What Has Nature Ever Done for Us: How Money Really Does Grow on Trees

During recent years, environmental debate worldwide has been dominated by climate change, carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect.

What Has Nature Ever Done for Us: How Money Really Does Grow on Trees 

by Tony Juniper —

Juniper, a British environmentalist, points out that we think everything nature does for us — providing water, pollinating plants, generating oxygen, recycling miracles in the soil and much more — is free, but it is not.

Its economic value can be and has been measured.

When we realize what that value truly is, we would stop treating our natural systems in a destructive manner.

For example, Hurricane Katrina cost the U.S. $81 billion, and damage still remains.

If the land used to raise natural mangoes around the levees had not been redeveloped for shipping and aquaculture, it is believed much of the damage would not have occurred.

During recent years, environmental debate worldwide has been dominated by climate change, carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect.

But a number of academic, technical, political, business and NGO initiatives indicate the emergence of a new wave of environmental attention focused on natural capital, ecosystem services and biodiversity — things nature does for us.

The book contains impactful stories imparting warnings about this and other unfortunate occurrences, as well as promising and enlightening tales of how birds protect fruit harvests, coral reefs shield coasts from storms, and rain forests absorb billions of tons of carbon released from automobiles and power stations.

Juniper’s book will entirely change the way you think about life, the planet and the economy.

$29.95 hardcover — Synergetic Press, One Bluebird Court, Sante Fe, NM 87508.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 32, Number 5, October/November 2013.