Ehrlich and Ehrlich
"Valuable as ecosystem goods are however, they are increasingly being replaced by goods from human managed systems"
p. 197
"replaced by goods from human managed systems" that create a tragedy of the commons.
"Energy is a key concept" --is "the ability to effect change in our physical world."
"Matter is just another form of energy"
"The rule that energy can neither be created nor destroyed is the famous 'first law of thermodynamics.'"
p. 176
Consumption (is related closely to the "A"
variable in I = PAT formula)
We face a series of entwined dilemmas
these are ecological in character and arise form
social conditions
numbers and density of people
patterns of consumption
susceptibility to epidemics
distribution of basic resources
wealth
food
people
p. 232
"The continued failure to ask what humans really want...
¥ the poor a better level of living
.... could endanger the well being of even the rich
instability
debilitating costs
continuous resource wars
p. 233
These are socially created ecologically consequential matters that are converging:
1). That class of problems that have no technical solution:
"freedom to breed in a commons is intolerable."
Garrett Hardin
2). That class of items that have no economic value:
"A tree has no economic value until it is cut down."
Gloria Steinham
a tree – pumps water, transforms radiation into oxygen, holds the soil, shades
forests – are watershed
buffers, source of springs, wildlife, renewable carbon bank
Any forest is an association of mutualistic
soil bacteria and plants, tied to commensal soil fungi, lichens, and animal
life that survives in unison withstanding long-term climatic variations,
periodic weather disruptions, intermittent fires, and regular depletion of nutrient
conditions due to a means of compensation that often escapes the market value
of lumber, or hunting preserves, or even protection of steep slopes as
insurance against floods.
