Conservation Law

A quote from H. Daly as he discussses uneconmoic growth...we have to protect our natutal capital, if the parents want their children to catch lobster, snapper and conch in the future, and to keep the cultural and spritual identity of the CI. We do not want to become another Nassua and concrete over Paradise..Daly says this "Ecological limits are rapidly converting “economic growth” into “uneconomic growth”—growth which increases costs by more than it increases benefits, thus making us poorer not richer. The macroeconomy
is not the Whole—it is Part of a larger Whole, the ecosystem. As the macroeconomy grows in its physical dimensions (population and per capita resource use), it does not grow into the Void. It grows into and
encroaches on the larger ecosystem, thereby incurring an opportunity cost of preempted natural capital and services. These opportunity costs of sacrificed natural services can be, and often are, worth more than
the extra production benefits of growth. We cannot be absolutely sure because we measure only the benefits, not the costs. And even if we measure the costs we add rather than subtract them. But whatever the
true benefits of economic growth, it is clear that they cannot apply to uneconomic growth."Population and Environment, Vol. 24, No. 1, September 2002  2002 Human Sciences Press, Inc.