Nature Has a Price Tag; How Much Is It?

[Staff]

Nature Has a Price Tag; How Much Is It?
If we can't act fast enough to save the planet for its (and our) own sake, maybe we can if we recognize how much it's worth to us in dollars.
By Rachel Cernansky
Boulder, CO, USA | Thu Oct 8, 2009 12:30 PM ET

Nature Has a Price Tag; How Much Is It? : Planet Green
excerpt from above:

It's becoming increasingly popular for not only tree-hugging environmentalists to care about nature, but economists as well. At least, the smart ones. In 1997, one study estimated that nature provides an average of $33 trillion worth of services annually.

That study has not gone without controversy, but—whether its authors wanted to foster investment opportunities, or had the foresight to know that's how to get people to care about the environment...

[Staff]

Tough choices follow in wake of invasive species
By Juliet Eilperin
Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 31, 2010

washingtonpost.com
excerpt from above:

Which is worse? Closing two locks on a waterway that's used to ship millions of dollars' worth of goods from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi basin? Or allowing a voracious Asian carp to deplete the food supply of native fish sustaining a Midwestern fishing industry that nets $7 billion a year?

And how do you put a price tag on the damage caused by the Burmese python and other constrictor snakes that are strangling the precious ecology of the Everglades?

Invasive species, long the cause of environmental hand-wringing, have been raising more unwelcome questions recently, as the expense of eliminating them is weighed against the mounting liability of leaving them be...

[Pahinh Winh]

The question is not, "how much does 'nature' - & saving it or repairing damge to it - cost?" The question is, "Where can we go if idiots are allowed to continue destroying & damaging the environment under the lying banner of 'progress' & 'civilization'?" The answer is a chilling, "Nowhere." Mitakuye oiasin / All (are) my relatives. And yours and theirs. Come to think of it, there ain't no 'us' or 'them'; there's only 'us'. We're all in the same canoe & the thing leaks partly because of 'us n them' attitudes. I been sayin' this for over 30 years - you'd think us Indns have invisible voices or somethin'.. although I know it's really that people as a group are too attached to the "us n them" perspective to pay attention. Sure seems a pity to leave the planet to amoeba, but that's where it's goin'.. until enough people get past "us n them" & far down the road into "us" & do what should-a been done in the first place, lila ota ehanni (LEE-lah OH-tah eh_HAHNH-nee) / a long time ago.

[hazelnut]

Well said, Pahinh Winh