2. DECLINE

Eric L. Jones

Chapter 2 in Revealed Biodiversity:An Economic History of the Human Impact, 2014, pp 19-26 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: History was long thought to be directed, maybe determined, by forces external to humanity. The Ancient Greeks attributed the waywardness of life to the maliciousness of the gods. Christians hold public prayers asking God to intercede during floods or drought. They have done so recently, even in Western countries, accompanied by opportunistic pronouncements that some disaster or other is heaven's retribution for human sin. When they are not blaming homosexuality or women bishops, priests and laymen alike are inclined to claim that the sin lies in practising an economic system of which they disapprove. This is invariably a (chronically underspecified) capitalist market system of which the critics are themselves the beneficiaries; the appalling environmental record of command systems, so much harder to correct, rarely comes in for criticism. Alternatively, human activity as a whole gets the blame for supposed environmental degeneracy.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Economic History; Birds; Landscape; Environmental History; Nature Conservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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