Final thoughts?

Last chance for some participation credit...

What were your most/least favorite parts of the class?

What were some central themes?

What can I do to improve blog participation?

What works in fisheries managment, and why.

Here is a great article by J. Sutinen illustrating the historical failure of command-and-control approaches to fisheries management. 

You don't have to take an economist's word for it.  Read more here and here and here and here.

Marine Spatial Planning as a means of curtailing overfishing

MSP is essentially zoning in the ocean.
Read about it here at the University of Hawaii (application to tuna).
More here at UNESCO and here at the Ocean Conservancy. 
Note the call for valuation in the first article.
How can economic valuation help in MSP?

Two additional solutions for slowing deforestation

The first is called "extractive reserves", which sounds a bit contradictory. The idea is to allow selective and sustainable extraction of certain resources while preserving the ecosystem as a whole.  Read more about extractive reserves here at World Watch Institute.

"Intercropping" is another idea that looks great. By planting certain species of trees alongside staple crops, nutrients are retained in the soil, significantly increasing yields. Read about tree intercropping here at SciDev.net.

Deforestation in Amazon slows down a bit

Here's the story from the BBC.

North Atlantic Swordfish are back

It's hard to believe that NMFS is labeling N. Atlantic swordfish as a sustainable seafood choice. This is a major victory for international fisheries management.  Read about it here at NOAA.

A short summary of the regulations can be found here.

Ecosystem values from trees

This is really cool: http://ecosystemcommons.org/discussion/ohio-state-unv-ecosystem-services-awareness

Background info here: http://www.itreetools.org/

U.S. soon to be world's largest oil producer

The International Energy Agency projects that the United States will soon surpass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer, but only for a few years. Further, natural gas will soon become the largest piece of our energy portfolio.

Read about it here at Bloomberg

What factors are driving these changes?
What are the implications for internalizing negative externalities associated with fossil fuel production and consumption?
What are the implications for economic growth?

Here is a related story at the NYT about the expiration of the production tax credit for wind power.

Family size and wealth

Nikolai's response regarding Hardin and population growth got me thinking about this... 

Here is an interesting read at ENN regarding family size, household wealth and evolution. 

The research appears to be seeking an evolutionary explanation for slowing rates of population growth. We know that world population growth is slowing. i.e. population is growing, but not nearly as fast as it has in the past. The UN has predicted that world population will plateau by around 2050, at a population somewhere between 7.4 and 10.6 billion people (best guess is 8.9 B). This is despite significant increases in longevity and lower mortality rates due to advances in medicine and sanitation.  The slowing of population growth is due to lower birth rates. People are deciding to have fewer children, mostly in  developed countries.


The article summarizes the results of a study which attempted to test the hypothesis that having fewer children leads to future reproductive success for offspring due to the advantages of wealth. i.e. having fewer children conveys an evolutionary advantage, if having fewer, but richer children today increases the likelihood that your genes will multiply in the future. 

I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning, but in any event, the authors of the study did not find support for the hypothesis. However, there are a lot of economic reasons why parents in richer nations might have smaller families than parents in poorer nations. Can anyone think of these?

Here is more reading at the World Bank.

Here is a long report from the UN on population growth and predictions for the future.

One step closer to a global carbon market

Australia joins the EU carbon trading program.
Read about it here at Triple Pundit.