consuming things that prices indicate have become scarce. In a materialist culture of
competitive status-seeking, paying more means showing off—as the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ implies.
One example of this is the threatened Japanese bluefin tuna, whose very high
price has not reduced consumption, but actually made it even more desirable.
Indeed, in 2013 the first tuna of the year was sold for almost $2 million. This pretty
irrational market failure was described as ‘Sushinomics’ by the The Atlantic (Narula
2014). It bears out Daly and Farley’s observation that the maximum economically
and technologically feasible exploitation of nature might just be too high. Even
from a blatantly anthropocentric point of view, this will have disutility effects on all
the manufactured goods whose successful use is dependent on an intact environment, for example, diving masks worn to observe tuna. Nature, Daly and Farley
note, “provides a complementary service without which the utilities of most consumer goods are not very great” (Daly/Farley 2010: 163).
Worse, there are no price signals for all non-commodifiable ecosystem services.
These include the entire cyclical management of freshwater or a healthy atmosphere
in which multiple ecosystems like rivers, oceans, soils and forests are involved in
cleaning water and air so that they are fit for human consumption. Emission trading
schemes represent attempts to create markets for the waste absorbing or usefully
transforming sinks that form part of these ecosystems. In these schemes, producers
are supposed to buy CO 2 emission rights (e.g., the European Emissions Trading
System), or the owners of forests are compensated for the CO 2 extracted from the
atmosphere (e.g., the REDD+ mechanism under the UN Framework Convention for
Climate Change). The goal is to disincentivize both the use of CO 2 -emitting
resources and the destruction of CO 2 -absorbing ones so that the balance, or carrying
capacity of the atmosphere, can be restored.
However, the creation of markets for ecosystem services only works on single
atomized units of capital, like a ton of CO 2 , and thus tells us little about the whole
web of natural life. Living species interact and form complex ecosystems with
balancing feedback loops and food chains. Thus, overexploiting one type of
resource, or condemning one species to extinction may seem harmless. But without
an understanding of these intricate relationships, we may create a ‘missing link,’
glut or shortage in the dynamic reproduction circuits of basic life support systems
like water supply, pollination patterns or soil fertility (Daly/Farley 2010: 75–76).
To me, it sounds like a rational risk management strategy to amend these price
signals with some biophysical data tracking and sound regulations on usage limits.
This is particularly important given the minimal help that price signals can provide
for future-oriented precautionary governance of scarce resources: living complex
systems are unpredictable precisely because these development models are built
around a mechanical additive understanding in which single elements can be freely
subtracted and added without changing the overall dynamic. The Assessment
Reports of the IPCC, for example, calculate that, if the atmosphere is to stay within
its current dynamic equilibrium, a concentration of CO 2 somewhere between 350
and 450 ppm is all that the natural cycle of CO 2 transformation can take. If we
exceed this amount, all the ecosystems involved in the carbon cycle face changes
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance
85
competitive status-seeking, paying more means showing off—as the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ implies.
One example of this is the threatened Japanese bluefin tuna, whose very high
price has not reduced consumption, but actually made it even more desirable.
Indeed, in 2013 the first tuna of the year was sold for almost $2 million. This pretty
irrational market failure was described as ‘Sushinomics’ by the The Atlantic (Narula
2014). It bears out Daly and Farley’s observation that the maximum economically
and technologically feasible exploitation of nature might just be too high. Even
from a blatantly anthropocentric point of view, this will have disutility effects on all
the manufactured goods whose successful use is dependent on an intact environment, for example, diving masks worn to observe tuna. Nature, Daly and Farley
note, “provides a complementary service without which the utilities of most consumer goods are not very great” (Daly/Farley 2010: 163).
Worse, there are no price signals for all non-commodifiable ecosystem services.
These include the entire cyclical management of freshwater or a healthy atmosphere
in which multiple ecosystems like rivers, oceans, soils and forests are involved in
cleaning water and air so that they are fit for human consumption. Emission trading
schemes represent attempts to create markets for the waste absorbing or usefully
transforming sinks that form part of these ecosystems. In these schemes, producers
are supposed to buy CO 2 emission rights (e.g., the European Emissions Trading
System), or the owners of forests are compensated for the CO 2 extracted from the
atmosphere (e.g., the REDD+ mechanism under the UN Framework Convention for
Climate Change). The goal is to disincentivize both the use of CO 2 -emitting
resources and the destruction of CO 2 -absorbing ones so that the balance, or carrying
capacity of the atmosphere, can be restored.
However, the creation of markets for ecosystem services only works on single
atomized units of capital, like a ton of CO 2 , and thus tells us little about the whole
web of natural life. Living species interact and form complex ecosystems with
balancing feedback loops and food chains. Thus, overexploiting one type of
resource, or condemning one species to extinction may seem harmless. But without
an understanding of these intricate relationships, we may create a ‘missing link,’
glut or shortage in the dynamic reproduction circuits of basic life support systems
like water supply, pollination patterns or soil fertility (Daly/Farley 2010: 75–76).
To me, it sounds like a rational risk management strategy to amend these price
signals with some biophysical data tracking and sound regulations on usage limits.
This is particularly important given the minimal help that price signals can provide
for future-oriented precautionary governance of scarce resources: living complex
systems are unpredictable precisely because these development models are built
around a mechanical additive understanding in which single elements can be freely
subtracted and added without changing the overall dynamic. The Assessment
Reports of the IPCC, for example, calculate that, if the atmosphere is to stay within
its current dynamic equilibrium, a concentration of CO 2 somewhere between 350
and 450 ppm is all that the natural cycle of CO 2 transformation can take. If we
exceed this amount, all the ecosystems involved in the carbon cycle face changes
3.2 How Mainstream Economics Views Nature and Its Governance
85