Mother Gaia gone viral - Peaceful Environment Management

An image of Mother Gaia has gone viral lately. A human apologizes to her for killing nature, and she replies that humans are just killing themselves, nature will move on and the human race won't be missed.

All environmental problems are inherently social problems - and they can all be boiled down to "The Tragedy of The Commons" or "Open Access Resources" - this video (see below) explains in 3 minutes what that is. And like any other social problem, it cannot be solved with brute violent force.

The Gaia image is widely posted, often by people who endorse the use of coercive power to violently regulate other people's behaviour. Little do those people realize, that coercive intervention is either:

1. the cause of the environmental problems
2. in the worst case, it makes them worse
3. in the best case, it has no effect.

Peaceful sustainable solution

So here's how to solve environmental problems in a sustainable and non-violent way. What would you do, if you had saved up money or taken a loan to buy an asset of great value? You'd have the incentive to make sure that you get the same value or more in return when you sell it again - and that you can yield a sustainable profit from your asset without destroying it.

A traditional fisherman does not have that incentive - his incentive is to get as much fish out of the ocean as possible before someone else does. A farmer on the contrary, owns the assets that he makes his profit from, so he will take care to yield a sustainable profit every year and make sure that his land has the same or higher value when he sells it again some day. The farmer may damage common resources through his farming as well, though - atmosphere, nearby rivers and lakes and the ocean. Because - TADAA - he doesn't own it and no one else does! Hence his incentive is to use that resource before someone else does. However, if someone owns that river or lake and that piece of the ocean and that piece of the atmosphere - the farmer would have to either compensate him or stop damaging it. And whoever owns those assets has exactly the same incentives - they invested a lot and will make sure not to waste their investment.

As for the fisherman, if he owns (and invested a lot in) his fish stock or patch of ocean as the farmer owns his livestock and piece of land - there would be no problem. He would have the correct incentives.

If the farmer decides to change his business to a waste dump, he will have to consider the harm the waste will do to the re-selling value of his land. He would probably decide to charge more for batteries and plastic than for organic waste. Hence the consumers would have to pay the full price for getting rid of their waste, which in turn would give the industry the correct incentive to develop cleaner technologies.


Finally: Keep in mind that value is subjective. When two people make a peaceful voluntary agreement, they both experience growth. Hence, economic growth is not linked to physical growth. If you and lots of other people subjectively value having access to unspoiled nature, then you are willing to pay for that - hence it becomes gradually more profitable for e.g. the farmer to provide unspoiled nature to consumers like you, rather than to use the land for farming or for dumping waste.