Benefits Beyond Calculation
This morning I listened to a podcast featuring Dr Edward O. Wilson, Pelligrino University Research Professor, scientific humanist and sociobiologist. He was joined by Harvard theologian Harvey Cox to consider the fate of the creation. Below is an extract from Dr Wilson's speech on the state of the biosphere and an empowering call to reasonable action.
"What are doing about it?... We are engaged in mapping the hotspots of the world... areas like the forest of Madagascar, the western gap, rainforest of West Africa, Sri Lanka, New Calendonia, the rainforest of Hawaii- the extinction capital of America, and so on...
34 of these richest of the hotspots cover only 2.3% of the land surface of the world, but they have within them nearly half of all the known species of plants and animals. Save them by whatever means its takes and you can save a lot of the Life.
Add to them some major core areas of the remaining tropical rainforest wilderness Amazon, Congo and New Guinea and your covering 70% of the known species. And how much would it cost to do that, one payment of approximately 30 Billion dollars... 1/1000th of the annual world domestic product of 30 Trillion dollars...
We can solve this problem, but we haven't got the will yet... The cost is not very high and the benefits are beyond calculation, I repeat the benefits are beyond calculation.
A civilisation able to envision God in an Afterlife is surely going to find a way to save the integrity of this magnificent planet and the life it harbours. I will close by a quote from my friend the late John Sawhill, president of the Nature Conservancy...
"Society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.""
Labels: Lectures
posted by Arthur Josephson @ 11:43 AM
3 Comments:
I just realised that Warren Buffett's 2005 donation to the Gates Foundation, or Bill Gates' donations since 2006 could have preserved 70% of the worlds biodiversity instead. Similarly, the required $30 billion was spent on Federal Relief from Hurricane Katrina. Exxon Mobil could pay it and still dish out $6 billion to shareholders from last years profits. Finally, it is less than 10% of the $360 billion that has been spent by the US on the Iraq war.
I've red an article that says it would cost about 300 billion US$ to develope techniques and machines to provide the whole world with non-fossile regenerative energy. It is so cheap, but the question is always, will it be done in time? And how to achieve it? We mostly know what should be done, but not how to realize it.
Schnitzel
Cant you post the article link?
Sounds like a bit of a rough guess as a: its such a massive amount of money its hard to say that they couldnt do it for that, b: before the theory and technology is developed any guess at cost is premature.
I say a safer bet is to secure the worlds biodiversity first- at 10% of the cost.
Post a Comment
<< Home