Bubbles (again) and giving up...

I read this very telling article from the BBC a couple of days ago which talked about the impact of loss of nature, ecosystems and biodiversity on our economies, based on how they are currently structured. Here is a little summary:

• Bill Jackson is quoted as saying "Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and)... 27% of reef-building corals assessed... are threatened with extinction."
  
• There is a project underway called "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)," which is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us (however they quantify that...). TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.
• "Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). "Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world."
• From Richard Black's Earth Watch blog from May 10 on the BBC website, "If you'd added up the numbers of mammals, fish, birds etc in the world in 1970, and done so again in 2006, one-third of them would have disappeared in between times."

What has compelled us to continue with such behaviour? Unfortunately, our ethics are to blame. Our human-centric ethics encourage us to do all we can to have knowledge and control over the forces of nature, and modify them in ways that are "convenient" to us. In the process, the rights of other sentient and non-sentient beings get trampled upon. Steiner's point is exactly in line with my last post - we view our society and humanity as the served, and nature as the servant, and in the process of separating ourselves from our servant, we have lost respect for it.
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I want to congratulate the Student Sustainability Initiative for a hugely successful Provost's Teaching Seminar on Sustainability. The seminar had around 300 professors attend, the goal of which was how each discipline can and must incorporate environmentally-, socially-, and sustainability-related philosophies into the classroom. This success would not have been possible without SSI's enthusiasm and determination.
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Think about what you do on a day-to-day basis. What do you eat? What do you drink? Where do you buy things from? Do you double-cup at Starbucks? Now, think of what you might be willing to give up to lessen your impact on nature. Is there anything you're willing to give up? Have you given anything up before? Tell me your thoughts...