CHAPTER TEN
Put a Number on the Value of Natural Capital
In an old joke, one fish asks another, “How’s the water?” The other fish answers, “What the heck is water?”
I first read a similar metaphor in the pioneering book Natural Capitalism, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins. For years, these authors—as well as other scientists, ecologists, and economists such as Gretchen Daily, Robert Costanza, Herman Daly, and E. F. Schumacher—have explored the value of everything the world provides our economy and lives, all called natural capital. Forests give us timber for homes and clean our water; fisheries and healthy soil feed us; the earth’s crust offers up its metals for cars, cities, and electronics; coastal wetlands and marshes protect ...
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