A little bit less either/or

A great insight by the always intriguing Micheal Pollan. The notion of wilderness is a beautiful thing but it has made it all too easy for us to dismiss the not-wilderness as beyond redemption – as outside the circle of care. What’s needed is an ethic of sustainability that applies to all the other part of nature not given wilderness status.

Here he is:

We’ve had in this country what I call a wilderness ethic that’s been very good at telling us what to preserve. You know, eight percent of the American landmass we’ve kind of locked up and thrown away the key. That’s a wonderful achievement and has given us things like the wilderness park.

This is one of our great contributions to world culture, this idea of wilderness. On the other hand, it’s had nothing to say of any value for the ninety-two percent of the landscape that we cannot help but change because this is where we live. This is where we grow our food, this is where we work. Essentially the tendency of the wilderness ethic is to write that all off. Land is either virgin or raped. It’s an all or nothing ethic. It’s either in the realm of pristine, preserved wilderness, or it’s development– parking lot, lawn.

Externality

I’m going to file this under useful concepts. I learned it from Bruce Schneier who is a very thinker about security and puts out Cryptograms, a thought-provoking e-mail newsletter about security issues. (His take on security is not the predictable, screw down the hatches and put away yer civil liberties point of view.)

Externality is the idea that a transaction cost is born by someone external to the transaction. So, for instance, there’s no incentive for a company that holds personal information on you to do much to prevent it being stolen if there are no consequences to them if it is stolen. If I’m the only one to suffer a negative consequence if my identity is stolen from a company I shared my information with and that company doesn’t have to face a penalty, then the cost of losing my information is an externality for them.