Right now the Society for Conservation Biology is polling its members to see how much they are willing to pay to offset SCBs carbon emissions, the vast majority of which stem from its members flying to the annual conference. It's a good idea in principle and ESA should probably consider a similar approach. However, what seems to be often overlooked in environmental and even ecological economics is that the act of expenditure itself entails the liquidation of natural capital somewhere and concommitant carbon release.
Imagine how much damage it would entail if we had to pay using a ridiculous example to make the point a trillion dollars to offset SCBs carbon. A trillion dollars entails a lot of agricultural/extractive surplus (the origins of money), and regardless of how green the agriculture and extraction is, at that scale it would cause far more damage than that caused by SCBs carbon. We need an estimate of per-dollar-natural-capital liquidation to make decisions about what price for carbon offsetting will actually pay a net environmental benefit. This research need is a major application for those engaged in ecological footprinting and I am wondering if anyone has seen anything published yet in this regard. I have seen figures on comparative energy intensity of nations GDP; not the same though closely related... Brian Czech, President Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy WWW.STEADYSTATE.ORG Sign the position on economic growth at: http://steadystate.org/PositiononEG.html
