We got the flow down, but we don't ebb so good
It occurs to me that we have no insight into the cost of our everyday actions in terms of natural resource utilization. I wound up talking to a fellow yogi about environmental matters after class (I know what you're thinking... "A computer scientist and yoga practitioner of Indian origin! How novel!") and it dawned on me little attention is paid to this in the capitalist structure we all know and love.
How much does an adult salmon really cost if catching it involves dredging rivers and it never has the chance to get its funk on and replenish the salmon stock in the rivers. How much does a piece of machinery cost if it cannot be unformed again into its constituent elements by natural processes? How much should it cost to raze a strip of arable land to put up a strip mall?
I feel like if we could accurately portray the cost of such resource usage, we would have radically different economic structures, products and design considerations. It’s not about cost in terms of paper money… it’s about cost in terms of finite resources. If we make products and use business models that conserve and replenish finite resources in their production, then we will automatically save money, because it required fewer resources to create the products. It works in theory anyway.
How much does an adult salmon really cost if catching it involves dredging rivers and it never has the chance to get its funk on and replenish the salmon stock in the rivers. How much does a piece of machinery cost if it cannot be unformed again into its constituent elements by natural processes? How much should it cost to raze a strip of arable land to put up a strip mall?
I feel like if we could accurately portray the cost of such resource usage, we would have radically different economic structures, products and design considerations. It’s not about cost in terms of paper money… it’s about cost in terms of finite resources. If we make products and use business models that conserve and replenish finite resources in their production, then we will automatically save money, because it required fewer resources to create the products. It works in theory anyway.
3 Comments:
At 2:24 PM,
Don said…
Accurately assessing full costs like this is hard to do because it's hard to draw the line anywhere. Sometimes reports come out in the media about things like this, like the true cost of using cloth diapers when you include the resources of washing them in the equation. But should you also include the gas to deliver them, the maintenance on the delivery truck or the time it takes to wash them? What about the cost to harvest the cotton? The production of the bleach to bleach them? Of course the extensive interconnectedness of all the processes might be exactly the point of even thinking about it in the first place.
A pretty decent way around this is to decide on the resource that you care about and create a market for it ... just like Arnold and greenhouse emmissions
At 8:49 AM,
Congogirl said…
I think this approach can be useful, but as don said above, it is difficult to know where to draw the line.
Also, most of the costs down the line (i.e. effects) will not be seen in one generation, and while humans are still wired to reproduce and care for their young, it does not follow that they care about others outside their basic unit or beyond the next generation.
At 4:05 PM,
Jystar said…
I think the idea you're discussing here bears some resemblance to the concept of environmental footprint. could be mistaken, but footprint is something the social ecology folks like to talk about a lot, and if you're interested it might be worth looking into.
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