Hi sam_21,
I have rephrased your question to 'If wilderness is provided by Mother
Nature, why isn't it free?'
The reason we ask this question is because we intuitively think that
Nature is free, in the sense that we don't need to pay any money for
it. For example, I would think that the oxygen we breathe is free
because we don't need to go to a shop to buy a supply of oxygen
everyday.
But in economics, the definition of 'free' tends to be a little
different. A 'free good' in economics refers to something whereby the
'amount available is greater than what people want at zero price. [1]'
This definition implies that something which is 'free' is not a scarce
resource, and by scarce, we mean 'a situation in which resources are
limited and can be used in different ways, so we must sacrifice one
thing for another. [2]'. If I can rephrase it a little, a resource
that is not scarce implies that 'there is enough of it for everyone
even if everyone doesn’t need to pay anything for it'.
But when we think about it, wilderness isn't really like that. There
is *not* enough of it for everyone. In fact, the competition for
wilderness, or the constant battle between environmentalists and
groups that 'exploit' the environment, is quite a contentious one.
As long as there is ‘not enough nature’ for everyone, so to speak, the
quick answer to your question would be, ‘the wilderness is not free
because it is a scarce resource; there is a limit amount of it on
Earth. We have to choose between environmental protection and
industrial development when we are considering what we want to do with
nature.’
Ecologists and economists have recently put a price tag on nature, to
the tune of $US33-trillion, in a report in the science journal Nature
[3]. The way the researchers are able, or at least try, to get this
figure is that they quantify the amount of work that nature does, in
the economic sense. For example, the trees that we see around just
don't sit there, they actually do a lot of important environmental
work, such as cooling the air. ‘The net cooling effect of one young,
healthy interior tree (such as in an atrium or winter garden) is
equivalent to ten room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours a day.
[4]’
We can also extend the idea of the intrinsic value of nature to the
‘wilderness’ that you have asked, even if at first, the wilderness
does not seem to be of much benefit to us; the Wildlands in the
Eastern Sierra ‘contribute $700 million a year to the Mono and Inyo
County economies, according to a report released today by The
Wilderness Society. [5]’
And in 1999, former President Clinton ‘announced a $1 billion Lands
Legacy initiative designed to help protect some of the wildest terrain
remaining on the American landscape, to create new urban parks, and to
safeguard "green space" that serves as a buffer against urban sprawl.
[6]’
You might also be interested in the The Wilderness Act of 1964 for
additional background on how we define and treat the wilderness. [7]
I hope these couple of examples have increased your understanding of
why wilderness, or nature in general, is not considered free. If
you’ve any questions, I’d be happy to clarify.
Sources :
[1]
http://home.earthlink.net/~jjweatherby/week1.pdf
[2]
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:0ugibs3wFMYC:www.onid.orst.edu/~torosiak/Handout%25202.doc+definition+of+scarcity&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
[3]
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s365476.htm
[4]
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:LD4jBMuPMHIC:biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020611/latu016_1.html+The+net+cooling+effect+of+a+young,+healthy+tree&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
[5]
http://www.wilderness.org/newsroom/rls050902.htm
[6]
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/06/15/p1s3.htm
[7]
http://www.nps.gov/olym/wic/wilderness.htm
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