Nature and you

This is kind of a two part post- first, I want to touch on a topic that came up in my Conservation Biology class today, and then I have a video for your enjoyment.

So today in Con. Bio., we had a guest speaker who talked about environmental economics. (Coincidentally, he had done his graduate/doctorate work at UMD-College Park...Go Terps!). He brought up that the difficulty of environmental economics can be found in the determination of the value of non-market goods and services provided by the natural world. For example, how much is biodiversity worth? Or the (re)cycling of nutrients through the soil? It's very hard to put a dollar figure on goods and services provided by the natural world.

For some, the natural world has more value than when seen through the eyes of someone else, and in fact, we are increasingly trying to replace or substitute nature. Just think of salicylic acid, or aspirin; it can be found in the bark and leaves of the willow tree, which has been the source of salicylic acid for pain relief since the time of Hippocrates. Now, we can manufacture it chemically, in a very simple reaction. I am not against this, as I would much rather see aspirin come from a lab than from killing thousands of willow trees*, but it is an example of the replacement of nature. When this happens, for some people, the value of nature has decreased, because it is harder to defend the intrinsic value of nature if it is not providing direct goods and services.
*Of course, this is not to say that aspirin produced in a lab is more "environmentally friendly", and I don't know the answer to this, but I suspect there is more to consider than just lab vs. environment. But that's not the point here!

On a related note, we show what we value by what we buy. Demand and the price we are willing to play all have an important role in determining how much we value something (whether that is goods or services). Or in other words, you vote with your money! Which leads us back to the question of how to put a monetary value on the environment? And should we even do this? (Can we work to protect/conserve/sustain-whatever word you want to use- the environment without putting a value to it? Does our human nature allow us to do this?) Questions, questions......

And now, for the video. World Wildlife Fund had a video contest, "Life. Nature. You", and this video was one of the winning videos. I think it's a great example of how close we are to nature everyday, and that it doesn't take a lot to find the beauty close to home!