Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.
The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches – driven by improved technology and increasing effort – is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition – manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don’t seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all – preferring to think that the science can’t possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes – with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do “science” for them – and why not? They live after all in a free society.
After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science – with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket – the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers’ lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the ‘fish are hiding’ crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding “advocacy scientists” to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking – the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?
The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.
In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.
And the connection to climate? Here.
I’ll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.
Anne van der Bom #244 — I’m all for rapid deployment of wind, and I appreciate your comments. Although, as you point out, it is possible to integrate a variable power source such as wind, there are also times when the output of a particular turbine goes to zero.
Wind must be in a certain speed range to operate, and when the wind is too weak or too strong there is no wind power. So replacing coal with wind for baseload power will be impossible unless some means for energy storage of wind (e.g. improved batteries, pumped hydro) can be developed.
My proposal, stated above at #88, is that wind when not used for grid power be used to crack coal CO2. Thus the grid stays reliable, and emissions are reduced at least partially. CO2 becomes, in effect, the storage medium for wind. The more wind turbines, the better for the coal plants — there would be no antagonism, no choice between one and the other. Carbon recycling could also produce vehicle fuel from coal CO2, by syntrolysis. To me that seems better than trying to substitute wind for coal as baseload power while countries like India and China are massively increasing coal capacity.
By the way, returning to the original topic of this thread:
I think that if Chip Knappenberger has demonstrated anything, it is that the emissions reduction proposals now before Congress are wholly inadequate, and that we need much stronger legislation, which puts a far greater price on carbon pollution than is now being considered.
Moreover, we need even stronger action than that — arguably the government should begin seizing and shutting down coal-fired power plants, and banning the manufacture of gasoline-fueled automobiles.
The USA, being by far the largest cumulative contributor to the anthropogenic excess of CO2, and being a world leader as well, should undertake such “innovations” to set an example for other nations.
I hope that Chip Knappenberger will be gratified when his study is cited in support of such measures.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2007.04.005
Overfish an area, you get population declines, changes in species ratios, the sort of thing politics can’t cope with although the scientists can point out the process as it’s happening. A classic current example is the industrial overfishing of the Red Sea, taking out the resource that individuals and families rely on for survival.
And so people turn to piracy. Google “Red Sea” fishery
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2007.04.005
#245, Jim Galasyn:
Yes, I mentioned this approach with regards to the Icelandic cod fishery in #188.
Could the inhabitants of Easter Island have used cap and trade to solve their deforestation problem? Or would they just have fought it out over the last remaining trees, the way the world is doing with conventional oil today?
“Or are you seriously proposing that if we just domesticated the biosphere, everything would be fine?”
There would probably be some issues with recruiting the necessary domesticators
Wind and solar and batteries. That’s been the approach for a hundred years, so please, lay off the disingenuous claims.
EDISON’S LATEST MARVEL — THE ELECTRIC COUNTRY HOUSE (NYT Sunday Sept 15 1912)
Replace the gasoline generator with solar photovoltaic panels and an inverter and voltage regulator, and you have the fossil fuel-free version of the same thing.
It is odd to see how the New York Times has changed… and look, they even talk about energy technology and science, instead of just quoting the EPRI PR guy:
Gosh, all that science makes my head spin – readers don’t want to hear about that, they just want to hear what the coal lobby’s economic analysts have to say, i.e. the Electric Power Research Institute
Who needs science when you have an expert to tell you what you need to know? It’s so much easier that way, isn’t it?
Re: Renewable energy
No one denies it will be quite a job to power the world with renewables only. However:
– we will have to do it anyway. Conventional fuels will run out in any case.
– one should not try to generate all energy that is used now, since most of it is wasted. To give an example, there is no real need to drive an SUV; you can use a small (electric?) car, or public transport. Another example: it is really necessary to air condition all of Texas the conventional way? Why not (say) use thick walled buildings (large thermal inertia + good insulation), with solar panels and solar collectors on top?
And yes, I am aware that the current situation cannot be changed overnight, and that change will cost money.
Neal, 9 May 2009 at 5:23, to check whether a word has appeared, use the “find” function in your browser while the comments page is open — e.g. search for ” cod ” — Gavin used that as his example to begin this.
>You probably only burn 1-2 kWh per day on lighting.”
Then why did they make such a fuss and ban conventional light bulbs?
Wilmot says: “So replacing coal with wind for baseload power will be impossible unless some means for energy storage of wind (e.g. improved batteries, pumped hydro) can be developed.”
Which is precisely what is already happening in countries that are not in the iron grip of Big Oil and Coal. You need to understand some things, Wilmot:
1) The USA is not the whole world
2) The US grid is not the only way a grid can work
3) Things are allowed to change
Nobody, but nobody, says that you can just build a load of wind farms and the problem is solved.
A diversified portfolio of renewables, on the other hand, does exactly what you say:
* Wind, solar and hydro together can provide baseload power
* Excess wind at night can be used to pump hydro
* Excess solar in daytime can be used to pump hydro
* Small-scale solar (e.g. solar-powered water heaters) can reduce domestic demand significantly
None of these things are technically impossible with today’s technology. The only obstacles are political.
—
reCaptcha understands wind power: revenue rentfree :-)
I always worry when somebody tells me we have to do something now, especially if they acknowledge that the solution will have no measurable effect on the problem.
Any solutions should certainly be subject to a cost/benefit analysis. Even if everyone agrees there is a problem, we have finite resources, and they should be spent wisely.
If the U.S. caps emissions independently of the rest of the world, we only succeed in spending hundreds of billions of dollars, without anything to show for it. It may not even lower total world-wide CO2 emissions, because as we make our own industries uncompetitive, they may just relocate and create more demand for 3 cent per watt coal-generated electricity in China and elsewhere. I realize that is frustrating for some to hear, but it is not necessarily an argument for doing nothing, just an argument for doing something else.
To use your analogy, why would any nation voluntarily reduce their catch, if they could be certain that another nation would simply increase their own catch and the total catch would remain the same.
You have to look for another way–perhaps spending money on increased fishery systems that would benefit all.
Would it be wise in 1970 for the government to mandate desktop computers on every desk in every school?
Sure, eventually it would have worked, but would the cost/benefit made any sense given the direction technology was evolving anyway.
If you look at the long-term, say 100 years, I think it is clear that the world will burn a lot of coal and oil in that time span.
It is also clear that 100 years from now (probably much sooner) batteries and solar cells will be dirt cheap, fossil fuels will get more expensive, and there will be a major shift away from them. How much money should we spend now, and how much should we hurt our economy to accelerate the process a few months or a few years? These are all fair questions.
If the political decision is made now in the U.S to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, where can you get the most bang for your buck? We may not know the right answer to that question, but it is pretty clear what the answer is not.
A history lesson …
Until about the time of WWII, the logging industry largely opposed large-scale harvest on PNW national forests. They worried that doing so would lower the price of timber and therefore the value of timberland. After liquidating their old-growth, they changed their tune and the US Forest Service became the clearcutting machine those of us my age grew up with, fought, and continue to fight.
The end result is that due to laws passed during the early 70s (ESA, NEPA, NFMA, CWA and others), logging on federal lands has been FAR less intense than on privately-held forests in western Oregon. By any measure other than volume of timber produced, federal public forests rate higher than their private counterparts. The only exception to this would be the Olympic National Forest, which is exempt from the aforementioned “alphabet soup” laws due to harvest agreements made when Olympic National Park was created back in the 1930s over howls of protest in the PNW (on the other hand, there’s no logging at all in Oly NP).
Just as has been mentioned regarding privately owned redwoods in California, we’ve had sparse examples of enlightened management in the PNW, too. Gilchrist Timber in central Oregon managed its old-growth ponderosa forest holdings extremely responsibly, and Old Man Gilchrist got himself an award from Oregon conservation organizations in recognition of his dedication to not destroying the forest lands he owned. They were logged, but carefully and minimally. Unfortunately, like all old men, he died, and his family sold the company. The new owners weren’t nearly as bad as Maxxum but did immediately put forward plans to double the cut – insisting that it wouldn’t cause any noticable changes in non-timber forest values. B***. But at least they didn’t go for immediate liquidation of the entire holding, as Maxxum tried to do.
Rene’s faith in privatization reminds me of our libertarians here in the US in the way that he’s either totally ignorant of, or ignores, facts on the ground (or in the sea).
Private ownership of natural resources in the US, at least, has led to degradation far beyond what we see on federally managed public lands (as bad as that management has been).
SecularAnimist Says (10 May 2009 at 11:43):
“Where is the evidence to support your assertion that there are “many better choices” than concentrating solar thermal when it comes to environmental impacts?”
In a fairly trivial observation of the world around you? In typing something like “mojave solar environmental impact” into Google’s search box?
“Let me refer you to a study that I have cited before:”
Yes, I know you’ve cited that study before, and therefore I will be considerably blunter in expressing my opinion of it, which comes down to four words: garbage in, garbage out. Start with a set of assumptions, and the results you you get will be the product of those assumptions, regardless of whether those assumptions have any relationship at all with the physical world.
As an example, if you start by assuming that scraping all the vegetation off a large area of land and treating it with herbicide has a negligible impact on the environment, then your study will naturally find that solar thermal is a low-cost option.
Or consider this quote from the press release: “CSP plants use less land per equivalent electrical output than large hydroelectric dams when flooded land is included”. Now isn’t that a classic piece of garbage going in? Hydroelectric dams convert land to lakes, which (whatever one may think of them), are still available as habitat for aquatic life, among other uses. CSP plants scrape the land bare and treat it with herbicides, just in case life should somehow manage to survive. How can anyone reasonably compare the two?
MikeN Says (10 May 2009 at 14:11):
“>You probably only burn 1-2 kWh per day on lighting.”
Then why did they make such a fuss and ban conventional light bulbs?”
Do the arithmetic: assume 1 KWh/day per household, 100 million households in the US, that’s 100 GWh for lighting. Assuming that the lights are on an average of 10 hours/day, that’s 10 1-GWatt power plants needed just to run the lights.
Little things multiplied by a hundred million or so tend to add up :-)
[Response: But I’m sure Chip would be happy to provide you with an analysis demonstrating that changing an individual bulb would only delay global warming at 2100 by a micro-second or two. – gavin]
dhogaza Says (10 May 2009 at 14:40):
“Private ownership of natural resources in the US, at least, has led to degradation far beyond what we see on federally managed public lands (as bad as that management has been).”
For a counterexample, consider the effects of off-road vehicle riding on public vs private lands.
James
10 May 2009 at 11:13 AM
Renewables can not replace our current fossil plants overnight. We’re forced to leave them running for some time. I meant that if you have a choice of what to shut down, the last ones to go will be the ccgt.
You are right. I should not have phrased it in such a simplistic way. I was not trying to argue that pumped hydro alone can deal with all peaks that renewable energy can conceivably produce. Apart from pumped hydro, we will have more means at our disposal to deal with variability (Diversification, geographic spreading, biomass, electric cars, (non-pumped) hydro).
There is currently more conventional generating capacity installed than is strictly needed to deal with outages and maintenance. If we decide to go down the renewables path, there will also be more installed capacity than is strictly needed. So we can even afford to dump some of those surpluses.
Re: 265: Exchanging light bulbs?
Yes, much energy goes into lighting, to me 10,000 MW seems a reasonable estimate for the US. Still, it would have made more sense to go for changing refrigerators, (deep) freezers and clothes driers first, rather than light bulbs.
But by all means, let’s use every opportunity for saving we have.
Wilmot McCutchen
10 May 2009 at 11:45 AM
Yes. But you’ll agree that that is hardly an issue. Over a whole country the size of Spain or Germany, wind power never goes to 0. RED Espanha has this sleek looking web page showing their wind power generation in real time, and how it fits into their total generation mix. It can give you a good impression about the variability of wind.
I don’t understand. What is the relation between those? How do the new powerplants in India and China affect the decision on what the smartest replacement for ff derived electricity in the USA is?
James, it doesn’t matter who owns property, to the OHV riders who make trouble. If they can climb it they’ll go across it and they’re getting able to handle steeper hills every year.
I had four of them on my restoration site yesterday, trashing the one little spring-fed puddle that reliably lasts long enough into the dry season for the yellow-legged frogs to reproduce. You think a sheriff cares? Try doing anything in wildland to protect it and you’ll learn.
You want to try owning fish in the ocean? A government-enforced ban on fishing is possible. An ownership scheme only benefits those owners who are rich enough to own a government or private police force to enforce their “property rights.”
Same for a little parcel of wildland. The owners rich enough to fence and guard and floodlight get fast police protection — and no wildlife. Anyone trying to do restoration with native plants gets crapped on. It’s the best we can do, try to keep a little of the wildland in shape until society gets smart, if it ever does.
Interesting, Hank – where is your restoration project taking place? Somewhere in the Sierras, I presume… a funny thing about the yellow legged frog program – the only restoration programs for yellow-legged frogs I’ve heard of are as follows:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/ltbmu/news/2008/10/03-ylf-habitat-restoration.shtml
http://www.mylfrog.info/pdfs/SEKI_fishremoval_EA.pdf
At one time, these frogs were the most abundant amphibian in the high mountain lakes of the Sierra Nevada. Populations of mountain yellow-legged frogs have declined approximately 95 percent in the Sierra Nevada, including in Yosemite National Park, and more populations are lost every year. The ecological effects of the loss of this species have been tremendous, as their former abundance made them a keystone predator and prey; a crucial agent of nutrient and energy cycling in Sierran aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
Yosemite is starting a project to restore native fishless ecological conditions to a small number of remote lakes. Such actions may include removal of introduced, non-native fish. Proposed actions would allow re-colonization by hundreds of native species, either naturally or through further management actions. This restoration would be most critical for the mountain yellow-legged frog.
[edit – stick to discussing valid points, not the commenters]
#252, Secular animist.
I think you misunderstand. What has happened with the climate legislation in the House is that it has been watered down in committee by the paid employees of the coal lobby, largely an alliance of coal-state Democrats and Republicans. This was done by various lobbyists who applied pressure on behalf of Duke Energy, Southern and so on.
Then, the coal lobby hires people like Chip to attack the bill on the basis of it being too watered down to do much good – thereby heading off any domestic legislation at all. That way, when Copenhagen rolls around in the fall, they can look forward to China and other nations that have already made significant steps towards renewables to balk over anything further, because the U.S. has not done so.
That’s the political play here, is my guess. It’s not new, the same approach was used to defeat Kyoto accords.
I am not saying that CFLs or LED dont make a difference – just not even remotely enough. Its too easy for people say ‘well I have replaced all my bulbs with CFLs, turn off all my electrics at night, grow my own vegetables so I am doing my bit’. Well all that helps – just not that much and it most certainly does not offset say commuting between your lifestyle block where you graze your kids horses on otherwise arable farmland in an SUV which you justify because you are now a “farmer”. I’m becoming more convinced that electric cars plus some biofuels for heavy lifting are way forward. And that generating the required electricity is doable as well. I very much doubt that the change would damage an economy that much overall, though there would certainly be local losers (eg coal).
anne van der Bom #269 — I was trying to say that whatever solution we might come up with in the US should also be a solution for China and India and the rest of the world. The plight of the polar bears and the effects of non-linear dynamics years in the future have so far not caused any change in course or even a slowing down. Human nature, as illustrated by Gavin’s parable, tends toward a bad result.
Hybrid power generation for carbon recycling could turn CO2 from a waste product into a resource and thereby make it profitable to solve the weird world weather problem within the short time (20 years) we have for taking effective action. A profit motive might succeed, whereas we must admit that scolding and shaming and even threatening to punish are bound to fail. Maybe it’s a Hail Mary play, but it seems like our only chance.
ReCaptcha: implore neighbourhood
Ah, so *that* explains why wild salmon are thriving in the Columbia Basin.
capcha must be an american football fan: “clone Unitas”
I empathise with the difficulties faced by Chip. In my state bodies are disposed of directly into the river – a long running, sanctioned tradition. There are some (down-river types) who now raise the contentious claim that this has health drawbacks and further suggest punitive economic measures such as interment in wooden coffins as a ‘solution’.
I have provided a detailed analysis showing that if my town adopts such measures the body count in the river will drop by less than 2%, a negligible amount. What is more, the proposed ‘solution’ promulgates uninvestigated changes in land use, deforestation and an unfair imposition of cost on the poor – all in the name of environmental protection and equity! The response I receive on presenting this logic is the unsusbstantiated claim that other towns will shift their burial practices to uneconomic methods at some unspecified point in future. Extraordinary!
My thoughts are with you.
Ammonite
All these jokes and mockery, but not really addressing the substance of Chip’s analysis.
It doesn’t help that the post starts with a bad analogy, easily avoidable. The top 5 don’t catch 50% of the fish, they have more than 60%, and China is the leading emitter, with more than 20%.
[Response: Do pay attention. The number of fisherfolk is analogous to population – do the math again. – gavin]
#188 / 245: Neal & Jim, thanks for the references to the successful experiments in Iceland, NZ and the Alaskan pollock fishery to replace the tragedy of the government commons with property rights approaches that gives the fishermen a stake in protecting the resources they harvest, instead of simply an incentive to invest in a mad race to catch fish before others do in a continually shrinking fishery with shorter and shorter seasons.
I continue to have problems with the spam filter (links and bad words?), so I have excised most of this post and put it up separately at my blog, linked at my name above (with links to some of my other posts on fisheries)
So I come to the RealClimate website, click on the “About” section and read: “RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.”
Then I read the first post on the header regarding the tragedy of the commons. So much for the science mission. When the scientists reveal their bias it becomes difficult to trust their science. True or not, because of the obvious political leanings of the author the science just seems like a cover for a social engineering project. It would lend credence to your mission if you stuck to the science and left the politics to other sites.
[Response: We write about what we want to write about. You have no obligation to read. – gavin]
In the past, Hank has revealed the fact that he’s a small landholder trying to, on an individual basis, do some habitat restoration.
Maybe you can’t find it on the web because he hasn’t bothered to put his stuff on the web.
Maybe this isn’t proof that he’s not doing what he claims to be doing.
dhogaza Says (10 May 2009 at 19:50):
“Ah, so *that* explains why wild salmon are thriving in the Columbia Basin.”
A question, then: are you under the impression that salmon are the only species of fish that lives in the Columbia drainage? (Though strictly speaking “lives in” is an inaccuracy, since the salmon spends much of its life in the ocean, swimming upstream to spawn.) That’s not the case: there are many other kinds of non-andromanous fish that live there, plus reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates of all sorts, and vegetation. The river and the lakes behind those hydroelectric dams are still a living ecosystem, even though the dams have had a disastrous effect on a few species.
But look at your comment from the other side: if the effect on a few species gives you reason to question the existence of those dams, how can you justify the far greater effect of solar thermal?
#262 Cardin, do you seriously think that there is ANY possibility of “the U.S. cap[ping] emissions independently of the rest of the world”?
US legislators (and presidents from Bush Sr through Clinton and Dubya) have made it crystal clear that we won`t act alone.
Rather, we face classic collective action problem with respect to a shared resource – like fishermen regulating a fisheries, ranchers agreeing on how to manage a range or farmers managing streamflows – with respect to which we have long been the major user (and remain so by far on a per capita basis), and very few are willing to act (other than to posture) unless we are.
We have long recognized that there are shared gains (in the form of avoided losses to ecosystems and economies) to acting to limit human-induced climate change and ocean acidification, and to improved environmental management in the third world – real costs that your “cost-benefit” analysis neatly ignores), and we have ample carrots and sticks to persuade others to follow.
The problem is that the wheel of our own government has long been captured by the investors and industries that reap short-term profits while shifting costs to all of us and future generations.
IOW, the supposedly cool and rational approach is, at its core, a mask by which particular interests continue to hijack the rest of society.
It`s this fact that drives others – frequently wealthy – who are not invested in fossil fuels to support the PR campaigns of Gore and others (not enviro-facists out to destroy capitalism).
Anne van der Bom Says (10 May 2009 at 16:01):
“But you’ll agree that that is hardly an issue. Over a whole country the size of Spain or Germany, wind power never goes to 0. RED Espanha has this sleek looking web page showing their wind power generation in real time…”
Sleek perhaps, but does not display on my system. Still, it would be very interesting to see their actual generation, graphed as say hourly MW generated over a year, because I would be very surprised if it didn’t show significant variation. After all, wind is not random: it’s generated by weather systems operating on continental scales. Perhaps the total never goes to zero, but the question is whether it goes significantly below demand for long enough to exhaust whatever storage is on the system.
270: Hank, what you`re bemoaning is the “property” is only as good as one`s ability to defend it. The battle we all face with spam is another example.
The rest of creation has long confronted the same, unending battle over resources; unfortunately nature is relatively defenseless before mankind, and our continuing technological/organizational innovation continues to ramp up our assault on “wild” nature.
The flip side is that progress also makes it easier for us to identify polluters and to protect assets.
Re 262 Ammonite:
Sometimes the best answer is satire. Well said!
dhogaza argues that since private forests are harvested faster than government ones, that MEANS they they are being harvested too quickly. His idea seems to be that state judgements should be accepted without a second thought, a la the USSR.
In markets such as lumber, resource depletion by some operators, creates incentives for other operators to replace the depleted resources. Governments have no comparable rationale to work on, and do not stand or fall on the soundness of their lumber judgements.
What’s up at the BBC? Last night they showed a one hour programme about the marvels and beauty of South Pacific Islands – of the many unique and unusual species, and the precarious lifestyles of some human inhabitants (BBC2, 9th May 20:30 hrs, ‘South Pacific’). But absolutely no reference to climate change or rising sea levels! Some of the islands were tiny with just a couple of palm tress. There’s one of just 0.6 square miles and 300 inhabitants, and remote from any neighbours – living in peace and harmony. How could the BBC fail to mention the terrible threats facing these islands?
#145: Jim, it seems to me that you and others have misunderstood Rene and are attacking strawmen rather than his points, which are fairly general – and fully acknowledge the undeniable point that resources that are unowned or unmanaged are abused.
Rather than seeing common ground or exploring how to address these classes of problems, you ll prefer to offer what are essentially red-herrings about how private property is itself imperfect, which is not a point that Rene has at all contested.
“Yeah, let’s just domesticate and privatize everything, that’ll solve it! You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, either with regard to endangered species protection, management of a commons, or the interaction between the two. Zip.”
Is Rene or anyone saying that we have to privatize all resources? Rather, he is giving you a great talking point for all those supposed “free-market” “skeptics” out there, who fail to recognize that markets don`t work with respect to resources that nobody owns or are not collectively protected/managed.
You are all so ready to fight that you are having great difficulty distinguishing friend from foe.
Tokyo, Rene is making up a strawman. His ideal of ownership only works when you take humans out of the picture. His theory is unrealisable without overwhelming control of the short-sightedness of humans and the capitalist consequence of conflating wealth with power: the power gains wealth, which garners more power, which gains yet more wealth…
So someone who plays for the short term will gain power over others.
And so short-sighted goals are rewarded in capitalism.
in 284: “The flip side is that progress also makes it easier for us to identify polluters and to protect assets.”
But those with the greatest power to pollute have the greatest power to avoid the consequences.
Something you have realised but not taken to its inevitable conclusion and something Rene shows no sign of acknowledging.
OT HERE I know, but worth keeping an eye on; the Artic ice appears to be thawing from the pole this year!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
Seems we may have to add south-east asia’s rainforests to the list of tragically lost commons.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/green-power-plants-may-burn-palm-oil-1682650.html
Unfortunately this is being proposed in order to “help the UK meet its target of generating 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020”. The palm plants may be renewable, but as for the rainforest…
Rene Cheront wrote: “With the odd exception, people do not knowingly or deliberately abuse their own property, since this is self-defeating. Do you knowingly or deliberately abuse your own property? Surely not.”
Pity you weren’t around to argue the slaveowners’ case, Rene. After all, they would surely never have abused their property, would they?
When a company owns a piece of tropical forest, the most profitable thing to do with it is generally to harvest the saleable trees, and either just sell the remains and move the capital on to the next privatization-generated opportunity, or use the land for cattle grazing or oil palm plantations, destroying its biodiversity and destroying the livelihood of local people in the process. So that’s what they do.
#289 Mark
“Rene is making up a strawman”
I understand a strawman to be a caricature of an opponent’s position, created so as to be easily demolishable. Please explain which ideas you feel I have given such treatment to.
“His ideal of ownership only works when you take humans out of the picture”
I have absolutely no idea what this might mean. Are you thinking of property rights in the animal kingdom perhaps?
Nor do I see any argument as such in the comments on alleged short-termism. Nor the vagaries on power in #290 either for that matter. Am I to understand your primary agenda is ideological?
EL writes:
It wasn’t an estimate, pal, I was quoting the price the utilities in California actually charge. Nine cents per kilowatt-hour for wind. No need to guess.
Douglas Wise writes:
Why do you think that?
Fine with me–just let them do it with the Price-Andersen Act repealed.
EL writes:
Draw power from solar thermal, photovoltaic, geothermal, and biomass power plants?
Wilmot McCutcheon writes:
Has it escaped your attention that while wind is most abundant at night, sunlight is most abundant during the day?
Re #297–
Yeah, “Texas on a nice hot summers (sic) day” sounds perfect for solar thermal or PV, doesn’t it?
Mr. Knappenberger might like to reflect that if the USA refuses to take action to reduce its emissions, this is likely to have costs. First, as I think has already been noted, this will greatly reduce the chances of other countries reducing emissions – after all, what could be a greater political gift to those in China, India, or Europe who oppose emissions reduction measures in their own countries? Second, if Americans as a whole demonstrate the kind of selfish nationalism Knappenberger displays so proudly, sooner or later some state or substate organisation is going to build up sufficient resentment and hatred to say it with a nuke in a shipping container, or perhaps a genetically modified virus.