What would be the difference between using a resource and exploiting it?

"What would be the difference between using a resource and exploiting it?"

"exploit" typically carries with it negative connotations. American Heritage has it as "To make use of selfishly or unethically", and Collins contains a similar result, but also provides a second meaning: "to make the best use of {eg}'to exploit natural resources'" which illustrates a contrast that I find interesting: that we're unethical if we exploit a person and make the best of their resources for our own gain, but we're not unethical if we exploit non-human resources for similar ends, but which is beside the point.

So exploiting a resource is using it in an unethical fashion (implication being that an unsustainable or fundamentally destructive use is unethical) There is then the non-destructive or degrading use, and the non-use that is still use, such as having wilderness to provide oxygen, filter runoff, prevent erosion, create rain etc. We avail ourselves of these services or uses without actually using the resource in a conventional sense.

geoffc: you are 100% correct when you say "...and the non-use that is still use, such as having wilderness to provide oxygen, filter runoff, prevent erosion, create rain etc. We avail ourselves of these services or uses without actually using the resource in a conventional sense."
HOWEVER, we can also get all these benefits in sufficient quantity by otherways from land where the wilderness has been destroyed.

For example: We get all the oxygen we need from the vegetation that we replace the wilderness with. We filter all sewage water in cities in processing plants to near drinking quality and divert storm water without causing erosion. Farmers in rural areas actively seek to minimize erosion and increase soil health because it is in their best interests to since it increases profit. etc,..

The truth is that we (and also our descendants) don't *need* wilderness to live a healthy life - an example of this Ireland, Ireland doesn't have any sizeable pristine wilderness left yet 6000,000 million people live there with a very high standard of living.

What pristine wilderness does have is an aesthetic value. People like to visit/look at the wilderness. So it comes down to a question of what people want more-- a wilderness to look at or land to use. This is best answered economically by the population: if the people want to keep the wilderness than they will pay to keep it that way. There is nothing stopping you from donating and raising funds to buy land to keep it as a wilderness.

"HOWEVER, we can also get all these benefits in sufficient quantity by otherways from land where the wilderness has been destroyed."

We have only the most superficial knowledge of the damage done by destroying wilderness. The diverse ecosystems that we destroy are replaced with either monocultures or handicapped polycultures. Species extinction and plagues of vermin are some of the results. The recent dust storms are perfect examples of how we fail as a species in this regard.

We rarely use fertile soil for growing food (because we have destroyed most of it), finding it easier to utilise fertilisers injected into a barren substrate, leading to a raft of nutritional illnesses that are becoming ever more prevalent in western society. Farming via in-the-ground hydroponics is entirely dependent on cheap fossil fuels/abundant nitrogen fertiliser.

Nature is more complex than we can appreciate, and the effects of our short term desires on the long term viability of the ecosystems that support us are far reaching and often hidden until it is too late.

"The truth is that we (and also our descendants) don't *need* wilderness to live a healthy life - an example of this Ireland ... yet 6000,000 million people live there with a very high standard of living" [there are only 6 million odd people in Ireland]

Their existence at the numbers quoted is entirely dependent on the continued abundance and access to fossil fuels, most especially as fertiliser. This is worlds away from sustainable. That high standard of living has nothing to do with the natural world, and everything to do with predation on cheap labour from second and third world countries. Environmental destruction outsourced.

The real truth is that most people have no idea what is important and needed to survive. Spending so long in the city where everything is shipped in from "out there" and appears miraculously in the supermarket has allowed people to entertain dangerous illusions like those you promote.

I would advise you pick up a copy of "The Lorax" by Dr Seuss for a rudimentary primer on the knock-on effects of resource exploitation.

Geoffc
When I studied ecology, they taught us that for an animal or plant to 'use' or to 'exploit' a resource meant the same thing.

Yes, to exploit has a negative connotation, but I think the point is, there are no objective criteria by which the distinction could be made; it depends on the opinion of the person making the call, and in that sense, is arbitrary. If you eat a sandwich you might think that is good and perfectly harmless, but by that act someone else can't eat the same sandwich, so they could say it's 'selfish'.

Do you agree? If not, what do you think the objective criteria could be?

Ecology is a scientific discipline that relies on constrained terminology, sadly for us, politics and "environmentalism" is a lot more free and easy with the language!

Objective criteria can be established if we are willing, the only reason they aren't is because the current ambiguity suits people's diverse purposes. Perhaps you've heard of Permaculture, which sets out a prime directive and three ethics:

PD: The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.

Ethics
1: Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.

2. Care of People: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.

3. Fair share: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.

With a framework like this it would seem to be a good deal simpler to make such objective decisions as opposed to the current all-for-one and none-for-all approach determined by the framework of unfettered capitalism. Without a moral and ethical code we are lost upon a sea of competing desires with only what amounts to a might-equals-right methodology to distinguish the quality of any particular decision or action. In the past state-wide religion has offered such a code, for better or worse, but we have left those days behind and science has not stepped in to fill that moral void.

The question of the sandwich is dependent on many factors. Who made the sandwich? Does the potential consumer have fair right to consume said sandwich? Would their consumption of the sandwich mean that they have taken their fair share, and provided fair recompense to those involved in the lifecycle of the sandwich, or not?

Similarly for the wilderness, ethic 1 would indicate we leave it alone because it is a life system. Ethic 2 might lead us to consider exploiting it, but ethic 3 would balance against that consideration because there are already enough of us humans so such use would be considered greed.