http://www.ted.com Every day, we use materials from the earth without thinking, for free. But what if we had to pay for their true value: would it make us more careful about what we use and...
========== I'm here to talk to you about the economic invisibility of nature. The bad news is that mother nature's back office isn't working yet, so those invoices don't get issued. But we need to do something about this problem. I began my life as a markets professional and continued to take an interest, but most of my recent effort has been looking at the value of what comes to human beings from nature, and which doesn't get priced by the markets. A project called TEEB was started in 2007, and it was launched by a group of environment ministers of the G8+5. And their basic inspiration was a stern review of Lord Stern. They asked themselves a question: If economics could make such a convincing case for early action on climate change, wel...