Externalities and the Sacred

A recent report by Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program concluded the following, “The huge profit margins being made by the world’s most profitable industries (oil, meat, tobacco, mining, electronics) is being paid for against the future: we are trading long term sustainability for the benefit of shareholders. Sometimes the environmental costs vastly outweigh(ed) revenue, meaning that these industries would be constantly losing money had they actually been paying for the ecological damage and strain they were causing.” ¹ This is a very important fact to recognize, as one considers the global economic and social system. However, I believe there is a deeper point to be grasped as we consider the report’s conclusions.

The notion that you can affix a monetary value to many of the "externalities" that the report identifies is the notion of a madman. To wit: if the neoincotinoids found in Monsanto's Roundup result in the catastrophic reduction or extinction of the monarch butterfly – as is occurring presently -- what price tag do we put upon such a crime? I recall visiting the shores of Lake Michigan with my mother in the 1970s and viewing great clusters of these floating miracles perched upon milkweed patches. As Monsanto seeks to remove wonder – in the form of bees and butterflies – from the planet, how many dollars do we assign to this extermination?

Answer: no dollars. The very essence of such elements of existence is that their value exists outside of financial calculus... because they are Sacred. With approximately 200 species going extinct daily, we exist in the epoch of the Sixth Great Extinction on earth and this event is being forced by... "externalities."

The world of the global market is the world of desacralized life. It is a slow motion crime scene.

^{1 http://www.exposingtruth.com/new-un-report-finds-almost-no-industry-profitable-if-environmental-costs-were-included/}