declaration of Independence, inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One might, therefore, say that we hold these things sacred. much of it was incurred for the purpose of extracting resources whose environmental costs were never compensated. The organising principle here is not to totalise economic logic. It is that people and nations should be able to make as much money from the alternatives to extraction (past a sustainable level) as they do from extraction itself. People should be able to make as much (or more) money from zero-emissions practices as from Putting a price on Nature implies it exists fir st and foremost for our use pollution-creating practices. It would be hypocritical, for example, to say: “Don’t cut down those trees – but I’ll only pay you if you do.” Money, after all, is an expression of what society values. As what we value shifts towards ecological healing, we need to change the economic system to reflect that. We should not pretend, though, that the financial incentives we Applying analogous reasoning to Nature, we arrive at ideas like the ‘rights of Nature’ now proclaimed and adopted by Bolivia, and at the criminalising of ecocide advocated by the lawyer activist Polly Higgins. Money and law are both expressions of what society values. Money can embody finite value; only law can embody the value of anything beyond price. This means that economic solutions will never be enough, any more than the programme of quantification can ever proceed to totality. But it does not mean we should abandon measure, abandon science, or abandon attempts to align profit with people and planet. Rather, these tools must operate in their proper domain: in service to the sacred. In fact, some of the programmes justified by the concept of ecosystem services have been successful, and we should not dismiss these successes on dogmatic grounds. assign towards environmentally desirable outcomes can truly represent the value of the land, water, biodiversity, and so on. The only reason to do that would be to preserve an ideology, the very ideology that has driven so much destruction to begin with. It is surely a good thing to align money with ecology, but we must do that without reducing ecology to money, Nature to commodity, the infinite to the finite, the sacred to the profane, quality to quantity, and the world into a pile of instrumental stuff. Detaching financial incentives from the doctrine of value frees us to apply them flexibly on a case-by-case basis that fully recognises their social context. It is time for the science of economics to bow to the art. Charles Eisenstein is the author of Sacred Economics and other books. Issue 276 Resurgence & Ecologist 35

Page Text

View plaintext

Pink River Sky by Tiffany Lynch is invisible to our eyes. For example: • generations-old social practices that allow traditional people to coexist with the land • the integrity of sacred sites • complex ecological dependencies that we have not yet learned to see or measure And there is another, deeper problem. Underlying ecosystem services valuation is the belief that everything has a price; that there is a finite measure of the value of all things. There is no room for the infinite, the sacred, that which is beyond price.

This is not a mere philosophical quibble; it has profound practical consequences. If we value a certain forest at $1 billion, then if we can make $1.1 billion by chopping it down, the implication is that we should do it. If we value the survival of a given species at $5 billion, then if we can make $6 billion by exterminating that species, we should do it. And if the value of all ecosystem services is $100 trillion, then if we can earn $200 trillion by liquidating Earth, we should do it.

Does that sound preposterous? It would be, except that it is what we are doing already (though not purposely), abetted by the ideology of value. Monstrous consequences result whenever we put a price tag on life – especially when those assigning that price stand to gain financially from deciding what that price should be. Putting a price on Nature is a form of ‘othering’. It implies that Nature, first and foremost, exists for human use,

that the ecosystem’s purpose is indeed ‘service’.

This view of Nature is rapidly becoming obsolete. We are turning away from the Cartesian ambition to become the lords and masters of Nature. Less and less do we see Nature as a pile of instrumental stuff, generic building blocks to manipulate with blithe indifference to the consequences for other beings. We are instead recovering a sense of the sacredness of all life. Indeed, I am sure that it is this biophilia that motivates the well-meaning attempts to monetise ecosystem services. Unfortunately, by putting a finite number on these ‘services’ we reduce the infinite value of the sacred to a quantity.

Invocations of ‘the sacred’ or ‘the infinite’ leave many people feeling uncomfortable and asking, shouldn’t we be making public policy based on science and not nebulous, quasi-religious notions like these?

Indeed it is true: appeals to the sacred over the measurable are unscientific. Science has, at least since the time of Galileo, concerned itself with the measurable. Qualitative properties, said Galileo, are secondary, less real and not the province of science. David Hume articulated it thus: “Let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it contains nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

The goal of science and anything (such as

34 Resurgence & Ecologist

Januar y/Februar y 2013

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content