To many people the most prominent debate of the day is seemingly between the economy and the environment, and in today's economic climate the health of the economy is often deemed more important.
Environmentalism, in some circles, is still thought to be only about protecting trees and cuddly animals instead of trying to protect the environmental conditions necessary to ensure the health of people all over the world. While environmentalists and environmental NGOs actually spend a great deal of time studying and reporting on how climate change will impact human and economic health, many people consider environmentalists to be critical and dismissive of any type of resource extraction or energy production and as never giving a thought to job creation or the impact environmental regulations would have on the profitability of certain industries.
In similar fashion, any action taken to protect the environment is seen by many as detrimental to the health of the economy. In the short term this perception is often correct: stricter pollution regulations hurt the profitability of companies and decrease the speed at which they are able to expand their operations while renewable energy is, at the moment, more costly to produce and will need continued government support to become as viable as its more polluting alternatives.
The problem with this perception is that the economy and environment are not in opposition with one another. In fact, environmental issues are not separate from any issue we face but actually a component of them all. You cannot combat poverty, disease, or suffering without a stable climate and a healthy environment for which people to live in and you cannot improve a struggling economy either.
A healthy environment is a prerequisite for a healthy economy. The economy relies on the planet's ability to provide resources and the necessities of life, if the pollution we produce is reducing its ability to do that it becomes catastrophic for the economy. In fact, climate change has the potential to (and most likely will) send us into one of the biggest global recessions ever.
"Climate change presents a growing, long-term economic burden for Canada," said the National Round Table of the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) in September of last year. The NRTEE is an independent agency created by the federal government in 1988 with the mandate to show "leadership in the new way we must think of the relationship between the environment and the economy and the new way we must act." According to their report last fall, climate change will start costing Canada in the billions by 2020 but that number could balloon up to as much as $43 billion a year by 2050. The economic burdens climate change creates come from a disruption to Canada's timber industry arising from changing environmental conditions, a drain on our health care system from warmer weathers and increased premature deaths, flooding in coastal areas and many other factors.
The report did not go into the impacts felt from global affects such as a rise in the cost of food, and an increase in the need for humanitarian funds to help those affected by the drastic increase projected for extreme weather patterns. Take that into consideration as well and the future looks grim for Canada's economy if runaway climate change is allowed to continue.
Last year a report showed that climate change is to blame for the rise in the cost of food. Food prices, as with energy, have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the economy, when people have to pay more for food it causes inflation and means everyone spends less on everything else. The more climate change creates harsher conditions that are detrimental to global food production the more the global economy suffers.
The increase in extreme weather patterns that we have seen in the last few years are projected to increase in quantity and size as climate change progresses, and in addition to causing massive amounts of human suffering they are also quite costly. In 2011 the United States experienced 14 extreme weather events, all of them costing more than a billion dollars each.
The impacts of climate change have far greater consequences than sheer economics, however. While it may be possible to put a dollar figure on the costs involved in relocating people, providing humanitarian aid to countries experiencing drought, and the cleanup of areas that have experienced extreme weather or flooding, calculating the cost of human suffering involved in those occurrences and putting a dollar figure on it is of course impossible.
There is nothing more threatening to the health of our economy than climate change, yet frequently there are those defending environmentally destructive activities by claiming they are doing so for the sake of the economy. The truth is actually that the action they are defending would most likely be good for the economy in the short term but in the long term would also contribute to future economic hardship and the risk of massive global recession, not to mention the incalculable costs of human suffering. Perhaps it's time for Canada, and much of the rest of the world, to start looking at the long term implications of a damaged environment when mapping out their current economic strategies.
http://lmbcorporation.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html
- Derrick Jensen in ‘Endgame, Vol. 2: Resistance’
I am dismayed in that I am starting to feel that the inertia of our oil run planet is too much to stop or slow down before collapse is catastrophic.
1) Earth's ecosystems are what have supported human and other life up to this point, and need to be radically preserved if they are to continue doing so.
2) Economic activity and wellbeing does not necessarily have to be economic growth; it is more reasonable and healthful to look at it as economic *development*.
3) The destruction of the natural world caused by human economic activity exceeds the natural world's ability to replace what is being lost. This situation needs to be reversed.
4) It is not generally understood how radical is industrial civilization's onslaught on the natural world's ecosystems.
the idea of infinite consumption is at best a fleeting thought in the average person's mind. and yet, we are bombarded with marketing and advertising morning noon and night, in this country more than any other with messages urging us to do just that: consume.
for mankind to repair and stabilize the health of the planet, reduction must occur.
industrial civilization and globalization must be replaced with 1,000's of other solutions that meet each localized communities needs. there is no one size fits all answer to the challenges that face us.
Therein is the problem. Almost all of us are ecologically illiterate in the science of ecology or how creates, cycles and supports all life, including man's own, "life-supporting services" generated by Earth's natural and wild, physical body and face or Earth's ecosystems that are created and sustained by cuddly animals and plants and trees, those oxygen releasing, climate moderating, water exhaling and the very natural sequestration of those climate warming gases, that natural ecosystems and biodiversity, like trees and plants, naturally take care of.
We need to focus on the first green, the big green, the only green that will ever matter: The salvation of Earth's natural and wild ecosystems and their plant and animal biodiversity, all the reasons man exists and breathes. We need to remember, before all else, man and Earth exist only because of Earth's natural surface and body, and ecosystems exist only because of their plant and "cuddly" animal diversity, which would also include amphibians and reptiles, vital to the sustainability of Earth and all life, including man's! Kindergarten science!
The paragraph that reads:
"Environmentalism, in some circles, is still thought to be only about protecting trees and cuddly animals instead of trying to protect the environmental conditions necessary to ensure the health of people all over the world." is not to suggest that cuddly animals or trees to do not play a role in the health of ecosystems or that we do not need to protect them for that reason. Obviously trees and all species are pivotal to the health of our environment.
What I was suggesting is that quite often people who do not view environmental protection as important have the perception that environmentalists just want to protect cuddly animals because they are cuddly animals and not because of the role these cuddly animals play in our ecosystems, and that environmentalists just want to protect trees because they like trees and not because of the role trees play in ensuring a healthy environment.
I apologize if this wasn't clear and agree with you that we need to protect biodiversity including the cuddly animals, the ugly ones, and the ones that crawl around in the dirt. Thanks again.
You are correct. Many species of plant and animal biodiversity are neither cute or cuddly, like microorganisms in the soil that pump life into a living soil, like fungi!
we know who they are.
enjoyed the article. saddens me that we don't find 100's to 1,000's of comments on the threads on this type of story.
the planet is primary. if there is any single issue that should park us all in the same boat, it's this one.
very interesting read