Trying to value the potential non existence of the environment using money as a measurement seems to rapidly become incoherent:
assume there's no environment. ok, so human life can no longer be supported on earth. So there's no one to trade with to exchange money for useful goods and services like oxygen and radiation shielding. The value of money is obviously zero in the limit where the environment no longer exists.
Can the analogy be adapted to measure the lifecycle cost of running an ISS terms of physical resources. E.g. what's the minimum size that a self sufficient earth bound country would have to be in order to throw off enough surplus labour and resources to launch and maintain an artificial ISS habitat for 6 people? Would a hypothetical self sufficient New Zealand with 5 million people suffice?
Here's an attempt:
Apparently ISS cost $100b over 10 years. Call it $10b / year. World GDP is around $90t / year. So ISS costs 1/9000th of world GDP. Under extreme conditions, a human nation can direct maybe 1/3 of national GDP to external government projects (e.g. WW2 total war scenario). So maybe we could have a society of 3 * 1/9000 = 1/3000 of world GDP that could sustain itself and an artificial ISS ecosystem for 6 people.
1/3000 of earth human population is about 2.5 million people say.
So a healthy resource rich earth environment + labour of country of 2.5 million people under total war rationing conditions could sustain artificial ISS environment able to support 6 people.
That's more of a fun answer to those who absolutely want to put a value and make a matter of "fair calculation" of everything, nothing to be taken too seriously.
Still, that gives some relief to the absurd notion that drives all economics that only human labour and capital have value, and that resources are infinite and free. Then, that "rational" economic considerations should drive our policies (instead of common, democratic deliberation around our competing wants and wishes, impossible to subsume into any sort of rational calculation).
Should we want to consume as much as possible as fast as we can, then disappear from the face of a scorched Earth? Or should we change radically our ways to make human life sustainable on the long term? This isn't a matter of reason, only of collective preference, that can only be decided through debate. The only thing open to calculation is what the future will be, if we do this, or that. But what future we want isn't a rational matter, and shouldn't be dictated by "those in the know", or even worse, "those in power" (irk).
assume there's no environment. ok, so human life can no longer be supported on earth. So there's no one to trade with to exchange money for useful goods and services like oxygen and radiation shielding. The value of money is obviously zero in the limit where the environment no longer exists.
Can the analogy be adapted to measure the lifecycle cost of running an ISS terms of physical resources. E.g. what's the minimum size that a self sufficient earth bound country would have to be in order to throw off enough surplus labour and resources to launch and maintain an artificial ISS habitat for 6 people? Would a hypothetical self sufficient New Zealand with 5 million people suffice?
Here's an attempt:
Apparently ISS cost $100b over 10 years. Call it $10b / year. World GDP is around $90t / year. So ISS costs 1/9000th of world GDP. Under extreme conditions, a human nation can direct maybe 1/3 of national GDP to external government projects (e.g. WW2 total war scenario). So maybe we could have a society of 3 * 1/9000 = 1/3000 of world GDP that could sustain itself and an artificial ISS ecosystem for 6 people.
1/3000 of earth human population is about 2.5 million people say.
So a healthy resource rich earth environment + labour of country of 2.5 million people under total war rationing conditions could sustain artificial ISS environment able to support 6 people.