The Global Ponzi Scheme revisited
The Economist has an interesting article talking about the true cost of goods and services we take for granted when the environmental impact is measured and accounted for. This is also Lester Brown’s argument, which I wrote about recently. Mr. Brown calls it a Global Ponzi scheme.
In The Economist’s article, the author writes about the destruction of mangrove swamps in Thailand to make shrimp farms. Profits per hectare were nearly $10,000 and accounted for by the private sector, but the public cost of the farms include generous government subsidies, increased pollution, and the loss of the mangroves’ natural role in the ecosystem which includes protection against violent storms and a source of food and medicine for local people. What looks good in an accounting ledger for the private sector masks the public cost spread over society as large that appears in no ledger at all.
My wife taught agroforestry in Cameroon for the Peace Corps. Her job was to teach her village how forests protect their farms by preventing the wind from blowing away all their topsoil. Preventing erosion is noted in The Economist article’s second sentence:
In 360BC Plato remarked on the helpful role that forests play in preserving fertile soil; in their absence, he noted, the land was turned into desert, like the bones of a wasted body.
Some things never change, though the lessons often need to be continually relearned.