As the debate about how to revive our economy while sustaining our environment heats up, it's important to remember that the economic driver truly "too big to fail" is Mother Nature herself.
It's been calculated that nature's "Ecosystem Services" are worth over $33 trillion dollars a year – nearly double the size of the global economy. And while that figure is important for putting a value on Nature's contributions to the economy, it belies the fact that without nature we could not survive at all.
So the true value of natural services? Priceless.
In their seminal work "Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on BioDiversity," Harvard M.D.'s teamed up with Oxford University Press, the U.N. Environment Program, and famed biologist E.O. Wilson to compile a comprehensive picture of how diverse species and ecosystems provide "materials, conditions, and processes that sustain all life on this planet, including human life."
Here's a look at the Top 10 things Mother Nature does for us for free, year after year, that we couldn't even begin to do ourselves without her:
In the largest event of its kind, Plug In America assembled 75 plug-in vehicles to rally and then drive in formation through the streets of Santa Monica on Saturday. The diverse assembly of electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes included RAV4's, sexy new Tesla's, a converted GeoMetro that a couple did in their garage, a powerful offroad Jeep that runs on 20 golf-cart batteries, electric motorcycles, a schoolbus, and even a 50 ton truck from the Port of Los Angeles that is used to haul cargo containers.
What will it take to build a Green Economy? And how long?
These were the questions on the table as Governor Schwarzenegger opened the Building Green Economies Forum as part of the XXVI Annual Border Governors Conference. Experts including academics, nobel laureates, labor leaders and clean-tech CEO’s offered their strategies for building a green economy, as well as predictions about when oil will be an ‘alternative’ fuel.
With landfills across the nation bursting at the seams, there are signs of renewed interest in burning solid wastes. Using advanced gasfication methods, companies can now produce energy from a host of materials with virtually no emissions.And while this is certainly better than just dumping trash in a landfill, is it really better than simply recycling and reusing those materials?
The richest woman in the world is a Chinese billionaire whose fortune dwarfs Oprah Winfrey’s or JK Rowling's. How does she make her money? Buying our waste paper and selling it back to us.
The amount of computers, laptops, cellphones, and TV’s we throw out every year would literally stack up to the sky. Where does it all go, and why should manufacturers and marketers be worried?
How can printed electronics, advanced bio-refineries, and a few...
Experts warn that declining water supply and failing water infrastructure globally may soon become the world’s next energy crisis if meaningful action isn't taken. “We need to pay attention to water,...
A lot of people are scratching their heads right now as we watch bank after bank melt down. Huge financial institutions with billions of dollars on their books, thousands of employees and decades of experience are crumbling...
We live in a world of increasing complexity, constant change, and unprecedented problems. It is clear that the old ways of doing virtually everything must be radically re-examined. And while the crises we face are many...
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