These are three conflicting or rival positions:<\/p>\n
1. People <\/em>value nature, and the best measure of how much they value it is how much they would be willing to pay for it. Actual market prices may not reflect real value because of various flaws in existing markets. For example, if you find an old forest that no one owns, chop it down, and burn the wood for fuel, all that activity counts as profit. You don’t have to deduct the loss of an asset or the damage to the atmosphere. However, it would be possible to alter the actual price of forest wood by changing laws and accounting rules. Or at least we could accurately estimate what its price should <\/em>be. The real value of nature is how much human beings would be willing to pay for it once we account for market failures.<\/p>\n 2. Nature has value regardless of whether people are willing to pay for it. Perhaps nature’s value arises because God made it, called it “good,” and assigned it to us as His custodians. Or perhaps nature has value for reasons that are not theistic but do sound religious. Emerson:<\/p>\n The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. … The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Emerson’s view is sharply different from #1 because he believes that his fellow men do not value nature as they should. “To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. …” Thus prices do not reflect nature’s value.<\/p>\n If you’re an economist or a scientist, you may not personally feel that God is present in nature or that nature is ineffably precious. Regardless, you can respect your fellow citizens who hold those feelings. One version of scientific positivism says that there are (a) testable facts about nature and (b) opinions about nature as a whole. The latter are respectable but not provable. They are manifestations of faith, neither vindicated nor invalidated by science. This sounds like the early Wittgenstein.<\/p>\n 3. Nature has value irrespective of price: real value that may or may not be recognized by people at any given moment. But this value does not derive from a metaphysical premise about nature as a whole, e.g., that God made the world. We can make value judgments about particular parts <\/em>of nature, not all of which have equal value. We can change other people’s evaluations of nature by providing valid reasons.<\/p>\n Yosemite is more precious than your average valley. How do we substantiate such a claim? Not by citing a foundational, metaphysical belief, but by describing Yosemite itself. Careful, appreciative descriptions and explanations of natural objects are valid arguments for their value, just as excellent interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays are valid arguments for the excellence of those works.<\/p>\n