the famous words of Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker (1994, p. 117), prices do not tell the ecological truth. One example of this is the long-term decline in the prices of most primary commodities that has so decimated the economies of resource-exporting nations in the Third World, even as stocks of those commodities have declined. The exhaustion of the Atlantic cod fishery is perhaps the best known Canadian example. In many cases, artificially low prices may encourage impoverished countries to intensify exploitation of diminishing reserves because they have no alternatives, and because international bodies like the IMF have forced these countries to abandon self-reliance in favour of exporting. This intensified exploitation further gluts the market and further lowers prices. A big reason why prices have not reflected resource scarcity is because the prices of materials do not incorporate full costs. And the environmental costs of extraction industry have been increasing even as resource prices have been declining. According to John E. Young (2000, p.10), The World Banks index of metals and minerals priceshas declined 48 percent in real terms since 1960. The banks index of nonfuel primary commodity prices has dropped by 55 percent over the same period. It seems clear that measures must be taken to make sure that prices do tell the ecological truth, thereby allowing markets to encourage the right kinds of production and exchange. Ironically, some of the means by which costs could be more accurately reflected in market prices are being used to do precisely the opposite. That is, governments are using subsidies and taxes to encourage the destructive activities that should be discouraged. According to Myers and Kent (2001), what have been called perverse subsidies amount to $2 trillion worldwide, and they constitute 78 percent of all subsidies bestowed by governments. They total about 5.6 percent of the $35 trillion global economy.