Ronald Bailey Considers the Idea that the Way to Save Nature Is to Make It Worthless

On Wednesday, at the “Making Nature
Useless,” seminar sponsored by the D.C.-based think tank Resources
for the Future, Iddo Wernick, a researcher at Rockefeller
University’s Program for the Human Environment, asked, “Can
improving efficiency and changing consumer preferences overwhelm
rising population and affluence to reduce the tons of material that
Americans use? The world?” To answer this question, Wernick and his
colleagues collected data about the consumption trends on 100
materials that have long been used in the U.S. economy.
Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey considers the
idea that “the way we will save nature is by rendering it
economically worthless.”

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