(In response to Sheril Kirshenbaum's guest blog about the need for water conservation at the NPR 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog.)
Water quality is threatened by what is now common practice: injection of highly poisonous chemicals into the ground. There are tens of thousands of points where this is happening around the nation. (Hundreds of thousands around the world?)
Putting a fee on the taking of water or other natural resources is the best (most efficient and fair) way to give incentive to conserve the resources. Natural wealth belongs to all. This method of managing natural resource wealth is fair if fee proceeds are shared with all people.
Sharing fee proceeds will ensure that, in adopting a policy to provide necessary information and incentives to economic actors, we do not impoverish the people at large.
Information about potentially harmful stress to ecosystems caused by excess taking of water (and other resources) from the natural environment is transmitted through the human economy and society in a way analogous to the way that information about other kinds of harm enters other kinds of neural networks. Fees on environmental impact function as signals of a global neural network, acting so as to reduce harm to ecosystems. Like a sensory nervous system for Earth.
http://gaiabrain.blogspot.com/2007/09/gaia-brain-integration-of-human-society.html
Wed Apr 25 2012 08:36:58 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
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