It was interesting to read Pearce and Barbier in the context of the commons, which is a place my brain likes to live a lot of the time. They claim that the absence of a price leads to evaluation by the end "user," a point which I can understand- but for the clear contradiction of such in my life these days. That's the whole point of the Community Orchard: Free Fruit for All! Volunteers are growing food (~100 fruit trees, bushes, etc.) in a public park with the intention of giving it away to anyone who wants it. The neat thing is, I don't get to decide the answers to those questions. It's a community project, which means that anyone who shows up gets to answer those questions. In my mind, food ought to be available to anyone who is hungry, particularly in this society where its abundance is mind-blowing. I like the idea of living in a society where we give gifts (like free fruit, rather than polluted air!) to those we'll never meet.
In a way, the fact that it is free makes it even more precious and cherished.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
(Louise Erdrich)
So, then, what about attaching price tags to environmental assets in order to change the way we treat the environment? I don't think we can accurately capture this =>
in dollars or dineros. Soul-filling is, as the credit card ads say, priceless. Let's consider permitting something outside our current monetary structure to have value- inherent value, which exists regardless of Italy, Big Macs, or carbon dioxide. And I think that one way we do that is through sharing experiences that change our lives and our minds. Like growing fruit and giving it away, for one.
Oh, the irony.
Love your post and love the quote by Louise Erdrich! I have difficulty grasping the idea of putting economic value on everything. Can we put economic value on happiness? You probably can, but it probably won't be right. Now, can you put an economic value on unhappiness. Probably a little easier to do when you consider the economic repercussions of depression medication, therapy, hospitalization, and suicide. But, you cannot value happiness against that, just like you can't value the fact that biodiversity exists or the value of our ecosystem - without it we have nothing.
ReplyDeleteYou might need to draw a distinction between the use of a small community orchard and our withdrawals from a huge ecosystem. I think the point of trying to price ecosystem services is to ensure that the true cost (externality) of anything we take out of an ecosystem gets built into whatever the resulting product is. On a macro scale, that seems fundamentally different than what you're trying to do with the community orchard.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the scales are vastly different between a community orchard and the ecosystem as a whole, but I think the benefit of shifting how we value ecosystem services away from a money-value still holds. I personally think it is more powerful to accept/create intrinisc value that isn't associated with the S&P index. To me, putting a monetary price (or "capitalizing") on it debases nature. I'd rather work toward accepting the sanctity of nature than trying to persuade people how much that baby eagle is worth.
ReplyDeleteOn a slightly related note, Derrick Jensen is one of the more intense authors I've ever read. I can take him in small doses. Here are some words from him which reflect, to me, the absurdity both of what we're doing and of putting a price tag on it:
"But it makes me ask again: What is the calculus of casualties? There’s no reason to confine this calculus to humans. How many baubles is life on the planet worth? How many salmon, how many generations of salmon, swimming upstream, spawning, dying, feeding humans, bears, eagles, their own offspring, entire forests, are worth the life of one politician, one executive, one lying statistician? The lives of how many species of salmon are worth the fortune of one politician, one executive? How many salmon are we willing to sacrifice so that an efficient executive can have a vintage car? How many rivers of fish—and how many rivers themselves, with their once-clean, free-flowing water—are worth sustaining a lifestyle based on exploitation, a lifestyle that will not last, and that will, we can only hope (the we in this case evidently not including the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle), end very soon."
When I was at Cider Fest last weekend, my fiance asked me, "So what if one person takes all the fruit?" I didn't really have an answer, and I am not sure what the Community Orchard has decided or talked about in regard to what is considered an abuse of the orchard. My thought and hope is that the type of people that would utilize a community food source have a deep sense of equality and taking only what is needed. It is unfortunate that the tragedy of the commons happens all to often with common pool resources, but I don't think it is a hard and fast rule, especially when the community has invested in the development of that resource.
ReplyDeleteLouise Erdrich's quote makes my eyes sting...the wasted sweetness, what a lovely concept, and so very common in nature. Makes me think of my favorite childhood book, The Giving Tree. Thank you for that, Amy.
ReplyDeleteOn to economics, the big ugly monster! (1) The tragedy of the commons, and (2) placing monetary value on ecosystem services, are probably a few of the most controversial issues in sustainable development. And excellent choices for a blog. Bravo! I have no solutions, only uninspiring insights.
A perfect example of the tragedy of the commons in action: ranching in the western U.S. What’s worse, there ARE prices in place, they’re just too darn low. And the subsidies in place means ALL citizens pay for cheap meat. Great for us veggers, right? It’s been going on for a mighty long time now, no need to get into it here. I might actually get sort of enraged, so it’s best that way.
Regarding ecosystem pricing? There are a few options in the works. One (of many) I’ll mention is the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). The GDP is simply a measure of total production (i.e. money changing hands) and was never meant to be a reflection of true quality of life. The GPI on the other hand, accounts for unpaid labor (volunteer work, stay-at-home moms, etc), crime (building a prison is a “pro” in the GDP; not so in GPI), and resource use/abuse (finally externalities get some attention). That being said, statistical analysis (as we all know) is very much a product of ACCESS to ACCURATE information, and interpretations/assumptions about the NATURE of that information. So WHO decides what information is included, and how is it INTERPRETED? Is anyone tired of CAPITAL LETTERS yet?
So can the tragedy of the commons be solved by ecosystem pricing? Who knows. Would it be good to raise prices for resource-intensive products/services like gasoline, bananas, flying, and Big Macs made from low-grade, South American cattle raised on land that used to be rain forest and is now so degraded it can't support anything else? Yes, if we do it right. The key is to find ways of spreading the costs so as not to disadvantage the poor. No small task! Is that what people mean when they say "job security"?
Amy, nice post and a great discussion by all. Amy, while agreed with you that sole fact of monetizing nature debases it, I don't know of another way to get enough people in the world to find intrinsic value in it. I think this blog and disussion follows nicely to the TED talk we heard from Tim Jackson. The idea that changing the structure of the economy will, in fact, do exactly what you are trying to say here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Reen said. While it is a sad fact, Americans tend to think in tangible ways. Sometimes these are money driven. Having these stats spurted out to them rather than scientific values puts it into perspective for them.
ReplyDelete@ Julia: And that's the true problem, that we think in terms of dollars. So do we continue to twist how money works in order to trick people into acting in a more responsible way (short-term only to the point where people wise up to the ruse) or focus on changing the underlying culture (long-term) so that people actually value behaving in that way for reasons other than money?
ReplyDeleteClearly I'm in camp 2, but I also tend to view this issue from a big picture (long-term) perspective.
This is what a discussion course would look like in my dreams! Students teaching each other. Well done everyone! This is the level of personal engagement, reflection, and critical thinking I was hoping for.
ReplyDeleteThis may not be an either/or issue of ethics-intrinsic value vs. price signal, but perhaps a continuum of strategies to engage enough people to create a tipping point to turn the great ship of civilization before it sails off the edge.
I love Daniel Pink's book on what motivates people, "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us." He proposes that the most motivating factors are not money, but Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Well worth a holiday read! I think Scott Russell Sanders will also help illuminate this topic next week.