There are many examples of very precious resources being squandered because of profit motives, our stewardship of the planet could be <i>much</i> better, I doubt it could be much worse.<p>In less than 300 years, basically since the time that we started to industrialize we have remade face of the planet.<p>Point me to all those efforts at sustained management that ought to be a counterexample to those examples of wanton destruction of habitats and ecosystems for profit.<p>Everywhere that money is brought in to the equation sooner or later the ecology will have to suffer. Running an ecology as a business is simply not an option.<p>I know it has been tried many times and I know that there are plenty of people that probably have the best interest of their environment at heart, but from what I've seen to date the best thing we have done is to simply <i>not</i> mess with a large enough area and hope that it will recover.<p>Any attempt at large scale intervention, even from a positive viewpoint has sooner or later become a game of seeing how to use that resource within the letter of the law for maximum profit.<p>Rainforests, the Canadian forest management, wildlife preserves, the artic and the oceans.<p>The list really is endless.<p>Calling the people in charge bean counters is doing them a service, it means they're not actively involved in destruction on a planetwide scale that they are aware of.<p>I even leave open room for 'best intentions', but that doesn't mean their effects are positve. Not by a long shot.<p>Right now those places that are doing best in terms of species diversity and other parameters indicating relatively healthy ecosystems are those that we haven't gotten around to yet and those that we have utterly abandoned.<p>Environmental economics is a complete contradiction, you can not manage a tract of rainforest or a volume of ocean in a way that is at the same time good for the environment and ecologically sound.<p>We have basically taken out an environmental mortgage and have spent that mortgage on stuff that harms the environment, it will be a long long time before we are in a position to pay it back.<p>I realize this is not a happy picture, but sometimes it is better to open your eyes to what's really going on than to put on your rosy sunglasses and to hope that it will all go away.<p>There are lots of very uncomfortable conclusions that we may one day have to draw, there is a small chance that we will be in a position to guide those decisions if we start acting long enough in advance.