Price vs Value

If economic growth is based on tenuous relationships between human societies and abstractions of nature in the worlds of finance and trade, where does nature reside? Is it an afterthought, where we go when we're not 'in the office?' No - It is there all the time, endeavoring to acclimate to the accelerating cycle of change in human economies; it climbs the edges of high rises and perches in neon signs. Seemingly surprisingly to many - we are OF nature. To think we are separate, that our perceived power bestows upon us the right of ownership over land/water - is short-sighted. - these are signs of a disconnect with our own physical nature which cannot and does not exist in a vacuum. One notices the value of clean air when they breathe in the pollution of factories and traffic. One notices the value of clean water when they have to drink soda because clean water is not available. One notices the value of limiting packaging when there are no support systems for recycling, where everything is trash, where your dollars vote as representatives for you - to maintain packaging choices that get dumped and buried away - to what end? If you learn to solve problems with money, the weight of the problems is a number, it is no longer physical. People do experience the weight of loss and have for a long time, but when you yourself have not - it is easy to see it as some far off story that someone else lives.

We cannot appraise nature with money as the base unit. If we do, one way or another, in that combat to wrangle nature and manipulate it for gains - we will be weeded out. When climate, water supply/quality, food security, pollution and biodiversity are all measures of the most fundamental success we can strive for, we cannot 'afford' to focus on our money's worth. At times when survival has become distant from our own personal efforts and has been put into the hands of money, how do we re-arrange societal structures to prioritize efforts that have direct effects on our physical and economic ecosystems?