[PEN-L:2447] Re: The V-word

[HANLY@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Just ONE THOUGHT on Terry's post responding to Blair:

Terrence  Mc Donough wrote:

Recently Terry and Mike wrote:

>
> Questions of the value of nature must be posed as considering the
> preservation of the system as a whole rather than comparing the
> marginal value of bits of it.  Whatever criteria are used (utility,
> use value, spiritual, aesthetic) it can be agreed that the remaining  ecosystem
> and its component parts have much  more value than any conceivable
> alternative human use of the resources and consequently the
> preservation of the ecosystem at its current level of diversity
> becomes a bedrock principle  which is not in practice subject to
> debates about the relative value of the environment.
>
I know this uses the neoclassical approach but one way I have tried to bring
home to me students the importance of what Terry has stated in this
paragraph is to ask them to consider the VALUE of the enironment in which we
humans must live to be INFINITE.  This gets away from the neo-classical idea
that "efficiency" requires that "we" exploit the environment until marginal
costs EXCEED marginal benefits.  With infinite costs to further
environmental deterioration, it forces us to set limits as quickly as
possible.

COMMENT: Millions of humans are starving to death around the world. Apparently
both of you claim that the use of the ecosystem to keep people from starving
is wrong if this  alters the current level of diversity or degrades it.
 There is
apparently no question of saving people who are starving while degrading the
environment since the costs to further environmental deterioration are
infinite. I asssume neither of you is starving. Perhaps you could explain as
well what it means to say that the system as it presetly is has
 infinite value and how one proves
that. If the ecosystem has infinite value how can we decrease its value?
Any finite deduction from infinite value would leave infinite value and
so it would seem to follow that unless one can create an infinite deduction
from its value it will remain as infinitely valuable. Of course you claim that
there are infinite costs to further environmental deterioriation? Do you have a
reference as to where this is proved. Of course we might if we do enough damage
make the world uninhabitable by man; however, no matter what we do to the
environment there is surely going to be some ecosystem that survive,
 perhaps with
cockroaches being the species that thrives best, but some ecosystem is likely
to remain. We will kill ourselves before we manage to kill every other living
thing and so some ecosystem will remain. Long before humans the ecosystem itself
evolved in a manner that eliminated many species. Did this destroy the infinite
value of the ecosystem? If you claim that new species and diversity were being
added I guess you should simply have as your principle project the
encouragement of more gene alteration in various species. That enables us
to produce more diversity and at the same time better pork, fish, plants,
etc. for human consumption ;-)
   Cheers, Ken Hanly
     Suffering from the greenhouse effect in the Great White NOrth where it is
minus 43 degrees Celsius- even worse in German degrees- and with a windchill
of -54. This makes me cool to our ecosystem and warm to technocrats and heating
experts.


--
Mike Meeropol
Economics Department
Cultures Past and Present Program
Western New England College
Springfield, Massachusetts
"Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!"
Unrepentent Leftist!!
mmeeropo@xxxxxxxx
[if at bitnet node:  in%"mmeeropo@xxxxxxxx" but that's fading fast!]