I'm guessing that this guy, a certain Dr Euston Quah Teong Ewe who wrote in the forum of today's Straits Times that...

"It is important, in my view, to attempt to place money values on the environment where it is affected by development projects. It is only by putting such things on a common plate, by deriving values in dollar terms, that some means of comparison and relative worth of projects and policies can be assessed inclusively.

There is not much advantage in listing, as is done traditionally by most nature societies, all the so-called biodiversity and species that face extinction in an attempt to stop a proposed project.

On the one hand, there is a development project worth, say, $50 million. On the other, there is a list of 10,000 species of birds, 8,500 types of insects, more than 2,000 species of trees and so on. How is one to make much meaningful sense of this, let alone weigh the merits of the project?"

... is gonna be taking lots of flak for what he said. I'm not one to call people names but on behalf of the rarer community which appreciates the intrinsic value of our natural heritage more than most others, I'm tempted to call him a bastard. Excuse me, but I actually felt angry at his words. Darn I have so much I wanna say about this, going all political and scientific and crappy, but for now I'll just keep my mouth shut. It ain't worth debating with people like him. I mean, just look at the title! "Economy v environment: Let's talk dollars and sense". Huh. Them Stoopid Money Monkeys.

posted by Husky @ 1/31/2005 01:38:34 AM  |