“Valuing the biosphere, even if it is to be across just the civilizational (merely 10^3 years) rather than the evolutionary (10^9 years) span, cannot be accomplished through largely arbitrary processes of subdividing nature’s realm into discrete services and then assigning to them globally averaged, functionally irrelevant, and questionably derived values. As I have argued before, the biosphere can be valued effectively only as a matter of a binding planetary compact uniting humanity in the acceptance of natural precedences and the need for limits on material consumption. This may initially sound like an excessively idealistic and impractically vague declaration of grand principles, but on reflection, it is merely a concise description of reality. In practice this means striving for the greatest possible preservation of environmental integrity. This goal is achievable by leaving large swaths of some of the most valuable ecosystems entirely or largely alone and by continuously trying to limit the environmental impacts associated with population growth and economic development.

This objective could be achieved with relatively low expenditures. Bruner et al. fould that parks and other protected areas are an effective means to safeguard tropical biodiversity and that even modest increases in their funding would be very helpful. James et al. calculated that the protection of the world’s biodiversity—by securing adequate budgets for maintaining the protected areas (national parks and various nature reserves, now covering nearly 5% of the world’s area) and by buying additional land to extend their coverage to a minimum standard of 10% of the area in every major region—would cost annually about $16.6 billion on top of the inadequate $6 billion currently spent. And Pimm et al. estimate that securing another 2 million km^2 and adequately managing the same amount of land that is already protected for biodiversity would need a one-time investment of about $4 billion.

These sums are small in comparison to the monies the rich world spends on many frivolous, or outright harmful, endeavors. After all, even a number as high as $23 billion is equal to only about 0.1% of the combined GDP of the world’s most affluent economies, and is a small fraction of the environmentally harmful subsidies that governments of affluent countries extend to their agricultural and industrial production.”

— Vaclav Smil

“If you want carbon to make into hydrocarbons, there are a lot of reasonably economical and easy to process sources. If you want to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, the first step is to slow down the rate at which you are putting it there. The next step is to plant a lot of green, growing stuff in places that used to be used for extracting, processing, refining, delivering and consuming fossil hydrocarbons. Use nuclear energy to produce as much fresh water as needed.

If you think you cannot turn a desert green, check out photos of Israel over the last 50 years.”

— Rod Adams