Must commerce, ecology, and agriculture always be at odds with each other?
is there some way the three can be COMBINED into one more environmentally sensitive process, using less land and promoting care of the earth?
or must there always be a separate place reserved for each of them?
Answer:
Its entirely possible to develop a new paradign that resolves the conflict.
The key is to stop thinking of environmentlal impact as a seperate eissue. It is not. All businessenterprises incur costs--for raw materials, labor, capital goods, depreciation.
They also pay for other costs--often through taxes, sometimes through contracts with providers. Some of these include the cost of maintaining roads essential totheir business, or education systems to produce skilled workers.
When a business conducts its operations andthey have an impact that incurs cost, the business should bear the responsibility for covering that cost. Otherwise the cost must be paid--soooner or later, by someone else--and when that happens, the business gets an unearned profit at someone else's expense. And when the cost is shifted forward in time by years or decades, the total cost is almost always increased as a result-which has been the case with most environmental costs.
So--one way to resolve the "conflict" is simply to define environmeental impact in terms of cost--and not alllow businessesto shift that cost to othrs. That resolves the apparent conflict. It also gives business the incentive to start doing what it does best: start making more money by finding ways to reduce costs (environmental impact)--thereby creating new products, technologies, and jobs--in short, economic growth.
BTW--that's a theoritical model. Implementing it would take a lot of research, and a long process of step-by-step change. One place to start iis illustrated by the legislation currently under considerationtomandate an increas in average gasoline efficiency for cars from 17 to 34 mpg. Not impose taxes on gas hogs, nor try to tell the auto industry HOW to acheive higher efficiency. Let them do that--that's exactly what they are best at. But in so doing you create a situationin which they (business) must shoulder some of the costs they incur re the environment--and give them a benchmark for reducing that cost by reducing the impact.
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