Taxing smelly animals

Too much cow gas? Tax it!

Here's the story from YahooNews.

An efficient policy that made me laugh ... its win-win!

Thanks Whitney!

Notice the expected opposition from the farmers. "We'll go out of business" (if we have to pay the real costs of production).

Ralph Nader on carbon taxes vs. cap & trade

From today's Wall Street Journal.

The Economic and Environmental Impacts of Recycling

Great article at Popular Mechanics.

Notice the "chicken and egg" problem and the importance of local conditions.

Blogging opportunity #3

"Us" vs. "Them" - or - "The player and the game"

We've discussed Garret Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" throughout the semester in just about all of our resource topics. Hardin discussed the herdsmen who were compelled to continue putting additional animals out to graze in the community land. We described this as individually rational as the individual received 100% of the benefits from the action (revenues from a fatter cow) but paid only a fraction of the costs (everyone shares in the lost quality of the common grazing land). Everyone following the same reasoning of course leads to ruin. Self interest, in the case of rival and non-excludable resources, is not compatible with the interests of society.

Who was Hardin really talking about? Was his paper a treatise on pervasive greed years ago or do you think he was talking about someone else? Who are the modern-day herdsmen?

The reason I'm posting about this has to do with something I've been considering for a long time, but really started hitting home during the presidential campaign... When you feel strongly about something, say, a political candidate or an environmental problem, it is easy, useful and convenient to point a finger at a "bad guy" and say "It's his fault. He's just being greedy. We have to stop that guy from doing all this damage!" Us vs. them is so easy. It feels good to have someone to blame for problems.

Examples abound. Titan Cement is bad! The loggers are greedy! The whalers are evil!

Is this productive? More importantly, is this even close to being a useful or correct approach to environmental problems? Are there good players and bad players? Or does the game just have really ineffective rules?

Blogging opportunity #2

The United Nations Division for Sustainable Development defines sustainable development as:

"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

What do you think about this definition?

Biofuel plantations in tropical forests are not worth it

A new study in the journal Conservation Biology claims that conserving tropical forests is more effective than converting them to biofuel production.

"It's a huge contradiction to clear tropical rain forests to grow crops for so-called 'environmentally friendly' fuels," said co-author Faizal Parish of the Global Environment Center, Malaysia. "This is not only an issue in South East Asia — in Latin America forests are being cleared for soy production which is even less efficient at biofuel production compared to oil palm. Reducing deforestation is a much more effective way for countries to reduce climate change while also meeting their obligations to protect biodiversity."

Biofuel production in already deforested and otherwise depleted lands, OK. Cutting trees to plant crops for biofuels, not. Seems pretty intuitive. So why is it happening? Perverse economic incentives.

Read about it here at ENN.

US, Brazil to speed up cellulosic ethanol research with Caribbean partners

Here's the story from Caribbean Net News.

Blogging opportunity #1

As we approach the end of the term, among other things I'm considering how everyone is grasping the big picture. You, of course, are considering your grades (among other things).

What follows is the first of a few open questions that will allow us both an opportunity to address these concerns. Mutually beneficial trade via a compatible set of incentives if you will...

Speaking of which, question #1:

Under what circumstances are the individual considerations of self-interest and the resulting social outcomes compatible with true environmental sustainability?

Feel free to provide real, hypothetical or historic examples or a general description.

Slow water currents and renewable energy

A new way to harness the power of moving water comes from something we've known about for hundreds of years: Vortex Induced Vibrations (VIVs).

Read about the new technology at ENN

First observed by Leonardo DaVinci, these vibrations result from spinning water flows forming and breaking up ("shedding") on the downstream side of a rounded ("bluff") mass that sits passively in a current of moving water.

A vortex is a spinning flow of liquid or air. We all see vortices (vortexes? vorteci?) each day as the water in the commode spins away. Other examples include tornados, hurricanes and black holes in space. A wind vortex creates the drag that moves sailboats. Anyone who has seen eddies (little cyclones of spinning water) form around rocks in a river or stream knows about this phenomenon, and has observed that water in the eddy spins on itself faster than the current is moving.

Scientists at the University of Michigan observed the way fish swim through the vortex created by the fish swimming in front of them (similar to drafting or slipstreaming in car or bicycle racing), and have figured out how to harness the power of slowly moving water by mimicking that process. Fish aren't the only animals to do this. We see geese and other birds flying in a "V" formation for the same reason. Lift force from the vortex created by the leader bird helps the trailing birds move along using less energy.

The U Michigan folks found that by placing a passive rounded cylinder in the water such that two vortices are created (above and below the cylinder), slowly moving water creates vortices that cause the cylinder to move like a piston. Presto! A renewable power source.

The thing that comes to mind for me is seeing a crab trap buoy move back-and-forth in a quickly moving tide, just like a piston. Why didn't anyone think of this before?

NOAA and NSF to study ocean acidification

This is a relatively new issue associated with fossil fuel consumption that some of you may not be aware of: ocean acidification.

Basically, anthropogenic release of CO2 is absorbed by the world's oceans. This eventually lowers the pH of ocean waters with potentially disastrous consequences for species that must form and maintain calcium carbonate skeletons or shells. Corals, shell fish, sea urchins and star fish will not grow as fast or survive as long.

Read about it:

Science Daily

WordPress

A lot of info here from NOAA and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Note the connection with sonar and marine mammals and the impact on algea and some types of plankton. This could get really ugly really fast.

NOAA and the National Science Foundation are looking for answers:

"The first comprehensive national study of how carbon dioxide emissions absorbed into
the oceans may be altering fisheries, marine mammals, coral reefs, and other natural
resources has been commissioned by NOAA and the National Science Foundation".

NOAA press release here (pdf file)