I have shown over and again that wealth represents the key to ecological and environmental pressures, as we have disclosed that wealth as a created body holds no regards for ecology within our present-day structure of economic understanding.
At the very simplest points of examining wealth we see that "the natural order" and its inclusion in any sort of valuation of the earth's material usefulness is flatly disregarded, e.g. economics is not interested in coal and its value other than being able to burn it off in the wealth creating drive.
What shows up is a need to review economics so that it is not just of value to the moneymakers but answerable and governable by men and governments to take all things into consideration. I fear that unless we can broaden the horizons of what is considered of economic duty, as well as economic use, that man will slide ever further down the slippery slope towards a return to a way of life pre 19th-20th century, without many of the natural tools in the form of created energy to assist life. Virtually, man will return to the wilds! Civilisation will weaken. The current views widely expressed revolve around principles of less of everything that can cause or will be the subject of environmental and/or ecological diet, e.g. cut CO2 emissions. But in order to be effective, what does that mean?
(a) Do we cut CO2 emissions? If so, how? Do we pick a percentage reduction in use, say go for 50%? Does that mean we pick 50% of indirect gas creators and tell them, "sorry. no more coal-produced power", or
(b) Do you stop production by 50% of the time, say at night?
(c) Do you canvass industry to use 50% less fuel? They will tell you that their duty is to the shareholders and they are in business to produce profit, so any move to alter fuel supplies must affect prices and profit.
This brings me nicely to suggest that the way forward in environmental control is an efficiency tax paid by suppliers and manufacturers according to a percentage of turnover paid annually like income tax; every commercial company would be subject to review according to the nature of their business and annual tax levied. The result of this would mean that companies would need to have a tight rein on such things as petrol/diesel usage, litter and pollution creation, fossil fuel use for heating and production.
The result of the above is that prices would rise as manufacturers would not find it easy to encourage extra production as this would only create more tax as well as turnover.
Companies stress energy efficiency in order to save-money. A levied tax would have the general effect of suppliers looking to produce better quality, more up-market goods and services, offset by more money in the community raised by the environment levy. This way there would be less unit production and use, coupled with better quality merchandise available to a wider part of the community
Clearly what can be seen is that however we tackle environmental and ecological problems, which are not just cosmetic applications of nominal control, just to be seen to be doing something about the problems is difficult to perceive and apply without creating wholesale damage and distortion to the economy.
Nevertheless those of you who have waded through this book and agree that essentially the environment issue is really an economic issue in disguise, must agree that something has to be done to correct economic prosperity which, if unchecked, will bring about its own decline as it runs out of materials, power and markets. OK: maybe not in this century or the next. But we need to be in a position where we leave our children's children a heritage worth having,
The statement that we can make is "that which modern man has created to effect a better quality of human life has adversely affected some facets of ecological structure and environmental welfare on the earth". Man must face up to the issues before it is too late, to take effective action so that nothing less than "wealth creation control" is established to prevent ever-hungry profit chasers belying the meaning of and the need for wealth in a civilised society. It is society and continued society that has to be the main priority. That economics exists is only to affect society: society does not exist to effect economics.
