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How much will it cost?

We often see things in reductive monetary terms. Either it costs too much and we can’t make a profit, or its a very cheap no-brainer.

Where I’m from, one of the easiest places to see this dynamic is with things like road infrastructure. The project will cost $1 billion, the road will last for this long, it will move this many more cars, and it will provide some magic number of what’s called “economic value” (whatever that means), that makes the project “worth it” or “necessary.”

There are many things that are simply not on the table when considering what something will “cost.”

What is the cost to the same city to provide space for a million cars, that could’ve been used for tax revenue, parks, housing or businesses? What is the future cost of a city not investing in rails or cycling, and stratifying accessibility by income? What is the cost of the carbon we are burning and putting in the atmosphere? What is the cost to the city if we only have neighbourhoods accessible by big, heavy, expensive, individualistic transportation options?

What does it mean for our community?

Each year in agriculture, Nitrogen use goes up. What’s the cost?

Likewise each year in agriculture the amount of chemicals applied goes up. What’s the cost?

Dollars-per-pound-Nitrogen is probably not a useful metric when considering the effects of these fertilizers on our water sources and our soil (especially since these two things are necessary to grow crops). There is a cost to the effect of less nutritious food, and there is a cost to the reductive and widespread belief that Nitrogen is just something you need to add to grow things.

Dollars-per-litre of chemical is probably not a useful metric when considering these chemicals cannot be target-specific, that they kill everything, good or bad, the pest that is eating the monocrop or the honeybee that is coming to pollinate it.

There are major significant costs to all our reductive activities.

We can make better decisions if we decide other things that aren’t money are not worth the cost. Of course the irony is, we will all be richer…with nutritious food, with clean air, clean water, functional and productive ecosystems, and bustling cities that don’t have all their eggs in one mass production basket.