Every human society has damaged their environment as much as their technology would allow. The Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and the Australian Aborigines are some of the more recent examples. Some like to believe in a spiritual caretaking connection with the world based in the dream-time, but the reality is that they have all exploited the land to their own benefits and caused massive extinctions in the process.

The Australian Aborigines wiped out many animal species of their arrival to Australia by eating them. They also wiped out many of the plant species by burning the forests. It is popular view that native peoples live in harmony with their land, but in fact what people see is the steady state which is left after the destruction. Once all of the vulnerable species are killed, the rest can survive and a steady state results, which can go on indefinitely. If a nuclear war broke out, and all animals except cockroaches were left, then this would be a steady state, but few would call it harmony. In fact that is a more extreme example of what has occurred in every country which has been colonized by humans.

Modern technology is more advanced than anything primitive societies had, and the rate of extinction is now much greater.

People identify the problem as being economics, and rally against globalization and multinational profits, but fail to see that as also offering solutions to the problem.

Corporations are motivated by greed (as in fact are the environmentalists, the difference is that corporations admit their own greed, at least in private). Corporations will always take the course of action which maximizes their profits (and their share value).

Any suggestion that they they can have their social conscience pricked, and will suddenly become conservationists is naive. Such strategies may work in the short term, but the executives of a company know that when the green awareness has worn off, shareholders will again simply be screaming for profits.

In order to protect the natural environment, the corporate environment must be set up so that maximizing corporate profits is done by protecting that environment.

There are several ways that can be achieved.

• Private Ownership. Laissez-faire capitalists are always keen to point out that if long-term ownership is assured then the owners of a region will protect it. The benefits that the conservationists put forward as justification for protecting the environment are also those which offer long term profit. Eco tourism and cures for cancer (from DNA of endangered animals) are just two. Private ownership of the world's atmosphere might solve the problems of pollution, but it's a bit hard to administer.

  Unfortunately few people have sufficient trust of governments to make this long term commitment. Governments are very fond of privatizing or placing arbitrary and ill-thought-out restrictions on people's property, and this creates a need to exploit resources as quickly as possible.

• Command and Control. Declaring certain places as being 'protected' places and fining companies who exploit them. Unfortunately even the suggestion that such rules may be introduced is justification enough to cause as much damage as possible to preempt the rules and make the introduction of them pointless.
• Environmental taxes. Simply imposing taxes on certain resources such as trees. Generally the taxes could be higher on more environmentally sensitive areas, and less so on others. Pollution taxes would also tackle problems with pollution.

Such economic mechanism for dealing with protecting the environment are usually ignored by conservationists because they see money and greed as the problems, not part of the solution.

See

• Land Salination