Footnote to the preceding, putting it all in perspective

And remembering what's important.

The BBC reported on Friday that according to an EU-commissioned study,

[t]he global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis....

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.

That's $2 trillion to $5 trillion a year. Every year.

The point is that

as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.

So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.

Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost,

one which - as always - falls disproportionately on the poor.

The hope is that, just as the Stern Review in 2006 prompted movement on climate change by showing the economic costs associated with it, this new study, called "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity," or TEEB, can do the same for biodiversity.