Nope, not the SWA... although StudLife did have some good wrap up articles. It's The Economist again, with their free cover article for the week. This deals with the rustiness of the environmental movement. The remedy? Stop being pure dreamers and work for realistic changes and explain things in terms that people can therby comprehend the direct effect on them. It's a decent read... and a pet issue with me: protest and awareness and activism are good, but only if they have a real plan for implemenation. You need to be able to dream for the future by planning in the present. Without a plan, without a conenction with the "normal" people, you're just a lost cause.
Economist.com | Environmental economics: "Mandate, regulate, litigate. That has been the green mantra. And it explains the world's top-down, command-and-control approach to environmental policymaking. Slowly, this is changing. Yesterday's failed hopes, today's heavy costs and tomorrow's demanding ambitions have been driving public policy quietly towards market-based approaches. One example lies in the assignment of property rights over commons, such as fisheries, that are abused because they belong at once to everyone and no one. Where tradable fishing quotas have been issued, the result has been a drop in over-fishing. Emissions trading is also taking off. America led the way with its sulphur-dioxide trading scheme, and today the EU is pioneering carbon-dioxide trading with the (albeit still controversial) goal of slowing down climate change. "
1 year ago
1 comment:
Great article, Steve. I'm happy that I read it before you posted about it - I thought about emailing you about it, but figured that you'd find it anyway. To expand on your comment that it forces people to stop being purely idealistic, I like how it also points out how oftentimes environmentalists are immediately closed off to economics because they see it as an 'evil empire' of sorts. I think any time you immediately discount an entire branch/way of thought, you're going to lose some of your credibility and ability to work through complex problems.
Also, there's some way to get full access to economist.com, because I have it (without paying for a subscription or anything). There's some sponsor, Marakon, that makes me click through a little splash page sort of thing, but then I can read whatever I want. Yay!
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