In fact, maybe every spot on Earth
has a certain mood, or states a certain truth, and if you are a species
evolving there, or if you're a human sensitive to what is going on there, what
eventually, inevitably results is a glad, simple, songlike expression conveying
that feeling or insight, passing it on to others.
Gloomy, shadowy forest brings forth
haunting, fluty thrush calls. The break of dawn on foggy mornings erupts in
good-natured turkey gobbling. The perspective of high perches watching over
lower worlds is the hawk's cry. Absolute freedom of movement inside the open
sky itself is Chimney-Swift twitter, and the sound of being earthbound looking
into the open sky -- that's the upward sweeping, tempo-increasing call
discovered independently by both the Field Sparrow and Prairie Warbler, in an
occasion of convergent spiritual evolution.
If such is the case, it can be
important, for it suggests that when finally all our forests, fields and
marshes are destroyed, if just one sprig of crabgrass remains on an eroded
knoll, and there comes to this place just one child to behold what is there,
think about it, love it, and hear what it has to say, then wisdom and hope can
be reborn again.
****
PUTTING A PRICE ON NATURE
The other day, for an online magazine in Holland,
I wrote an essay on how -- if we are to save Life on Earth -- we humans must
awaken from our hypnotic trances, begin seeing things clearly, and change our
behaviors. Dirk Damsma, a professional economist at the University of Amsterdam,
wrote saying that he agreed, and asked me what I thought about protecting
nature by putting a price on it.
"... as soon as nature can be
priced, protecting it can become profitable," he suggested. Here was my
reply:
I disagree with your idea that
placing a price on nature is the best way to protect it.
The workings of market forces
seldom live up to the promise of their theoretical underpinning, supply and
demand. Market prices are much distorted by such things as subsidies, sales
taxes, embargos and the rapacious, self-serving behavior of very rich and
powerful people and organizations. There is no reason to believe that if we
apply market principles to nature the things of nature will ever be designated
as having prices even approaching their real values. If we should "put a
price on nature," I can visualize our politicians spending billions on
propaganda saying we are protecting Bambi, but not spending a cent protecting
the habitat real animals need.