By: patagonia

patagonia — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:34:55 +0000

I agree with you completely. very nice argument, well laid out too! Your comments about economy being an obstacle to effective cost-benefit analysis for environment are very interesting; as you said, economy does place value in the present for environment, and only in the future if directly related to a natural resource (eg. oil, a river that powers a dam). I feel that this brings us back to the need for a new world paradigm. Human beings need a world view other than conventional economics with which to study and preserve the environment. Including cost-benefit analysis, other methods of environmental assessment based within the overarching framework of modern economy will inevitably fail to give full value to the environment. Moreover, we consistently fail to understand environment when it is framed wihtin the anthropogenic world economic system. This leads me to another point I have been thinking on: what is environment. This grand definition that is at the back (or front) of all of our minds. Can we define environment looking at it from our current worldview? As Jaye Ellis pointed out, it is difficult to even imagine a view, other than anthropogenic, from which to form our values, ethics, understanding and our definition collective definition of environment. It would be muh easier to come up with several definitions according to various proposed worldviews, i.e.: ecocentrism, antrhopocentrism, land ethic, deep ecology. Also, it would be easier, but important not to i think, to have our definintion closely reflect present environmental, social, economic and political conditions. The point I am hoping to make here is this; I think we should be careful of where we would place our definition of enviroment. Will it be placed wihtin the dominant Judeo-Christian macroeconomic worldview?; an environmental worldiew?; or caught floating around in limbo somewhere in between, like ecological economics. I vote for environmental worldview, but would settle for limbo because that is more relistically the world we live in today. So I have gotten quite far from cost-benefit analysis, so here is an attempt to bring it back: we must carefully balance the costs and benefits of defining the environment in terms of world views. We must think of it as, value will be given to this defination, and actions and policies will be carried out accordingly. What could be the costs-benefits of defining environment by monatary value within the economic worldview? In an environmental worldview, like Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic?

Comments on: Cost/Benefit analysis, into a future of lower value

By: patagonia