Another example of environmental valuation at work in today's Washington Post (It Sprouts! It Climbs! It Strikes WIthout Warning!)
[...]
"Invasive species are the greatest environmental threat of the 21st century, bar none," said Tom Stohlgren, an ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Institute of Invasive Species Science, who ranks it a greater problem than global climate change.
[...]
It is difficult to calculate the precise damage invasives inflict, but Cornell University's David Pimentel estimates there are 50,000 plants and animals that came from somewhere else, costing the United States more than $125 billion a year by sparking fires, blocking waterways and destroying crops. For instance, zebra mussels, which infiltrated the Great Lakes in the mid-1980s and clog pipes in power plants and other facilities, cost that region $100 million to $200 million a year, said David M. Lodge of Notre Dame University.
Hmmm...now if we only knew the costs of global warming we could compare (or should we?).
