Year: 2012

The fallacy of the tragedy of the commons

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Who owns, say, the natural gas deposits that have lain, untapped, under the ocean near Sable Island, a hundred kilometers from my house? Who owns the Gorgon gas field under Barrow Island off Australia’s west coast? Who owns the methane hydrate deposits off the shore of New Jersey? Who owns the limestone deposits under California’s central coast (deposits that yield up some of the world’s sublime wines)? Who owns the great boreal forests of Alaska, Siberia, and Canada? Who owns the rocks of the earth? Who, indeed, owns the air? The birds of the air? The water? The oceans? Fish stocks? Who owns the whales?

Who owns nature?

Commentary: Peak Oil: Yes, still a serious issue

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The director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will be delivering a lecture titled “U.S. Energy Outlook: Whatever Happened to ‘Peak Oil'” at Indiana University on February 6. The description of the lecture provides some background: “Not long ago, the public heard much concern that the nation and the globe had reached or was about to reach the point of peak oil production and would be on a downward trajectory due to declining resources. Despite growing demand for energy, however, fossil fuel resources have never been higher.”

Squandering the wealth of life

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In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Bank of England staff attempted to estimate the financial costs to the UK economy. In 2009 Andrew G. Haldane, Executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank estimated that the permanent loss to the UK economy from the banking crisis was anywhere between £1.8trn. and £7.4trn.

The softer, less measurable, more human consequences are only just now becoming clear.

What could the Farm Bill accomplish?

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Kari Hamerschlag has a post up about the upcoming Farm Bill and its potential to move money away from large scale industrial agriculture and towards smaller producers. For most small farmers producing for local markets, the idea is heady – after all, the economics agriculture are tenuous for many of us – we get all of the burdens of regulation without any of the economies of scale that accompany large scale agriculture.

Sharing a skilled future

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How appropriate then that we kick off this new way of working by taking a closer look at the concept of skillshare. It is the idea that you can learn anything from anybody, anywhere. No need for teachers or schools, just the willingness to share what you know and can do, with others, who will likewise share their skills with you. The most useful things I know were learned this way; my mum showed me how to cook, a friend explained the correct way to use a hammer and saw, another showed me how to split firewood using minimum effort. It’s how I learned to fish, grow vegetables, knit a jumper, ride a horse, bake bread, sharpen a knife, fly a kite and wash with a single cup of water.

Exploring the ingredients for Transition with Rob Hopkins: (transcript)

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“What we have in each of those ingredients, is a problem that we’ve seen that Transition initiatives come up against enough times to think that that is some sort of a common experience; and then the solution to that problem that we’ve seen implemented enough times to have some kind of confidence that it works…”

(Transcript of a long conversation with Transition founder Rob Hopkins – newly edited and formatted.)

Why climate change will make you love big government

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Climate-change calamities, devastating for those affected, have important implications for how we think about the role of government in our future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our survival.