Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
(and far from negligible) energy cost. That said, the authors do not deny the need
for “cleaning” nor for the investing in the prevention of further catastrophes. Disor-
der leads to further disorder. Yet cleaning, even if a preventive action, still requires
a considerable sacrifice of additional resources. And hence, the paradox still holds.
From the viewpoint of the Second Law, however, the only radical way to keep
the natural capital intact is via “no production and therefore no restoration”. As
this is humanly impossible, the accountants' maxim of keeping the natural cap-
ital intact is a fallacy, unless they explicitly account for the somewhat shrouded
influence of the sun as time goes by
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. Strong sustainability measures are costlier
today than those of weak sustainability, since the greater the number of restoration
activities, the higher their energy and material costs
13
. Additionally, the current
economic paradigm is one of converting any asset to its present day value, not only
in accounting but also in physical terms, i.e., resources extracted in the future will
be worth less than those extracted today. It is perhaps little wonder that the “NPV”
advocates tend to opt for the leaner and frankly cheaper sustainability measures.
If one were to strictly follow the accountant's maxim from an entropy law per-
spective, the ultimate sustainable economic objective of production and restoration
of biotic natural capital would consist of affecting so weakly the environment that
the sun alone would restore any environmental deterioration. Regarding minerals,
the Law dictates that Man should live only with recycled materials and use only
renewable energy, thereby avoiding any further fuel and non-fuel mineral extrac-
tion. This is of course an extreme conservationist and today unimaginable stance
but this reflection allows for a deeper analysis of the suitability of natural capital
as a concept, which is undertaken in the following section.
2.5.5 Mineral capital or mineral endowment?
The accountant's concept of “keeping capital intact” implies the complete exchange-
ability between goods and money. Accordingly, monetary capital is used to offset
any good's depreciation. At this point, it should be stated that the concept of
natural capital, whilst comparable, does not fit exactly with the idea of manmade
capital. In fact, there are important discrepancies.
Natural capital can be classified into biotic and abiotic. For the former, keeping
capital intact entails conserving biodiversity, i.e. conserving each and every species
and their dynamic interrelations. However, whilst one can substitute pork with beef
or poultry with relatively only minor socioeconomic problems, it is not possible in
Nature to substitute the same amount of biota in daisies than that in butterflies.
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If mankind stands back and does nothing, Nature will eventually regenerate with the help of
the sun's energy. Yet “her” regeneration timescale is vastly different to that of humans, which can
be shortened but not without an extensive use of energy (usually a fuel).
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Even if this is true, it is equally true that measures for repairing Nature are often “preven-
tive” actions that avoid worse situations in the future. The authors therefore advocate strong
sustainability measures even if they are costlier today.
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