#NaturalResourceEconomics
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Biodiversity & economics, limits of science rant
Because of how I understood anticapitalism, I was always against trying to calculate the economic cost of destroying nature.
Nature should not be destroyed because it's sacred. Period.
And, on a less spiritual way: as we don't have a clue* how complex ecosystems work, we should be less confident when pretending to put a price tag on ecosystem services.
But lately I am seeing economics less as a scam by greedy powerful to justify and optimize their exploitation of humans and nature (though I am still convinced that this brainwashing is the main function), but appreciate that in the strict sense, economics is just a way to make decisions. Even in an anarchist village, people do sorts of economics when taking decisions (just maybe a not based on €$¥, but more on "how much effort will it be for our community to build a new building with strawbales or with clay?"). And if we accept this role of economics, we see that it is necessary to integrate the value of biodiversity and nazure into the equation, because if we don't, we have lavk the tools to take wrll-informed decisions.
Still, it feels like that we won't be very successful in improving things if we talk about the value of pollinating wild bees for the economy instead of burning down the headquarters of the banks that finance industrial agriculture (and some other offices come to my mind, but maybe lets start with the banks...).
The problem with all this bioeconomics stuff is that it is so deeply flawed. And it's an uphill battle, as we will be always behind the "real" economy's destruction of nature.
"If you are so sure that this tropical forest is of any good, show us the numbers", they said, while destroying the ecosystem forever for a palm oil plantation...
* we really know little. We are getting better. E.g. in microbiology nowadays with molecular tools we can know *who* is there (mostly). But this leaves us with a large list of names and we don't have any idea about *what* they do. And latest when it comes to biological interactions in the real world, all we have left is to hold our hands and behold the impressive complexity and the miracles of life.
Thanks to
@blogdiva , one of your posts made me write this down. 
#NaturalResourceEconomics #PluralisticEconomy #PluralEconomics #degrowth #Bioeconomy #DecisionMaking #Biidiversity #EcosystemServices #EcosystemService
@dredmorbius@toot.cat@pluralistic On the "markets can't solve this" aspect ... there's one possible angle in which they might help.
Business function as accounting engines. They don't create wealth, they create accounting profits. (Interesting backstory, look up Alexander Hamilton Church on the origins of Cost Accounting, and yes, he's related to that A. Hamilton.)
Because Reasons, accounting considers some costs and not others. Natural resource accounting, and economics, its own special class of utterly fucked up, and that's also an interesting little tale of utter fuckwitted thinking. See Hotelling's Rule & earlier L.C. Gray (neither of whom cite any geology), and back to David Ricardo for what theory exists. It utterly fails to match actual pricing history (see BP's annual statistical rule, petroleum's got excellent data to 1860).
(Hotelling's relationship to Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago also raises eyebrows: petroleum monopolist-financed economist justifies petroleum monopolist pricing.)
Leo Tolstoy has an interesting alternative accounting, IIRC in "What Then Shall We Do" which includes sunshine and land and other factors excluded from traditional cost accounting.
The Rule of Capture (via an utterly fucked-up 1904 Texas Supreme Court ruling) creates a legal basis that again utterly ignores geological science. The principle is less used, but the legal precedent stands.
Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003), gives the information on primordeal primary production (plant growth) that resulted in fossil fuel deposits. A year of present consumption is 5 million years of ancient accumulation, a depletion cost not considered in present pricing.
If it were, depletion allowances for extraction would increase the cost of fossil fuels by a factor of millions. Simply by an accounting change, the resources would be effectively pinned to the ground by a force stronger than gravity: it would be a complete economic loss.
(Odds of this happening? Uncertain. Worth a shot? Um, hell yeah!)
Keep in mind that this is independent and in addition to accounting for sink costs, which is what a carbon or other pollution cost would be. Proposed carbon taxes are a very small fraction of what a full, geologically cognizant cost-accounting depletion allowance would be.
Links to follow.
#AlexanderHamiltonChurch #CostAccounting #HotellingsRule #NaturalResourceEconomics #HowardHotelling #LeoTolstoy #JeffreySDukes #BurningBuriedSunshine #DepletionAllowances #AccountingStandards #Petroleum #Economics