Review essay about "Free exchange: The natural question", Anonymous.The Economist; London Vol. 438, Iss. 9231, (Feb 6, 2021): 62.

 

This review essay may contain some errors about the objective truth. Also, this review essay is completely written by myself. Therefore might have a biased opinion. Please tell me if this essay includes some errors about the objective truth. Also, I like to hear your idea about my opinion. Please leave them on the comment.  

According to the UN, the values of produced capital such as machinery and buildings had increased about 100% from 1992 to 2014. It's roughly a double. However, during the same period, the values of human capital such as workers' labor and their skills increased only 13%, and even worse, natural capital had decreased about 40%. This phenomenon is one of the critical reason why environmental disaster is getting stronger. 

The value of nature quite enormous. 

We need nature for every resource. We need a trail for a light stroll, crops for the foods, fresh water to drink, and even air for the breath. From emotional things to something necessary, everything is from nature. People like to live near the woods and mountains rather than factories making a huge amount of smoke. 

Since human species need nature to extract resources and dump after using them, the increase of the human population is pretty threatening. 

About 1.6 earth is required if we use and discard resources at a current pace. And of course, we don't have 1.6 earth. We only have one.

From the article, the author insists that the efficiency of our nature to GDP transformation is about 3.5%. But, if our civilization improves the efficiency to 10%, we can deal with our current nature problem without 1.6 earth.

For this, the author claims understanding the economics of biodiversity is helpful for the human-nature relationship. Therefore we have to make some mathematical models and calculate specifically. Then, make some political will to appeal crowd about how nature is important and why we have to save it. 

About the article, I definitely agree with the importance of nature. It is surely critical for our daily life. I will choose a house with the woods and river rather than factories. 

But, about the efficiency part, I can't find the basis for the efficiency part. Also about the mathematical part. Since evaluation tool for every human is different, it seems very hard to make such models. 

Thank you.