这是一篇很好的文章。要生产就必须有消耗。这是不可避免的。 原料来自生态系统本身，而其耗损也与整个生态体系有关。当森林被大面积砍伐以提供原木来源之后，它就不再是休闲场所和蜜蜂栖息地了，其保持水土和净化空气的能力也会大大降低。废弃物回到生态体系中（例如大气和水土循环中），更加剧了生态系统的恶化。相应地，公共利益也会因此受到损害。公共利益不只关乎个人，从这个意义上来说，它是非竞争性的，也就是说，如果森林为我提供休息场所，对其他人亦然。因此，在为了私人目的进行的生产活动中，涉及公共利益的生态系统不可避免地沦为牺牲品经济对环境的负面影响已开始可能以隐而不现，比如，它会催生一些有一定潜伏期的慢性疾病，并造成不可预料的非连续性病变（传统的马克思主义术语把它称作“从量变到质变”）。现在的问题是，出于私人目的而进行的生产活动在与政治联手后有上升的趋势，所造成的对公共利益的侵害已为许多人所察觉（例如，他们不再享有清洁的空气和干净的饮用水）马军很正确——大众的知情和参与很重要，这有助于应对日益严重的威胁和已经存在的负面影响。在为追求最大利益的市场设置种种规定和限制时，这些负面影响必须被考虑到。因为这关乎社会公平。尽管如此，仍有一些经济学家声称，出于发展经济的考虑，中国可以先污染后治理，正如一些发达国家过去过去经历的那样。然而，这种模式似乎并不适宜于中国，其付出的代价也会太高。在经济发展到理想水平以前，中国人很可能早就被肮脏的空气呛死了。另外，许多运用“污染——治理”模式的国家都把危害环境的废弃物倾倒到欠发达国家（也包括中国）。 因此，这一模式也许更适合于发达国家。

This is a great article. It is impossible to make something from nothing - the production of market goods requires raw materials and generates wastes, inevitably. Raw materials are taken from the ecological system structure but that depletes connected ecological-system services. When a forest is fenced off to be used as a raw material source (by being logged) then its ability to act as a watershed, as a way of cleaning the air, as a place of leisure and habitat for pollinating bees is degraded. Waste returned to eco-systems (the air, water systems, the soil) further degrades ecological -system services. These are public goods that are degraded - they are not owned by anyone in particular and, when they are used as public goods, they are non-rival. ("non rival" means that if I use an open access forest as a place of leisure it is still available as a place of leisure to others).

So eco-systems which are creating life sustaining services that are public goods are being degraded in the production of private goods. Negative economic impacts feed into a complex ecological system creating degrading effects some of which may be hidden at first, e.g. chronic illnesses appearing with a time lag, and creating unexpected non linear transformations.(In old fashioned Marxist jargon, quantitative changes suddenly become qualitative changes -or in ordinary talk, "nasty surprises").

The problem is that private benefits accrue to market actors with political connections in some places and the burdens and losses from degraded public goods are felt by other citizens in other places (e.g. they can no longer breath clean air or drink clean water). Ma Jun is quite right - this requires well informed mass participation by citizens to better generate the information needed to account for threatened possible or already existing negative impacts (ecological and collective costs). Those negatively effected must have access to information, research and support to feed their concerns into a process of negotiated collective restraints set on the markets driven by the profit seeking few. These are social justice issues.

Despite this some economists say China should pollute to get rich first and clean up later. They say this is what happened in other rich countries. However, the turning points, the levels of income at which the worsening is supposed to halt and reverse, are too high for China to ever reasonably expect that it will get there. Its population will have choked on filthy air and water first. Moreover, much of the apparent improvement in wealthy countries comes from these nations offshoring the most environmentally damaging production stages of the goods that they consume to the poorer countries like China. Pollute first and clean up later is a theory that suits the big foreign interests and the wealthy shopper of my country.

Brian Davey