no free environmental lunch

Speaking of exploitation...

Business leaders and business managers - at least those with enough brains to look around to see what might come back and bite their enterprises in the butt - will look at environmental constraints as both a place to protect themselves and a place to emphasize sustainable productivity.

Here are some news items to illustrate the point. These are all from BBC News online. I am afraid it would be extremely difficult to find articles like these in the status-quo-ass-kissing news media outlets in the USA. [It's all good.]

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The world's fishing fleets are losing billions of dollars each year through depleted stocks and poor management, according to a UN report.
The World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calculate the losses at $50bn per year.
Half the world's fishing fleet could be scrapped with no change in catch.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7660011.stm

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.
Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.
Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7662565.stm

Businesses must change their attitude to environmental issues if the tide of ecological decline is to be halted.
That was the message from Valli Moosa... The former South African minister said all companies should have directors with environmental experience.
The 10-day IUCN congress in Barcelona will debate global environmental problems and potential solutions.
Mr Moosa spoke frankly about his view that unfettered markets and businesses are largely responsible for the world's current environmental ills.
..."Leading entrepreneurs and markets have certainly contributed to the growth of the global economy; yet while individuals may be moral, markets are not," he told delegates.
"The damage industries and commerce do to people and the environment is real, it is considerable, and it is unacceptable."
But, he added, it was also unnecessary.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7653863.stm

The G8 nations, together with the five major emerging economies of China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, use almost three-quarters of the Earth's biocapacity - the capacity of the world's ecosystems to produce natural resources and to reduce harmful substances.
The loss of global biological diversity is advancing at an unprecedented pace. Up to 150 species are becoming extinct every day.
As well as their uniqueness and beauty, their specific functions within ecosystems are also irrecoverably lost. The web of life that sustains our global society is getting weaker and weaker.
That is why Germany has chosen both biodiversity and climate change as top priorities for this year's environment ministers' G8+5 meeting.
The global value of plant-derived pharmaceutical products is more than $500bn (380bn euros; £260bn) in industrialised countries. Of the medicines currently available, 40-50% are derived from natural products.
...Biological diversity provides the world's population, particularly the poor, with foodstuffs, medicines, building materials, bioenergy and protection against natural disasters.
For oncology and anti-infective medicines, it amounts to 70-80%. With every species we lose, we may be losing a remedy for global health problems.
An estimated 40% of world trade is based on biological products or processes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6432217.stm

Climate change may hasten the spread of diseases that can move from wild animals to humans, warns the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in a report.
The Deadly Dozen highlights 12 zoonoses - animal-borne diseases - that may spread as the climate warms.
... "We've seen Lyme disease work its way up from the US into Canada, and West Nile fever as well," said William Karesh, director of WCS's global health programmes.
"Basically what you have now are fewer frozen nights in this region, and that allows the ticks and mosquitoes that carry these diseases to survive further north."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7657415.stm

28 November 2006
Ten years to cure 'water crisis' 
Britain's water systems are in crisis and the government has a decade to put things right, according to a coalition of conservation and angling groups.
They are setting out a 10-point plan to make UK water systems sustainable, including fair pricing, slashing waste and upgrading sewerage facilities.
... EU regulations require member nations to have plans for restoring natural watercourses in place by 2009.
The European Water Framework Directive prescribes that the ecology of rivers, lakes and wetlands should be restored by 2015.
"This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity," the coalition's report announces.

1 February 2006
Water crisis warning on new homes 
The UK will run out of water unless government plans to build more than a million homes in south-east England are changed, the Environment Agency says.
Chief executive Barbara Young told BBC News regulations needed to be rewritten to make it compulsory for developers to build more water-efficient homes.
The voluntary approach was failing and "dramatic action" was needed, she said.
... Current building regulations were too lax and without change there could be dire consequences, Ms Young said.
... In many areas ground water is already at its lowest ever level. To the south of London some reservoirs are less than half full.
Within south-east England, some companies are warning the watering of golf courses and football pitches could soon be banned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4670044.stm