3 ms·
Is it fair to say we never had much to worry about when it comes to preserving the aspects of the environment over which property rights can be doled out? e.g.
by savanaly 8y ago
Is it fair to say we never had much to worry about when it comes to preserving the aspects of the environment over which property rights can be doled out? e.g. Forests, to some degree, fish in the oceans. Because once the environment can become private property the owner has all the incentive in the world to utilize it efficiently and won't over harvest it except through foolishness or lack of knowledge.
But unfortunately this is not the reality when it comes to climate change, unless we gave ownership of the Earth to a despot and made it his personal property.
- Kadin 8y agoI don't think that's fair to say at all. Deforestation is a real problem, and this study doesn't suggest that it's not. There are still large areas of tropical forest being clear-cut, and the areas that are being reforested are not nearly as biodiverse. The property owners have no incentive to preserve biodiversity; quite the opposite. The economic incentive is to clear-cut them for lumber, then plant single-species cash crops. Fisheries are being depleted in a totally unsustainable way, and the areas and species that are well managed are in the minority. There have been some successes, e.g. North Atlantic lobster (although I don't think the uptick in lobster populations is necessarily well enough understood to be attributed to harvest limits), but the growing demand for deepwater fish and the increase in trawling is doing terrible damage to offshore ecosystems, and there is no management scheme in place for them.