ALL, a few words on a possible BK of another kind...
(from Winter 1998 issue of Adbusters magazine, available at adbusters.org)
$200,000,000 Biosphere Fails
Is Mother Nature being undervalued? Environmentalist Paul Hawken believes the answer is yes. Writing for Mother Jones (March/April 1997), he argues that, "living systems feed us, protect us, heal us, clean the nest, let us breathe." Yet most economists never consider these housekeeping services -- dubbed natural capital by Hawken -- when creating their economic models.
Hawken notes that the Biosphere II project, a $200 million bio-dome designed by the foresmost scientific minds in North America, failed to provide even basic levels of human sustainability. A quick tally of Biosphere II's failures speak for themselves: inhabitants did not have adequate amounts of oxygen; 19 of the 25 small animal species went extinct; the water became so polluted it had to be filtered by hand; cockroaches flourished. "Only when the benefits nature provides are disrupted do we take notice" notes Hawken.
If $200 million can's sustain eight people for seventeen months, one wonders how we can continue to discount the value of natural capital, when 160 people are born every minute.
It's becoming clear that technology cannot replicate the simplest restorative functions of the ecosystems we increasingly take for granted. As we continue to overtax the real biosphere, we are living on borrowed time and, it would appear, borrowed money. |
