“If men in their greed cut forests that preserve and distill moisture, clear fields, take the shelter of trees from creeks and rivers, [and] drain the water from swamps so that they can be cleared and cultivated, they prevent vapor from rising. And if it does not rise, it cannot fall.”

– Gene Stratton-Porter, quoted in “The Legend of Limberlost” by Kathryn Aalto, Smithsonian Magazine

Americans value money over life. I first grasped this when I was at a European meeting talking public health practice with colleagues. They were talking about policy decision when I suddenly realized they weren’t talking about prevention as a way to save money; they weren’t even talking about it as a way to save lives. They were talking about preventing disease so as to make people’s lives better. My brain missed a few beats, and then I asked, “You mean to say: you don’t have to justify it by arguing that it will save money?” They looked at me as if I was daft. “We do it for better health.”

I thought about that for a long time. I’m still thinking about it.

For Canadian geneticist, television presenter, and environmentalist David Suzuki, the “aha!” moment came on Haida Gwaii, when he was in a shouting match with a logger who had come to kill trees that First Peoples were protecting. In The Autobiography, he describes his shock when the logger shouts that the trees aren’t worth anything until he cuts them down. That was the moment when Suzuki realized that from the point of view of an economist, life on earth was an “external” of no value. Some call this economic rationalism. Few North Americans recognize it.

So if you only recognize life as having value in the form of the willingness to pay that has been measured in studies of health economics, the World Wide Fund for Nature, Global Trade Analysis Project, and the Natural Capital Project are constructing a Global Futures model of the economic worth of the living world, from which they have generated a first report. This report does not include the effects of catastrophic collapse (such as turning the Amazon rainforest into savanna), and includes only six of twenty pre-defined “ecosystem services.” Even so, in the U.S., business as usual will result in a -$82.5bn change in annual GDP by 2050, whereas conservation will result in a lesser -$39.7bn change. The corresponding global figures are -$9.87 trillion for business as usual and +$0.23 trillion with global conservation. In other words, neglect of life is about to exact a huge loss with regard to measures that many people who think in money take as valid indicators of future well-being. You can expect the projected loss to increase radically as the model becomes more complete.

The emerging paradigm would do far better if life were measured as the key parameter that predicts our species’ likelihood of survival, but in this indirect model—which modern Americans can grasp—life remains an “external” with no inherent value. If you are not yet persuaded that life on earth is worth more than anyone’s vision of a booming, vitacidal global economy, stay tuned for future reports from the Global Futures Initiative.