“Doesn’t cost anything to run” is silly. If maintaining the ecoysystem was free, we’d do it because most people prefer there to be one rather than not. Maintaining the ecosystem trades off against all sorts of other things we want, and if we have to give them up to maintain it, that’s what it costs to run.
It doesn’t cost us anything in that we don’t have to give up anything we currently have (provided that we execute the right policies to maintain current levels of prosperity without expanding into nature even more). You’re talking about an imagined future cost, and that gets pretty tricky. Who’s to say that it doesn’t cost us to keep the Milky Way running, since in a billion years we could conquer it all?
“Doesn’t cost anything to run” is silly. If maintaining the ecoysystem was free, we’d do it because most people prefer there to be one rather than not. Maintaining the ecosystem trades off against all sorts of other things we want, and if we have to give them up to maintain it, that’s what it costs to run.
It doesn’t cost us anything in that we don’t have to give up anything we currently have (provided that we execute the right policies to maintain current levels of prosperity without expanding into nature even more). You’re talking about an imagined future cost, and that gets pretty tricky. Who’s to say that it doesn’t cost us to keep the Milky Way running, since in a billion years we could conquer it all?