Using Private Property To Monetize Nature
Many wonder who is running the country as Biden slips into the world of senility. Actually, America is being run behind the scenes by groups of technocrats. Without any congressional authorization, these technocrats are taking action in multiple government sectors, making policy through executive fiat, one of which is on natural resources.
Although first announced in April 2022, the White House released the National Strategy To Develop Statistics For Environmental-Economic Decisions (SEED) in January 2023, creating a U.S. system of “natural asset accounting” and environmental-economic statistics. SEED is a fancy and vague description about inventorying natural resources in the U.S. and then assigning a monetary value to them in the United States. Natural resources include forests, wetlands, animals, minerals, plants, water, or any other non-human resource. Calling it natural capital, the purpose is determining how those resource assets contribute to the economy. Twenty-seven federal agencies participated in developing this strategy (xi), along with a professor.
A couple of easy examples to understand this, protecting a forest with good forest management is more cost effective than fighting a forest fire, thus that is an economic value. Or, minimizing the use of water adds value to other economic activities such as recreational enjoyment or agriculture as more water is available.