In a January op-ed in Science, ecologist Jaboury Ghazoul wistfully and wittily ponders how far the 789 billion stimulus bill recently passed by the US Congress could go toward saving our planet’s embattled life-forms.
In his essay, Ghazoul suggests we put the 700 billion “in the context of the species extinction crisis”.
According to various scientific analyses the extinction rate is currently 100 to 1,000 times the average. Such a catastrophic loss of species—while making the world a lonelier and less interesting place—will unpredictably reshape ecosystems we depend on, causing social, political, and economic upheaval.
 The endangered salt marsh harvest mouse. Photo by Paul Kelly. Courtesy of the EPA. |
Ghazoul writes that if we estimate the number of species on earth as 10 million then “to ward against extinction, we could equitably award $70,000 to each and every one of these 10 million species from our $700 billion cash injection.”
As an ecologist who has worked largely with plants and insects, Ghazoul describes how such species may benefit from their share of the stimulus: “In Borneo, the 350 or so species of dipterocarp trees could form a union to demand existence rights, using their $25 million to lobby for viable landscape mosaics in which they could persist alongside competing land uses…The 43 species of ants from E. O. Wilson’s single leguminous tree at the Tambopata Reserve in Peru could pool their resources to buy about 150,000 hectares of Amazonian forest (at $20 per hectare)…Even copepods, those diminutive denizens of the deep, would receive just short of $1 billion, yet their ubiquity will ensure that they would have little need of such financial security.”
Of course not every species is threatened with extinction. For those currently safe, Ghazoul imagines a grand savings plan. “The roughly 7.5 million species not considered at risk could bank their collective $525 billion, hedging their bets against some future need. The interest thereby generated could subsidize species with greater financial and conservation needs and, if reinvested, could maintain the capital stock.”
Perhaps ironically, one of the spending programs that pundits have jumped on from an early version of the stimulus package was a proposal for conserving wetlands in California that would aid the salt marsh mouse, an endangered species that has lost 85 percent of its habitat. Critics were dismayed that the species—and the wetlands that sustain them—were to receive 30 million dollars under the stimulus.
But, though this item is continually brought up by critics, there is no money in the stimulus for California wetlands or the salt marsh mouse. However, perhaps, that’s beside the point. The anger at this false tale shows how little people still value ecosystems—like wetlands—which provide clean water for consumption, places for fishing and recreation, and, yes, habitats for species on the edge of extinction.
What then would be so bad if California’s wetlands received 30 million dollars—and one species, at least, could be saved? Ghazoul’s essay, while tongue-in-cheek, is serious both about the plight of species worldwide and the fact that the global environmental crisis is continuing to be ignored.
“But where would $700 billion come from?” Ghazoul ponders regarding his hopeful version of the package. “From borrowing, of course. We have been borrowing from Nature’s capital for nigh on the last few centuries—is it not time we paid some back?”
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