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What is the ecological crisis ?
The limited vital energy of Nature
Imagine that all the boys of a school micturate against the same tree, every day. The tree would die because it would not be able to digest the refuse of all these boys. This is what is happening, metaphorically. All the consumers of this planet leave too much waste in Nature. This waste is not just the waste consumers throw away but also the waste made by all the processes in which all the goods and services are produced. It is the waste of the industrial development. This waste is not just too much for Nature to digest, it is also of a quality which Nature cannot digest or only after a very long period of time. It is not biodegradable is the term for this indigestible quality of waste.
Nature breaks down waste into its elements and turns these elements into natural resources again. It is the role of Nature in the life cycles of this planet to recreate dead material into nutrients for the living. The total amount of waste Nature can digest is determined by the total amount of Nature that exists and the speed with which it recreates waste. It takes Nature longer to digest a corpse than a leaf, for example.
The energy necessary to keep this recreation process going, is the vital energy of Nature. This energy is limited, just as the vital energy of the human being is limited. The amount and the biodegradable quality of waste left in Nature by current development, has trespassed the limits of the vital energy of Nature. Nature does no longer have enough vital energy to digest all this waste.
Pollutants are the waste Nature has not been able to recreate. They turn rain into acid, they make water undrinkable, they make a hole in the layer of ozone, they make animals sick, they destroy the fertility of sperm and shrink penises. According to a report by the United Nations, men will not be able to procreate naturally anymore because pollution, particularly by oestrogen, will have destroyed the fertility of their sperm, by the year 2050. Boys will then not be able to micturate against trees anymore, either.
Nature is exhausted because it has to digest too much waste or waste of a non-biodegradable quality. A human being who is exhausted and who has to keep on working, will die. Nature is dying. Entire lakes are dead already. Not even microbial life remains in their waters. The vital energy of Nature is expiring with Nature. The more Nature mankind destroys, the less waste Nature can digest, the more pollutants remain, the faster Nature dies. Since the human species keeps up its vital energy with goods and services from Nature, it dies when Nature dies. Mankind has to live in harmony with Nature, to be able to keep its vital energy. Consumers have to manage their costs of living to find and sustain this harmony.
This is the choice the ecological crisis offers.
What is integrity ?
Integrity is defined in the Webster's as :
1. the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety.
2. the quality or state of being unimpaired; perfect condition; soundness.
3. the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity
Syn. see honesty
What is an ecological product ?
Ecological is defined in the Webster's as : of or by ecology. Ecology is defined in the Webster's as : 1. the branch of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms and their environment. 2. in sociology, the relationship between the distribution of human groups with reference to material resources, and the consequent social and cultural patterns. The origin of ecology is Greek : oikos. It meant house. Because of the second definition, ecology is linked with economy, since economy is the science to share the limited resources to satisfy the unlimited demands of people. Ecological is an adjective that incorporates adjectives connected with a characteristic of Nature, such as natural, biological, organic, biodegradable. Ecological puts these adjectives in the context of managing the natural resources while living with them, from them, among them, through them, by them, because of them or living in whatever bond between Nature and human nature that can be expressed by prepositions.
Producers will therefore define what ecological products are. They will have to give this definition because they will have to prove scientifically why and to what extent their products are ecological, i.e., why and to what extent their products keep Nature in perfect condition and human nature sound. They will have to give these proofs because consumers will need them to justify to the state that they deduct the costs of these ecological products from their taxable income, as money spent on products that kept Nature in perfect condition and human nature sound.
Producers will justify their claims with a cradle to grave analysis. This analysis shows the costs of production with ecological goods or services. The total of these costs will be expressed as a percentage of the sales price of the product. This percentage represents the costs which the consumer can declare as costs to be deducted from taxable income.
Every improvement in the ecological quality of a product will be expressed in an improvement of the tax deductible percentage of the price. All these improvements will have to be proven scientifically. The competition to increase the ecological quality of products will therefore also cause an improvement in the scientifc methods to demonstrate why or how the goods and services, tools, techniques and processes that will be developed to build an ecological industry, do keep Nature in perfect condition and human nature sound.
Assume that a US car manufacturer claims that his car is for 50% ecological. The Japanese car manufacturer who claims that his car is for 70% ecological will have to put some very clear and solid proofs on the table to convince the US government that 70% of the costs of the Japanese car can be deducted from the taxable income of the US purchaser. The government will not tell producers what is ecological, they will verify the claims of producers that they improved the ecological quality of their products with the new techniques, goods and services they will have developed to achieve the goal of making 100% ecological products.
All the cradle to grave analyses will form lists of specifications of ecological products. These lists can be composed by activity or industry. All these list together will form the basis to administer the development of an ecological industry.
The desired quality of products has been, are and will be defined by the only people who can define this quality, the people who spend their money, time and energy to search for, think up, design, develop and make improvements in the quality of their products : the producers. The tax deductibility of the ecological costs of living creates the demand for ecological products that will drive producers to find the desired ecological quality of their products ; 100% ecological. Ecological products will be defined as safe cars are defined ; always better.
Is mankind capable to make products that have no negative impact on Nature ?
The presumption that mankind is capable to live in harmony within Nature is based on the following hypotheses :
If mankind is not capable of producing products that do not have a negative impact on Nature, mankind will become extinct. Whatever the rate of destruction is, there will be a moment that the products made by mankind will have destroyed Nature to the extent that there are not enough products from Nature to assure a livelihood. Mankind then dies out with the last group of people those who have been able to defend the last bits of Nature more successfully than other groups. Wars over drinkable water are already foreseen by futurologists, military experts and strategists, in the not too distant future. The government of Israel has kept the control over the water supplies of Palestine, for example.
To prevent this process, scientists will replace produce from Nature by industrial nutritive. Water will be replaced by a vital liquid and food by a vital substance. Whoever possesses the productive capacities to make these vital victuals will possess the integrity of human nature. Wars will therefore break out to control these productive capacities. Whoever possesses them will then change the integrity of human nature. This can be done voluntarily and on purpose by the masters of the human species or it is done unconsciously by scientists. The masters will want to change the human nature, for example, to stop violence, control births, increase intelligence, give birth to more scientists, in short, to create the Uebermensch. In the best of cases, scientists will slowly change the integrity of human nature. They will do it because they will not know which trace elements or other vital substances to keep the integrity of human nature, they leave out or are not capable of replacing in the industrial nutritive which they produce. Homo Chemicus will slowly replace Homo Sapiens. Homo Chemicus will not have more chances to survive than the cows, pigs, chicken and other animals that are raised industrially today. The mad cow disease, porcupine pest, chicken flu and salmonella in fish and chicken that is breaking out almost simultaneously all over the planet, are all indications that these sorts of animals are deteriorating as a result of the non-natural way of raising them. Hitler tried to do the same with the German people, in breeding farms to raise "dass Herrenvolk". Homo Chemicus can survive only as a zombie. Eventually, these zombies will die and Homo Chemicus will become extinct because there will not be a Homo Sapiens left to improve their survival chances or a few masters will live in pristine Nature which' integrity is assured by an army of Homo Chemicus zombies. These few remaining Homo Sapiens will then have the planet for their own and the entire process begins again.
The other hypothesis is that mankind is capable of living in harmony within Nature. When the consumer can deduct the costs of living with ecological products from taxable income, he and she will be driven by two very powerful drives to search for, buy and live with products that keep the integrity of their Nature : personal and financial interests. - Freud clarified why the power of the financial drive is so strong. - The personal interest that will drive the consumer is the interest to survive. Both interests cannot be perverted by Them because every consumer will be able to use his or her economic power of purchase with his or her ethical force. The consumer will keep his or her integrity while trying to keep the integrity of human nature, with his or her personal ethics.
Producers will be driven by the interests to maximise profits, reinforced by competition, to improve the ecological quality of their products until these products have no negative impact on Nature. Consumers will be the scouts to indicate the direction of the research required to achieve such 100% ecological products. With consumers and producers being driven by the same drives to survive and to live well, while pursuing the same goal to keep the integrity of human nature as the life producing capital of the human species, as a right of birth, the chance to create such 100% ecological products is as good as it can become. Will mankind succeed? Considering the technological capacities to get us to Mars, manipulate genes, clone animals, create elements and other accomplishments man has achieved, I trust that mankind is capable to create the products that allow us to survive in harmony within Nature, while enjoying well-being. After all, the ecological crisis began to threaten the survival of the human species with the application of the technologies that caused the industrial revolution, not more than 150 years ago. To survive, the technologies have to be adapted. Man's technological capacities have barely been developed in these last 150 years, I trust. This assumption is an act of faith in the reasonableness of mankind, - one of the values that is being lost in the consumer's society, - as well as in its capacity to reason. To put it with a double negative ; mankind is not that stupid that it will allow itself to become extinct by its own fault, not to apply truths, for example, like the truth that the costs of living have to be managed to enable mankind to live in harmony within Nature.
Brussels, 21 February 1998 W.A. de Bruyn
Is it legal to deduct the costs of living with ecological products from taxable income ?
To keep Nature in a condition that assures a livelihood for this and following generations, also assures their income. Costs of living assure long term income. Costs of production assure short term income. Costs that assure an income can be deducted from this income, by present law in the countries with a free market economy legislation. That is why costs of living that are managed to keep Nature in a condition that assures a livelihood, can be deducted from taxable income, as income assuring costs. These costs of living can be deducted from taxable income, the moment the consumer begins to manage the costs of living, because assurance assures from the moment assurance begins. A trial process will have to enter this interpretation of the law into the order established by the law.
Can the government end the ecological crisis ?
The most efficient way, not to say, the only way to solve a problem, is to solve it at its source. This is true for the problems of crime, drunken driving, overpopulation, pollution. It is the consumer who causes the pollution with the goods and services they buy.
When the government wants to solve the ecological crisis then the government must force, guide, herd, motivate, persuade all consumers to spend their income on goods and services that sustain a way of living within the limits of Nature. The government can therefore use tax incentives and tax disincentives as well as laws about permitted and not permitted levels of pollution and laws about substances that are permitted and substances that are not permitted to pollute the environment. This proposal implies the central management of the income of billions of consumers. The purpose of this central management will be to keep Nature in perfect condition, with all these taxes and permits and their rules and regulations, checks and controls. It implies a police state in which the government tries to impose a consumption pattern on billions of consumers. It is ridiculous to assume that central government of income to impose an ecological way of living on billions of consumers will ever have any success. The lack of success to achieve well-being for consumers with the central management of the costs of production, in communist states, is sufficient proof for the lack of success of central management to achieve operational goals. The proposal to centrally manage the environment as "public property" is therefore dishonest.
It is a mistake to assume that eco-taxes will reduce pollution. Eco-taxes will make polluting products more expensive. The producers of ecological products will then increase the price of their products, because ecological products are better than non-ecological products. Better products command a higher price. - When the costs of second class travel increases, the costs of first class travel also increases. - Eco-taxes make living more expensive, without motivating anyone to buy ecological products.
Eco-taxes are anti-social. The poor people, these who cannot afford ecological products, will continue to buy non-ecological products and get all the diseases caused by consuming non-ecological products.
Eco-taxes will create a source of income for the government. No government will be motivated to eliminate any source of income. There is therefore no motivation for the government to apply eco-taxes to eliminate polluting practises. Even if eco-taxes would be used to repair the damage caused by pollution, this damage could never be completely repaired. It is not by replacing the trees destroyed by acid rain that all the damage caused by acid rain to life in forests, has been repaired. Moreover, to levy eco-taxes and then to use it to repair damage caused by pollution is like allowing to use a road with too heavy traffic and to repair the road continuously. This is not an efficient way to maintain a road or Nature or anything. It is known as a criminal way to earn money by corrupting public officials to allow the practise.
Tradeable permits are a license to pollute. The company which can pay the highest price for the permit, can pollute the most. The biggest polluters are the ones with the lowest costs of production and can therefore make the most profit. They can therefore pay the highest price for the permits. Tradeable permits increase pollution.
Neither eco-taxes nor tradeable permits will reduce pollution. Moreover, they do imply a risk assessment of the levels of pollution the government will permit. This will have the following consequence :
"But risk assessment is now embedded in our environmental laws at the federal and state levels in a way that guarantees that the "rights" of industrial poisoners will be protected by the apparatus of the state while citizens will be first disempowered and then physically harmed by the risk assessors' work. Risk assessors are now in the position of the conductors and engineers who kept the trains running on time to the death camps in Nazi Germany to minimize discomfort to their passengers --they are just doing a job, honorably and to the best of their ability, but the final result of every professional risk assessor's work is the destruction of the natural environment, one decision at a time, and the relentless spread of sickness throughout the human and wildlife populations."
Excerpt from the article : "Ethical Hazards of Risk Assessment", by Peter Montague The entire article is presented at the ZERO web site : http://freezone.exmachina.net/ZERO.
Nature can be managed efficiently only by its natural managers : the consumers. Consumers are the natural managers of Nature because they manage Nature with every purchase they make, each and every day, everywhere, since all products are made with natural resources. It is not possible to force billions of consumers to live in harmony within Nature, not even in the most perfectly perverse police state pursuing evil.
Only in the beginning, when consumers can deduct the cost of living with ecological products from taxable income, will it be efficient to levy eco-taxes on non-ecological products. An eco-tax will make the price of non-ecological products more expensive. This price increase will make it more beneficial for the consumer to buy ecological products, when they can deduct their price from their income. Governments can hasten the change to a way of living with ecological products, wih eco-taxes, but only when the costs of living with ecological products can be deducted from taxable income.
When consumers account for costs of living with ecological products as costs that can be deducted from taxable income, this accounting will cause a shift in the source of income of the state. It shifts from the income from labour to the income from the use of natural resources ; from the income of consumers to the income of producers. The increase in demand of consumers for ecological goods and services will cause a rise in the income of the suppliers of these products. This rise will cause a rise in the income taxes they pay to the state. The income of the state will be reduced as a result of the deduction of costs of living with ecological products from taxable income. This reduction will be less than the increase in income from taxes on the growing incomes of the suppliers of ecological products. They will make a more efficient use of natural resources. - After the industrial revolution began with the invention of the steam machine by Watts and the more efficient use of natural resources, it also happened that a source of income of the state shifted. The state lost income from taxes paid by suppliers of non industrial goods and services. However, these reductions were eventually less than the increase in income from taxes paid by suppliers of industrial products, because they made a more efficient use of natural resources and particularly of energy. -
Moreover, the state will need less income, because it will no longer need the funds to protect Nature. Its natural managers : the consumers, will keep Nature unblemished.
Another reason the state gets more income when consumers deduct the costs of living ecologically from taxable income, is the whitening of the "black market". On a "black market", goods and services are commercialised without formal proofs. As a consequence, people do not pay taxes over the incomes they earn on a "black market". An analysis of the people who earn an income on that market will show that the majority is paid with money spent as costs of living. All consumers who manage their costs of living to keep Nature sound, need proofs of payment of their purchases. With these documents they have to justify that they deduct the costs of these purchases from their taxable income. When consumers ask for these receipts, a large part of the "black market" will disappear. Producers will therefore pay more taxes over increasing incomes. - Only in societies in which economic hardship exists, the "black market" continues to exist because this market sustains the hardship in the economy of such societies.
Willem Adrianus de Bruijn