Lately, I have been thinking constantly about value. My first formal, taught framework for value was economic utility. My former professor at UChicago, Michael Greenstone, joked in his lectures that talking of value in ‘utils’ is silly because no one outside of economics would understand it. Money, then, is used to assess value of every entity, including nature. What an idea!
The more you think about it, valuing nature and her elements in a man-made, largely theoretical, transactional unit is an absurd idea. What is the monetary value of a polar bear? Of the phenomenon of puhpowee? Do we even value it? (I co-wrote a white paper that answers this: we don’t.)
Anything that is not valued, but can affect the value of a central entity, is labeled an ‘externality’ in economics. An externality could be positive or negative (think the aesthetic pleasure from hiking in nature // carbon emissions, water pollution). This misvaluation of environmental elements - trees, bees, vultures - and the ‘ecosystem services’ they provide - oxygen provision, pollination, hygienists - is slowly being realized as the chief driver of unbridled extraction. So is the non-valuation of human-imposed harm on the allohuman world.
Read: Destruction ensues undervaluation of nature and harm to her. (NYT)
This thread of thought started when I built a framework for valuing nature and her elements in academia in a multi-discliplinary, entangled manner. A snippet of the framework, TIERRA:
T: Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Every research project should undergo consultation with the local, resident Native community, and intentionally integrate their input into research framing. This also involves correctly and equally attributing scholarship to Native wisdom-holders.
I: Inquiry & Thesis
Retaining rigor of analysis.
E: Environmental and Multispecies Ethnography
Multispecies Ethnography is an emergent area of scholarship that is critically formalising a number of methodologies to engage with allohumans.
R: Research: Empirics
Combine qualitative and quantitative data. Both forms must be in complementarity, and offer composite learnings.
R: Rhetoric and Environmental Humanities
Various forms of environmental writing often encapsulates phenomena in a more descriptive and vivid manner than physical and social sciences can. Such texts bring a consciousness of an 'eco-logic’ which places the mind and the land alongside, and creates spaces to engage in entanglements.
A: Art
Multi-form art is crucial in giving frame to and familiarise human experiencers to the allohuman phenomena.
A question to affect change is: how to value what’s previously been valued at near-zero? How to incorporate every harm to nature, and on the other hand, the life-giving provisions of the natural world into the economy, into our societal norms? TIERRA - both, the framework and newsletter, are very much works in progress.
Some realizations are at the solid base of this project: (a) we cannot simply put a dollar tag on nature, (b) valuation must be an multi-perspective concept, and (c) polluters only understand a dollar tag on harm to nature, so impose heavy penalty on any hurt Mama Earth bears. You’ll hear a lot more from me on value 🌎
A News Good, A News Bad
Global investment in renewable energy technologies totaled $1.1 trillion in 2022. In a first-ever, this amount is almost equal to the investments in coal, oil, and gas for the first time. (BloombergNEF)
On February 1, over 700 gallons of diesel fuel spilled at the Maui Space Force Surveillance Complex on the summit of Haleakala, Hawai’i. It’s a developing news so the impacts of the pollution remain to be seen. (Hawai’i News Now)
Culture Corner
Use of natural gas stoves have always been a serious environmental and health problem. Though they were in the limelight in January because of a proposed ban, with heavy debate. As much as I love smoky flavors, it is time we ban the pollutant-guzzling equipments.
In Getting Warmer With Kal Penn, a new 12-part Bloomberg show, the comedian is walking us through cutting-edge climate solutions and the people behind them.
Hey there, ermine! Source: U.S. National Park Service.
Love it!