[katieHaylor (OP)]

David says:

Is the human made concept of money responsible for the destruction of life and the life of the planet?

If so, what would be an alternative, which does not involve money, in which it would act as a positive in reducing our negative impact on the environment and life, and what could science do to sustain such a system?


What do you think?

[alancalverd]

Money is surely the most environmentally friendly means of maintaining a civilisation.

Civilisation is specialisation. This is clearly indicated by traditional surnames like Farmer, Smith, Fletcher..... that appeared in the Middle Ages all over Europe. Whilst Farmer might swap bags of wheat for horseshoes, they aren't a lot of use to Smith until Miller intervenes, and once Farmer and Miller are producing a surplus, it seems sensible to involve Baker. At this point, barter becomes very complicated. The whole system depends on Miller but he has no need of horseshoes, so he has to persuade Baker to give some bread to Taylor, who also makes clothes for Weaver, but Weaver depends on Seaman and Carter to deliver his cotton and wool, and they both employ others.....

Fortunately every known civilisation has evolved some form of common currency and cash accounting. Gold coins and cowrie shells work because they are rare, identifiable and difficult to make, and they avoid having to truck heavy and perishable raw materials, or split them into tiny parcels.

My favorite example is the Caroline Islands stone credit cards. These are worked rocks that come from another island, so can only be acquired by export trade. They don't change hands physically but are left beside the public road and everyone knows to whom they belong, so they can be traded for goods as tokens of value.

Replacing cash with electronic credit has done wonders for the environment. No need for everyone to trail around the shops in individual cars, or for shops to build huge car parks: shop on line, transfer the credit, and stuff gets delivered from one big van.       

Every living thing alters its environment - it's a definition of living! - up to the point that their toxic waste exceeds the capacity of the environment to reprocess it. The classic example is wine yeast which gobbles up sugar and excretes ethanol until, at 15 - 20% concentration, the ethanol kills the yeast. Humans occupy a large number of ecological slots and have multiplied almost to the point of exhaustion in many of them. Money makes it easier to exploit the environment, but lack of money won't prevent the basic processes of life from carrying on until we have exhausted something essential.

[evan_au]

If you are talking about physical money being environmentally friendly:
- Paper notes are biodegradable, and are pulped at the end of their useful life
- Plastic notes are not biodegradable, but will last a lot longer than paper notes before they need to be shredded
- Metal coins will slowly corrode (unless they are made of gold). Or if they fall down the back of your sofa, they might hang around long enough to make the day of some future archaeologist...

If you are talking about physical money being unhealthy (eg due to spread of bacteria/viruses), many places now prefer "contactless" credit card purchases so they don't have to handle physical money.

In reality, most of a country's money is not in the form of physical money, but in the form of bits in computer records. There are well-known problems dealing with e-Waste.

But overall, I suggest that the environmental impact of money is very small compared to the environmental impact of what we buy and sell with it. After all, money must be the most enthusiastically reused and recycled and repurposed resource in our economy!  (...unless it falls down the back of your sofa!)

[novicepug]

This is a very interesting discussion.

From the practical perspective, I would argue that paper money is the most practical and sustainable thing we have. It is biodegradable and easy to be made from recycled paper. I personally hate plastic money because even though they may be more durable, they shrink in the washing machine. Coins are just impractical and will rust except if we are producing it from gold.

In many countries, many people prefer cards or online transaction. But this is money we are talking about, and there is a sentimental value in actually having a physical money. For me personally, it is very easy to spend my money while shopping with card, rather than when I am actually seeing the amount I am handing in to the cashier. Other than that, in the country where I live people still prefer cash because of its anonymity. But it would be interesting to see if we can have a better alternative to paper money in the future.

But just as evan_au said, it is the things that we bought with our money that are mostly not sustainable, so we should be focusing more on that.

[charles1948]

"Money" is probably the greatest human invention since fire or the wheel

The beauty of money is this: it has no intrinsic value.  You can't eat it, or build a house or a boat with it, or employ it any useful way whatsoever.  Even when money was made of gold and silver coins, they weren't much practical use.

The value of money rests solely in human imagination.

Doesn't this show the magnificent power of human imagination?

[EvaH]

David asks:

Is the human concept of MONEY (which has no connection to life) the greatest cause of damage to the environment, the loss of eco-systems and the greatest cause of extinction of many plants and animals? What can science do to slow this damage down or repair what damage has been done?

What do you think?