Bottom-line, we have to expect that individuals (and the groups they belong to) will have their own preferences that they will try to realize. Voluntary private transactions between individuals and firms, whereby each achieves some of its objectives, is the engine that has fueled civilization, improved technology and increasing wealth.

Problems occur when private transactions have a large external component to which neither party has any effective obligation, or when the resources involved in economic activity are “common” or open-access resources that are not effectively regulated – then such common resources get abused.

When the commons is small, informal public pressure, jawboning and community sanctions (including force) have been traditionally employed to solve such problems – and much of our success as a species is based on evloved behaviors that enhance such cooperation and coordination.

But in a rapidly growing, globalizing yet still hetereogenous world, moralizing is still our instinctive response, but is hardly an effective one. More formal rules and regulations may be needed, and in many cases clearly are essential. Strong, competitive markets, when coupled with unclearly defined or ineffectively defended resources, leads inevitably to resource abuse – until resource users, property owners and governments decide that it is in their interests to put a stop to it.

Can I suggest you take a look at the links I sent to Roger above, particularly Bruce Yandle, The Commons: Tragedy or Triumph?, http://www.libertyhaven.com/politicsandcurrentevents/environmentalismorconservation/commons.shtml?

My comments on the Lahsen & Noble posting about research on land use in the Amazon might also be worth considering: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001043lahsen_and_nobre_20.html.

What is rather fascinating to me is that this is an issue where CU could so easily reduce emissions by purchasing windpower from the local utility, at least during a transition period to some longer term solution, at a very modest cost. All of the moves towards renewable energy at CU have been driven by the university’s customers – the students. Students not only voted to tax themselves to pay for windpower for the student controlled buildings, but also taxed themselves to set up funds to invest in energy efficiency and solar, and agreed to a very large fee increase to build new academic buildings only with a commitment from the campus administration that those buildings meet the LEED Gold standard of the US green building council and that the electricity for these buildings come from 100% Green-E ertified renewable sources. CU is unusual in that is has taken significant steps towards sustainability, but these have been driven from the bottom, not by leadership from the level of the chancellor or the president. So it may not be surprising that the chancellor is, at least initially, proposing to ignore the impact of the power plant decision on carbon emissions. However, given the very modest costs involved, I am guessing that the final outcome will be quite different. The surrounding community and students are likely to put some significant pressure on CU to take a different approach; and as a public institution CU now faces a new state administration and legislature that has a clean energy and climate change agenda, and is unlikely to agree to provide tens of millions of dollars of state capital funding for this project without the carbon emissions being addressed.

How can you argue that some people on the planet, and they will be among those having more time and money to spare, can abuse the commons by eco-touring, while at the same time argue that all should be willing to do their share to save the planet? I’m thinking especially of the billions of people who must abuse the commons merely to try to stay healthy and alive.

1. “multi-millionaires … are not and can not be Green.”
This is overly broad and unsupportable, except in the limited sense that the wealthy on average use more resources than the middle classes and poor. This has always been the case, even when we were hunter-gatherers. But does that mean that the wealthy are necessarily hypocrites when they talk about preserving the environment? The wealthy frequently invest in preserving important pieces of natural habitat (and do a better job of managing their properties than the government does), and the developed and wealthy western nations have much better environmental records than do the poor and underdeveloped nations. Are we all hypocrites then, if we choose to use our comparative wealth to plead for changes that express our desires for an enhanced natural environment? I would certainly disagree, but note that you would sweep in as well people such as Lomborg and the organized churches.

2. “pointing out true facts to those who are clearly not ‘walking the talk’ is, for reasons that I cannot understand, considered to be in bad form.”
I have not said that criticisms of perceived hypocrisy by wealthy “enviros” is in bad form; I have just indicated that while I understand the wellsprings of such feelings, I consider them to actually be unjustified given the nature of the problem. Quite interesting that those who perceive a problem are expected to wear hairshirts and flagellate themselves in order to avoid being termed hypocrites, while resource users who remain selfishly interested simply in continued resource exploitation and who deny any institutional problem manage to avoid a hypocrisy charge.

3. You criticize “Clear-cutting the slopes, building human-made structures in formally unspoiled locations, locations that require large CO2 costs to ensure the comfort of the skiers, huge infrastructure investments, high CO2 costs for transportations, etc., etc.”

Your first comment illustrates well what happens to open-access common resource where there is no cost to resource use. Since GHG emissions are free, no one faces any incentives to find ways to structure their activities so as to reduce such emissions. If such measures were in place, we would all take such measures into account in our private economic decisions, since they would be reflected in the pricing signals we face.

4. You criticize “‘Eco-Tourists’, the very definition of an oxymoron and additionally, what a crock.”
Is it your view that western tourists can best preserve nature in the less developed world by refusing to visit such countries? How then will such countries have incentives to preserve what we consider to be valuable?

Regards,

Tom

PS: As I was addressing also Roger and Benny in my initial comment, I was necessarily rather broad. I apologize for any resulting incorrect and unfair presumptions.

I think we’re all quite aware that developed nations all have regulatory/legal regimes that regulate many air pollutants (more or less effectively, and with many problems remaining), but surely you understand that these respective measures have no binding effect on other countries, and that in the developing world pollution is very ineffectively regulated, if at all?

Just as we can expect more effective pollution control in developing countries as they become wealthier and enhance their governance and legal systems, we can expect greater national and international efforts made to deal with matters that are less tractable than classic air pollution to solutions at a purely local level, including various aspects of climate change.

Regards,

Tom

I would just point out that there are very good reasons why they say one thing and do another – just as a fisherman who is pleading for a more sustainable use of a fishery will himself catch whatever fish he can, and invest is a faster boat and fish-locating gear, while not investing in the fishery, and just as Colorado University will invest in the lowest-cost, most reliable energy supply despite its goals to lower its climate impact.

Regards.

I see you noted in final comments to me on another thread that “Commons problems are “solved” (quotes because they are often not completely solved) by turning them into non-commons problems. … If you insist on defining climate change as a commons problem you will find that there may indeed be no solution beyond muddling through (which may be where we are headed). If it is to be “solved” then someone has to figure out a way that is politically, technologically, and practically feasible to turn the challenge into a non-commons problem.”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001006the_simplest_solutio.html

This represents a limited, partial understanding of how commons problems are resolved. While private property approaches (which also require the establishment of commonly accepted understandings and legal institutions) that resolve commons problems by eliminating the commons is one approach, it is not the sole one. Historically, many commons have been managed by creating shared rules of use, while excluding outsiders – so that from the outside, the commons looks like private property. These traditional approaches have relied heavily on a shared sence of community and on informal (but still effective) rules and sanctions, including peer pressure (moral suasion) and direct action. This can still be seen at work in the New England lobster fisheries, for example. It seems to me that these approaches have very deep roots and provide the basis for mankind’s startling evolutionary success.

Many traditional approaches to commons have been swamped by growing market demand and evolving technology that has made either privatization or destructive exploitation by outsiders possible.

But in some cases, where privatization is simply not feasible, community management approaches are making a comeback. The latest reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act for US fisheries is a case in point. This eliminates the destructive, dangerous and wasteful race to catch diminishing fish stocks during incresingly limited fishing seasons, by setting quotas that are allocated to existing fishermen and that, like rights to graze a shared range, may be transferred among the fishermen in private transactions. Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine has a good article on these approaches here: http://www.reason.com/news/show/36839.html

If you are interested in exploring this further, I would suggest the following as useful starting points:

1. Bruce Yandle, The Commons: Tragedy or Triumph?

http://www.libertyhaven.com/politicsandcurrentevents/environmentalismorconservation/commons.shtml

2. Messick, D. M., M. B. Brewer, Solving Social Dilemmas, http://www.iew.unizh.ch/wp/iewwp059.pdf

Exerpt: “[I]nformal sanctions are key to the enforcement of implicit agreements and social norms. Their importance derives from the fact that the bulk of people’s daily interactions is not governed by explicit, enforceable contracts but by informal agreements and social norms. These agreements and norms are major factors in a society’s social capital that is crucial for the functioning of democratic institutions as well as for economic and social success. How we interact with our colleagues at the workplace, with our friends and neighbors and even with strangers is governed by a set of informally shared rules of appropriate behavior.”

3. Thomas Dietz, Elinor Ostrom & Paul C. Stern, The Struggle to Govern the Commons, SCIENCE VOL 302 12 DECEMBER 2003
http://www.conservationcommons.org/media/document/docu-7e8akm.pdf

4. Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolsak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Stonich, and Elke U. Weber, The Drama of the Commons (Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Editors, National Research Council)
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10287.html

5. CAROL M. ROSE, EXPANDING THE CHOICES FOR THE GLOBAL COMMONS: COMPARING NEWFANGLED TRADABLE ALLOWANCE SCHEMES TO OLD-FASHIONED COMMON PROPERTY REGIMES, 10 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y F. 45
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/delpf/articles/delpf10p45.htm

6. TERRY L. ANDERSON AND J. BISHOP GREWELL, PROPERTY RIGHTS SOLUTIONS FOR THE GLOBAL COMMONS: BOTTOM-UP OR TOP-DOWN, 10 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y F. 73
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/delpf/articles/delpf10p73.htm

7. BRUCE YANDLE, GRASPING FOR THE HEAVENS:
3-D PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE GLOBAL COMMONS, 10 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y F. 13
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?10+Duke+Envtl.+L.+&+Pol‘y+F.+13

8. Robert Ellickson, Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes,
http://www.amazon.com/Order-without-Law-Neighbors-Disputes/dp/0674641698/sr=1-1/qid=1169438777/ref=sr_1_1/002-1575649-3454448?ie=UTF8&s=books

9. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
http://www.amazon.com/Governing-Commons-Evolution-Institutions-Collective/dp/0521405998

Please note that I also find Public Choice analysis, focussing on the manipulation of governing institutions by elites and special interest groups, to be very useful as well.

Regards,

Tom

I don’t see any reason to acknowledge something that is simply not true. Emissions of waste gases of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and others, are regulated, and with increasing stringency. These regulations are such that total emissions and ambient concentrations of these gases in the U.S. are significantly less than ~20-30 years ago, even though economic activity has greatly increased.

Particulate emissions are also being regulated with increasing stringency.