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COMMENT IN RESPONSE: SCB'S INVESTMENT IN CARBON OFFSETS

I share Neil Dawe's sentiment that if conservationists work solely on climate change while ignoring the need for an ecologically sustainable global economy, our efforts will fail. I feel the same about human population growth. The twin issues of economic growth and population growth are more fundamental to biological conservation than reversing climate change, recovering endangered species, reserve design, ecological restoration, or any of our typical conservation practices. I support groups that work on ecological economics and human population issues specifically because I know that my activities (serving on recovery teams, designing wildlife linkages) will make the world better only if humans succeed in controlling our populations and economies.

To me, the issue is not whether population and economy are the ultimate issues (they are!), but whether SCB is the correct entity to take those issues head on. I see SCB's decision to assign high priority to climate change as a movement towards the ultimate issues. I believe most SCB members feel that SCB's strength is in dealing with activities more proximately related to biodiversity (habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, chains of extinction). Accordingly, many of us promote our desire for better policies on economics and human population through entities other than SCB. However, SCB is a membership organization, and our priorities do change. Perhaps, as Neil Dawe suggests, it is time for SCB to focus more on ultimate than proximate issues. Even if economics and population are not the centerpiece of what SCB does, I agree that SCB should not be entirely silent on these issues.

Paul Beier

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