Barry Commoner has advocating the idea of simply banning chemicals when trying to regulate them because of their poisonous aspects becomes very complex.  It seems to me that the same principle could be applied to ecosystems -- the knowledge base is simply not good enough.

20% removed, the remaing 80% is then reduced by another 5th the next year and so forth.  Until no biomass is left in the soil, that eliminates the ability of the soil to remove cO2 from the atmosphere. Then more fossil fuel based fertilizer is added to continue the process.  

Resulting in an exponential rise in GHGs from cellulosic ethanol.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Remember, though, that pre-European inhabitants "managed" and tended their landscapes. The thought that "forests have thrived for millions of years without our help" is a pretty bogus piece of rhetoric. Proper management practices will take decades to reduce the extreme fuel loading of 80 years. Both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have made the problems worse.

And where do the candidates stand on National Forest issues?? I don't think you'd get a straight answer out of any of them, Republican or Democrat. It seems that the national consensus is that whatever happens will happen and we'll have to be happy with less forests, both in our lifetimes and for our grandchildren.

Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com

Considering the discount rate idea, we have to start by considering it along with its companion intertwined concepts that infect economic rationalizations, including opportunity cost and the necessity for growth.

In fact, the discount rate idea is least harmful if applied only to income streams, because it's an attempt to compare apples to apples (I'll accept 100 units of currency today -- if you make me wait a year to be paid in that currency, I want more than 100).

So if we just stuck to discounting actual streams of income to enable us to compare different projected inflows and outflow streams, then it's a reasonable tool.

But economists, like the proverbial folks who only have a hammer and thus find that everything looks like a nail, make the leap to valuing "ecosystem services" in monetary units as well.  Therefore, on paper, these can be (and inexorably are) discounted.

Thus, these sums are put into a set of simultaneous equations to produce a decision curve that shows, if the assumed discount rate is X, the forest should be clearcut; if Y, clearcut it next year, etc.  Monetizing "ecosystem services" reduces the natural world to an input to these systems of analysis, where it's literally "irrational" to preserve the environment.

The other claw in the discounting pincer is the a priori assumption of economic growth and increased money supply (which means that money is automatically worth less over time, because its growth far outpaces any increase in the true capital that the fictional money supposedly represents).  Basically it's the self-fulfilling prophecy approach to policy: we know we plan to keep inflating the currency to promote "growth," so just to stay "even" we have to discount future currency flows to compare their value.

A last stinger in the discounting idea is the myth that the future will be richer than the present.  In about 1750 we started a long project of living well above our means, living on principal rather than interest (by switching from renewables to fossil fuels).  At that point, material wealth exploded, and population has naturally followed -- the curves for energy consumption per capita and population look, to a very close degree, identical.  

Our autistic economic models confuse income with principal and don't allow us to see that our gross annual "production" is not production at all, but rather is liquidation of assets.  In other words, we've been madly consuming irreplaceable energy and converting it to material wealth to the point where we will soon be unable to keep it up -- and then we're going to find that the future is NOT wealthier than the past.  So, in addition to the monetary debts that we're shoving onto them, the future is going to find that we've shoved a bunch of environmental problems onto them, thanks to discounting.  

For example, propose spending $100 billion on cleaning up Superfund sites and the response you will get is that you have to consider the amount of risk reduction that the $100 billion buys, where the cost of cancer to someone in future generations is discounted (because, after all, we go in assuming that they are going to be richer, so why should we tax ourselves today to pay full fare for their cancer avoidance?)  Economics doesn't want to deal with the reality that our future prospects are for a much POORER world, to the point where environmental cleanups we fail to do today are probably never going to occur at all --- we'll simply say "too bad."

[Of course, this all changes if a set of miracles occur and we figure out how to make real fusion reactors work--but I graduated from a top fusion research school a long time ago and can tell you that the progress we've made since then is only called "progress" charitably.]

The 5% Project

Second, according to J.R. McNeill in "Something New Under the sun: an environmental history of the 20th century", which is an excellent discussion of environmental problems in general, and according to plenty of other research as well, one of the main motivations to moving to coal in the 1700s was the overuse and destruction of England's forests in order to make charcoal -- much of that used by blacksmiths to make tools, which is one reason I am skeptical of those who think we can move back to preindustrial technologies.  So, hopefully I'm not being nit-picky, but our civilizations have been using the principal for a very long time, which leads to

Third, I think we should measure national or global wealth is by counting wealth-generating assets, not income.  So if oil is being used or forests destroyed or steel mills being milked and left to rot, the gross domestic capital is declining, not increasing

Finally, I think there is some complicated interplay between discount rate and depreciation.  Depreciation is, ideally, a measure of how much needs to be reinvested in machinery in order to keep a factory running.  If you apply the discount rate and only the discount rate, you're in effect arguing for milking your capital equipment (including ecosystems) until they collapse.  

Since economics has an enormous, basically insurmountable problem in discussing long-term economic processes, it seems to me that even using the concept of discount rate when discussing long-term economics doesn't make any sense (by the way, the radical economist Alice Amsden once wrote an article called "Otiose Economics").

(2) Doesn't the beauty of this supposed win-win situation assume that there are absolutley no links between once ecosystem and another? For example, in calculating the value of the mangrove system, do the economists consider the possibility that a 20% reduction in mangroves might result in a 20% reduction in the population of a certain species of fish which breeds there but plays a critical role in another ecosystem, which cannot cope with a 20% reduction of that fish? Perhaps if the infinite-growth crowd would actually cough up money for ecologists to study the role of EVERY SINGLE SPECIES on the Earth, we culd figure this out. But I'm willing to bet they don't want to pay for that... and are not including the cost of doing so in their calculations.

(3) Doesn't the beauty of this system assume that all current ecosystems are 100% intact and functional? As Ms. Lowry points out, we've reached the point where most, if not all, ecosystems are already severely degraded. Is there 80%, 70%, 20% of any system left???!!! For example, less than 1% of the original tallgrass prairie of North America remains. Does this means the infinite-growth people will say enough is enough... no more prairie will be sacrificed for development or agriculture? Indeed, will they say we must restore it to 80% its original range? I doubt it. They'll apply their analytical tools to the remaining fraction.

(4) So many species are on the threshold of extinction because there breeding population is already reduced by habitat destruction, pollution, hunting, introduction of non-native species, introduction of exotic diseases, et cetera, that losing a mere 10% of their habitat could push them over the edge of extinction. There is no way a bunch of bean counters, given the minimal support of ecological inventories, could have enough information to determine exactly how much habitat can be destroyed.

(5) It is funny -- not in a good way -- that the assumption of non-linearity is interpreted as follows... carving off a small bit of an ecosystem, as much as 20%, is fine because it will still be 90% functional. Couldn't carving off a small bit of ecosystem, just 20%, leave it, say, 30% functional? Perhaps removing 20% would shut the whole thing down? Or the result depends on which 20% you carve off?

I wonder whether the researchers would be okay if someone deprived them of 20% of their income? Or 20% of their house? Or 20% of their food? Or 20% of their oxygen?

Would it be rude to point out that "economics" doesn't "want" anything, any more than "science" "wants" anything, or "history" "wants" anything?

Economics is a way of looking at things, a set of assumptions, models, analytical tools, etc. As a field of study, it has no desired set of outcomes.

Someone, I forget whom, once said something to the effect that science is an approach, a method, a way of looking at the world. So to are art history, music theory, theology, and the rest. Specific economists might have certain goals in mind when they argue this or that point, but I don't think that you can reasonably advance the position that Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, Joe Stiglitz, and George Stigler all want the same outcomes because they all hold degrees in the same discipline. There are at least one or two economists out there that do not believe in a)unlimited growth, b) that the future will necessarily be wealthier than the past, c) that comparative advantage is the basis for trade, or d)infinite growth of any money supply is possible or desirable. A straw man that big is a serious fire hazard.

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.

"If the roots are healthy..."

The roots of this economy ARE being severed.  A productive, creative workforce in a democratic workplace.  That is the root of US economic success.  That is being "outsourced".

The really tragic part, you know that if that workforce turned to making renewable energy and conservation devices and plugin hybrids, like they fervently want to do, the garden would bloom again in spring.

It is the boardroom dictators, backed by petty political tyrnats, that keeps working people from doing what they like to do.  Beating the world in manufacturing, productivity, and innovation.

An honest, satifying  day's work for the highest quality of life they can provide for their families.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I'll second the props for the Bliss article. One thought stuck me though, at the end. Maybe some informed Gristers could chime in:

"Less than 2% of US citizens now farm. This number must increase, if we are to survive. Farming can be fun and educational, as well as put food on our tables and build communities."

OK, many of the small farmers and other rural folks I know are solid environmentalists who display a deep connection to the land and its rhythms. Many are hunters and fisherman, but not the types that you would see on the TV "outdoors" shows. Their approach to the environment is practical and traditional, rather than theoretical. They are situated in the landscape- Leopold is the model here-in a way that urban folks are not. I agree that we would be better off if more of us understood our connectedness to nature as well as a sustainable farmer.

But, if more of us go back to the soil, won't that mean more acres under cultivation, more deforestation, more irrigation water, more runoff,etc.?

I mean, I like the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal as much as the next guy. And I agree that we need to be closer to our food. Much closer. There isn't a single sentiment in the Bliss quote with which I disagree. But I also wonder what impact a large scale move in this direction would have on what remains of our natural landscape.

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but what I think Bliss has in mind is a more careful, more intensive, more labor-intensive, and more productive cultivation of the soil. Not more acres under the plow. Perhaps actually less.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.