What is the best ecosystem services provided to us? I perhaps not many people would disagree that, ocean and forest are two important answers.
So what?
Well, we basically survive of these services. Think about soil that we needed to grow crops, and the protein that we get from these services, etc.
A land should be able to provide sufficient material that supports life, including ours. As we climb higher up to the top of the food chain, we required more of these fundamental autotrophic or ditritustrophic organism to be at the bottom of the food chain.
If this was true, why do we keep clear cutting the forest and trashing the ocean?
To answer this question, I want to ask another question, "Are we at the stage of surpasses carrying capacity?"
It is very possible especially at well-developed places, we tipped the carrying capacity. Think about how many of these places rely on material transported into the system. How much food is needed from the other world? Overall, we are still wealthy. We still have the option of conserving land, refusing genetic modified food sources, etc. But back to the question, are we living in the era of surpassing carrying capacity? If we consider regionally, like cities, definitely, we are living off natural resources from other area. Globally however, maybe not. Though we hear about a lot of people starve to death, many food are wasted in the wealthy country and perhaps some countries, on average consumed too much per capita than needed. If we can figure out a way to redistribute these resources, surely more people can be fed for survival. You will be surprised when you hear about how little we need for our survival.
I am going to raise more question,
"What then justify the act of getting scarce natural resources from other countries without much gratitude and respect?"
"Do we want to consider global as a survival unit or local?"
"Are the under developed countries poor in material, technologies, information, pride or maturity?"
