![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
peristaltor.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsLast February, NPR's Planet Money examined a unique strategy by Ecuador's government to preserve its Yasuni National Park, an isolated and wild place reached best by hours in a canoe. This is one of those places with amazing biodiversity, with more tree species in a hectare than most more northern countries have within their borders.
The problem threatening the Yasuni? It has oil, and President Correa, seeing the destruction other Latin American countries have suffered for oil exploration/extraction, wanted to avoid a similar fate for his most wild of national places. His solution: ask for money to preserve the park as is.
Seriously. Planet Money interviews those seeking to preserve the park by asking for money:
Sadly, the podcast to which I linked is an update. That $3.6 billion wasn't forthcoming, so Correa has no choice but to allow for some extraction. The park will undoubtedly suffer as a result.
The same week I heard that PM podcast, though, I also heard Seth and Justin over at the Extraenvironmentalist interview filmmaker John Dennis Liu in Episode #65: Restoring Function.
This Plateau sounds fascinating. Essentially, this is glacial dust (loess) from Himalaya erosion over thousands of years. It is also the seat of the Han Chinese civilization that spread out to become the most common ethnicity in that country today.
Why, then, was it a barren wasteland? Liu notes that, while the area has been farmed for millennia, the agricultural practices used slowly eroded the ecosystem to the point where the hydrological cycle was broken. The constant tilling had killed the soil biota to the point where the soil would not retain any water, so farmers were starving and the soil was blowing in sometimes massive storms that affected everyone downwind. Once it fell, it settled where it was not appreciated, such as in the Yellow River.
Visitors watch water gushing from the section of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir on the Yellow River, during a sand-washing operation
The Chinese government took an unusual step. They calculated these downwind and downstream costs, then added up the economic benefit the farmers on the Plateau contributed to the Chinese economy. The answer was extremely negative; the agricultural output was dwarfed by the impact the degraded ecology had on other parts of the country.
Here's the situation in a nutshell, according to Mr. Liu's article "Restoring Land and Hope in China" in New Agriculturalist magazine:
The Chinese government shut down the meager sorgum and corn crop farming. They gave the citizen food and jobs, first teaching them the basic goals the government ecologists had in mind. Those that were degrading the system the most were, well, prevented from continuing the degradation and given the job of policing the area to prevent others from engaging in this same activity.
The result? Judge for yourself.
Loess Plateau before restoration.
Loess Plateau after restoration.
Liu points out that China took an unusual step. It could. China is one of the few nations large enough to have an ecological disaster affect so many others within its borders. While economists call the negative effects of economic production "externalities", for China—a central government responsible for the whole of its economy—there are no such externalities, just cost shifts from one area to the other. Liu goes further, stating in the Extraenvironmental podcast that there are no such things as externalities at all. It's just a phrase economists coined to at least acknowledge the damage some activities had on other parts of the economy. It is a fiction, though, since really one cannot ignore the economic damage of any given activity without considering the negative impact it has elsewhere. One author quoted Liu from his movie:
In his EE interview, Liu suggested we have to "Naturalize the Economy" rather than exploit the ecology for economic gain. We have to return to what author John Michael Greer called The Wealth of Nature: Economics as If Survival Mattered. And nature cares not one whit for money. Money is, in fact, just an artifact, valued only by people. Money is not a measure of anything other than what people who issue and most widely use it value. If the people who issue money don't value functional ecosystems, they can put a price on destruction. Which is, as Liu points out, what happened on the Plateau.
Sadly, as David Graeber points out in his book Debt, money is just a way to move wealth from one place to another, to de-localize an economy. As long as the near-sustenance farmers on the Loess could sell even a meager portion of their crops for money to buy other things, they would continue and even accelerate the soil's degradation. China was big enough to realize this could not continue.
Which brings us back to Ecuador. Rafael Correa could not convince the international community to preserve the oxygen generator, the carbon sequester that is the Yasuni National Park. Why? Unlike most of Ecuador, the international community is addicted to oil, and has priced that precious goo beyond all efforts aimed at ecology preservation. If the US gives Ecuador money (which it didn't), it removes future reserves from extraction and thus raises the price of future oil. The US cannot put a price on losing such reserves from the market, since doing so would be to admit that they were addicted to the stuff.
And thus, the market works. Back to Graeber: "Money always has the potential to become a moral imperative unto itself. Allow it to expand, and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools, and potential merchandise." (David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Melville House Printing, 2011, p. 319.) Since Ecuador is poor, they are reduced to the status of debtor, and forced to sell their most valuable assets to raise themselves and their people out of poverty.
The perversion of this logic can be found in the Loess Plateau. As Herbert Stein put it in the economic law that bears his name, "Any system that can't go on forever, won't." China recognized this, and is taking steps to avoid future dust storms and clogged rivers, as well as increasing the agricultural production of the Plateau itself.
Our own US and western world's addiction to petroleum (and other ancient carbon fuels) can't go on forever either; every drive miles to the next frivolous destination has exactly the same effect as tilling barren soil. Without facing this hard fact, though, places like the Yasuni will continue to fall.
That hard truth, though, is impossible to relate to economists who dismiss any symptom of unsustainable practices with words like "externality."
The problem threatening the Yasuni? It has oil, and President Correa, seeing the destruction other Latin American countries have suffered for oil exploration/extraction, wanted to avoid a similar fate for his most wild of national places. His solution: ask for money to preserve the park as is.
Seriously. Planet Money interviews those seeking to preserve the park by asking for money:
As payment for preserving the wilderness and preventing an estimated 410 million metric tons of fossil fuel-generated carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, Correa has asked the world to ante up in the fight against global warming. He is seeking $3.6 billion in compensation, roughly half of what Ecuador would have realized in revenues from exploiting the resource at 2007 prices. The money would be used, he says, to finance alternative energy and community development projects.
Sadly, the podcast to which I linked is an update. That $3.6 billion wasn't forthcoming, so Correa has no choice but to allow for some extraction. The park will undoubtedly suffer as a result.
The same week I heard that PM podcast, though, I also heard Seth and Justin over at the Extraenvironmentalist interview filmmaker John Dennis Liu in Episode #65: Restoring Function.
This Plateau sounds fascinating. Essentially, this is glacial dust (loess) from Himalaya erosion over thousands of years. It is also the seat of the Han Chinese civilization that spread out to become the most common ethnicity in that country today.
Why, then, was it a barren wasteland? Liu notes that, while the area has been farmed for millennia, the agricultural practices used slowly eroded the ecosystem to the point where the hydrological cycle was broken. The constant tilling had killed the soil biota to the point where the soil would not retain any water, so farmers were starving and the soil was blowing in sometimes massive storms that affected everyone downwind. Once it fell, it settled where it was not appreciated, such as in the Yellow River.Visitors watch water gushing from the section of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir on the Yellow River, during a sand-washing operation
The Chinese government took an unusual step. They calculated these downwind and downstream costs, then added up the economic benefit the farmers on the Plateau contributed to the Chinese economy. The answer was extremely negative; the agricultural output was dwarfed by the impact the degraded ecology had on other parts of the country.
Here's the situation in a nutshell, according to Mr. Liu's article "Restoring Land and Hope in China" in New Agriculturalist magazine:
We have been documenting China's Loess Plateau since 1995. When we got there we found a fundamentally degraded ecosystem. . . .
Work began initially in the Loess Plateau due to a silt problem. Erosion of the deep Loess soils was clogging the Yellow River with 600 million tons of soil every year. This had such downstream implications that it was decided that rehabilitation upstream, to lower erosion rates, would be less expensive. We had to control soil erosion from the slopes and this was coupled with action against desert encroachment in the north. If you don't fight it on every side it will overwhelm everything. You cannot just garden around the edges.
The Chinese government shut down the meager sorgum and corn crop farming. They gave the citizen food and jobs, first teaching them the basic goals the government ecologists had in mind. Those that were degrading the system the most were, well, prevented from continuing the degradation and given the job of policing the area to prevent others from engaging in this same activity.
The result? Judge for yourself.
Loess Plateau before restoration.
Loess Plateau after restoration.
Liu points out that China took an unusual step. It could. China is one of the few nations large enough to have an ecological disaster affect so many others within its borders. While economists call the negative effects of economic production "externalities", for China—a central government responsible for the whole of its economy—there are no such externalities, just cost shifts from one area to the other. Liu goes further, stating in the Extraenvironmental podcast that there are no such things as externalities at all. It's just a phrase economists coined to at least acknowledge the damage some activities had on other parts of the economy. It is a fiction, though, since really one cannot ignore the economic damage of any given activity without considering the negative impact it has elsewhere. One author quoted Liu from his movie:
The products and services that we derive from [functional ecosystems] are derivatives. It's impossible for the derivatives to be more valuable than the source. And yet in our economy now, as it stands, the products and services have monetary values, but the source—the functional ecosystems—are zero. So this cannot be true. It, it's false. So we've created a global institution . . . economic institutions and economic theory based on a flaw in logic. So if we carry that flaw in logic from generation to generation we compound the mistake. -John D. Liu [38:44]
(I underlined and edited.)
In his EE interview, Liu suggested we have to "Naturalize the Economy" rather than exploit the ecology for economic gain. We have to return to what author John Michael Greer called The Wealth of Nature: Economics as If Survival Mattered. And nature cares not one whit for money. Money is, in fact, just an artifact, valued only by people. Money is not a measure of anything other than what people who issue and most widely use it value. If the people who issue money don't value functional ecosystems, they can put a price on destruction. Which is, as Liu points out, what happened on the Plateau.
Sadly, as David Graeber points out in his book Debt, money is just a way to move wealth from one place to another, to de-localize an economy. As long as the near-sustenance farmers on the Loess could sell even a meager portion of their crops for money to buy other things, they would continue and even accelerate the soil's degradation. China was big enough to realize this could not continue.
Which brings us back to Ecuador. Rafael Correa could not convince the international community to preserve the oxygen generator, the carbon sequester that is the Yasuni National Park. Why? Unlike most of Ecuador, the international community is addicted to oil, and has priced that precious goo beyond all efforts aimed at ecology preservation. If the US gives Ecuador money (which it didn't), it removes future reserves from extraction and thus raises the price of future oil. The US cannot put a price on losing such reserves from the market, since doing so would be to admit that they were addicted to the stuff.
And thus, the market works. Back to Graeber: "Money always has the potential to become a moral imperative unto itself. Allow it to expand, and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools, and potential merchandise." (David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Melville House Printing, 2011, p. 319.) Since Ecuador is poor, they are reduced to the status of debtor, and forced to sell their most valuable assets to raise themselves and their people out of poverty.
The perversion of this logic can be found in the Loess Plateau. As Herbert Stein put it in the economic law that bears his name, "Any system that can't go on forever, won't." China recognized this, and is taking steps to avoid future dust storms and clogged rivers, as well as increasing the agricultural production of the Plateau itself.
Our own US and western world's addiction to petroleum (and other ancient carbon fuels) can't go on forever either; every drive miles to the next frivolous destination has exactly the same effect as tilling barren soil. Without facing this hard fact, though, places like the Yasuni will continue to fall.
That hard truth, though, is impossible to relate to economists who dismiss any symptom of unsustainable practices with words like "externality."
(no subject)
Date: 9/9/13 19:19 (UTC)I can think of half a dozen companies where this is exactly their modus operandus. Comcast wouldn't have customers if you didn't count the angry ones. Also, there are a few others that were taught a legal lesson only after they lost a key lawsuit challenging said MO. The biggest that comes to mind is McDonalds. The movie Hot Coffee well documents what happened there.
(no subject)
Date: 9/9/13 20:50 (UTC)The McDonald's case was unjustly ruled in favor of the woman, IMO.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 00:21 (UTC)I'd actually agree with that. Corporate capture at its most egregious.
The McDonald's case was unjustly ruled in favor of the woman, IMO.
I heard details of the case from overhearing some trial lawyers that stunned me (and the jury, it seems). Those details were critical (and offer a brilliant counter-point to completely unfettered market activity!).
If you base your decision only on the media coverage, it's not surprising to me that you would reach that conclusion. Why people continue to describe the media as other than overwhelmingly corporate is still stunning to me. I long for the days out media was more liberal, more progressive.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/13 00:30 (UTC)Oy.
If you base your decision only on the media coverage
I don't. I reckon we've seen close to the same amount of information on it.