Uncommonly Bad: Why I Will No Longer Support the Sierra Club

I’ve considered myself an environmentalist for almost 20 years, and during this time I’ve been a member of many environmental organizations. For my birthday a couple of years ago my brother got me a membership to the Sierra Club, which surprisingly I had never joined. I soon received my first issue of Sierra Magazine and over the course of the year was generally pleased with the articles, finding them generally well-written and poignant. I renewed my membership in 2005.

In June of this year I received the July-August issue of Sierra Magazine and in it was an article entitled, “The Common Good”, by Jonathan Rowe of the Tomales Bay Institute. The title sounded interesting, but after just a couple paragraphs I was surprised that the article had made its way into the magazine. It is little more than a shoddy, poorly-reasoned polemic against the field of economics and the “market-system.” It contains many glaring mischaracterizations of economics and amazingly, in a bizarre feat of circular logic, the author cites methods developed and implemented by economists over many decades as potential solutions to environmental problems that supposedly are beyond the scope of economics. At the same time, the author continually fails to adequately define his terms or offer persuasive evidence to support his grandiose claims. In short, this article appeared anomalous in a magazine that (despite many legitimate polemics against Bush Administration policies) had stayed clear of knee-jerk liberalism and the dubious ideological prescriptions that accompany it. (For the record, Mr. Rowe he has agreed to debate me at the Institute where I teach and from all indications he appears to be a nice man).

Being that my academic training is in economics, no doubt my offense at this piece was greater than the average reader. I have a pet-peeve for people and organizations that criticize economics without having a solid grasp of what it is they are criticizing, and who believe that simply pointing out that there are serious environmental problems in the world and that the world is partly governed by markets is de facto evidence that markets are to blame (i.e. weak correlation is not proof of causation). Whereas this form of naiveté is commonplace amongst some of the more wide-eyed students I come across (i.e. me when I was younger), there is really no excuse for one of the country’s preeminent environmental organizations that boasts almost 800,000 members to be publishing, and thereby sanctioning, such intellectual sophistry.

I decided to write a piece in defense of economics entitled, “Why Environmentalists Should Embrace Economics,” and submit it to the Sierra Magazine for publication. A number of drafts made the rounds amongst my colleagues and friends (to receive a finished copy please email me at jason.scorse@miis.edu). Soon thereafter, I received an email from the Sierra Club saying that after reviewing the piece they have decided that it doesn’t “meet their needs at this time”. I asked for clarification, and also informed them that I think it is incumbent upon them to publish at least some type of response to Mr. Rowe’s piece (there are many more qualified people than I who I’m sure would happily oblige). They eventually replied and said that on first reading my article was deemed too “technical” (you can judge that for yourself), but they would review it again. I have not heard back from then since.

We are living at a time when there is a strong backlash against environmentalism and pieces like, “The Common Good” do little more than add fuel to the fire. The majority of Americans are generally supportive of environmental causes, but become wary when environmentalists spend an exorbitant amount of time criticizing the capitalist economic system that has propelled America to such prominence and virtually unparalleled material well-being. While everyone understands that some spheres of life should not be subject entirely to market forces, using overly broad and ill-defined notions of what constitutes the “commons” is more likely to convince people that environmentalists are leftover communists than to draw rightful attention to the many serious problems plaguing open-access resources (it’s also simply sloppy thinking). In addition, with conservatives in charge of all the branches of the Federal Government rallying against the “encroachment of the market system” is clearly not a winning strategy.

Unfortunately, Mr. Rowe and the Sierra Club don’t seem to get it. Charges that economists are largely ignorant and that the “market” is some sort of monster preparing to destroy every last thing on Earth may stoke people’s passions and provide fodder for those who continue to romanticize life in pre-capitalist societies, but it does more harm than good since it obscures rather than clarifies the key causes of environmental degradation.

What is especially frustrating about the perspectives voiced in “The Common Good” is that free-market principles are actually one of the environment’s greatest allies. Many environmental groups now understand this and recognize that it is actually the absence of markets, or policies that distort them, that are at the root of most environmental degradation (see the excellent speeches by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on this subject).

In the September/October issue the Sierra Magazine ran a piece highly critical of corporations. While there is much to criticize and dislike about aspects of corporate behavior, this piece also was skewed given that corporations provide so much good for society, including quality goods and services and most of the country’s employment. In one bizarre sentence the author quotes someone who suggests that we enact laws that prohibit all pollution; yes, zero pollution allowed in society! Nonsensical corporate-bashing seemed like another emotional freebie that Sierra just couldn’t resist cashing in on.

Just this month in the November/December issue the Sierra Club finally published a letter critical of Mr. Rowe’s piece, but for me this is too little too late. I have decided not to renew my membership in 2006. I also want to urge others to shift their resources away from the Sierra Club to other environmental organizations that have a healthy respect for the power of markets, such as Environmental Defense, The Nature Conservancy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

This is one of the beauties of the market; you can let your money do to the talking. And you can rest assured people will listen.

J.S.

Comments

[joshua corning]

"It is little more than a shoddy, poorly-reasoned polemic against the field of economics and the “market-system.”"

see? i told yah so. :)

and

"correlation is not proof of causation"

:)
anyway i will shut up now.

[bernie]

Your experience and observations are unfortunately accurate. I started out in my college days in the early 80s as an environmentalist when reason was a welcome guest to the challenge of protecting and improving our environment. I will also say that environmentalism was once much more successful in positively shaping public opinion and policy. I have watched reason, science and economics all shown the door to blind ideology. Environmentalist are moving closer towards extreme views that resemble those held by the animal right activists who now resort to threatening human life for a voice.

[J.S.]

Bernie- I am not suggesting that most environmentalists are following the nonsensical path of the Sierra Club- as I mention, I think the majority are very reasonable and rational (NRDC, Environmental Defenese, Nature Conservancy) and I think the Sierra Club is the exception to the rule. Also, I think the same is true with animal rights groups- a few extremists mire what is otherwise a very reasonable and sensible movement.

J.S.

[odograph]

I think the Sierra Club fight more with their heart than with their head.

[Mr. Econotarian]

I think it is ironic that at the same time environmentalists blast the Bush administration for being "anti-Science", they themselves are "anti-Economics".

Environmentalism is over-run with anti-free-marketeers. I see the attraction, because without a free market, society would not have grown to the place where the environment could be threatened. At the same time, these people don't seem to care that globally people are being killed on a regular basis because of failed economic policies (socialism and other forms of economic dis-liberty). One of the greatest killers is particulates from wood and coal fires inside poor people's houses - household environmental problems.

[Robert Schwartz]

the excellent speeches by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:

The same one who is bending every fiber to block the win-turbine farm in Cape Cod Bay.

Look, you cannot take these people seriously, they are not serious people.

A bunch of superannuated hippies with half digested ideas about the world, politics, science and anything else germane to the topic at hand, intoxicated by a farrago of Marxism, romanticism and misunderstood eastern religions. People who do not want to solve problems -- they want to be problems.

[Michael P.]

Studying the multitude of ecological problems we humans have created can be disheartening: Air pollution, climate change, farming practices that are destructive and chemically-dependent, drinking water contamination, deforestation, coal mining pollution, habitat descruction, widespread mercury contamination, loss of genetic diversity, etc. The planet is f*cked, and this mostly happened within the last two hundred years.

Look at the exponential human population growth this planet has seen. Perpetual growth is not limitless. Overpopulation contributed to this ecological destruction. There are too many people competing for limited resources with a limited environmental sink to clean up after us. Our economic systems lubricated a natural machine--our reproductive tendency.

Arguably, cheap energy was a primary contributor--both through the dominence of dirty energy sources (coal and oil) and our uses for abundant energy. Cheap energy led to cheap food led to massive increases in population led to widespread dependence on cheap energy to make cheap food to feed more people who wanted more comforts and conveniences.

Cheap energy has empowered us. We successfully employed that abundant energy to create conveniences and comforts. Along the way, it was impossible to understand all the consequences of our actions. Many unseen consequences are slowly killing and poisoning the planet.

I hear some economists claim that petroleum depletion will lead to more intensive drilling, followed by greater discovery, just as it did in the 1980's. I'm saddened by their lack of appreciation for the immediacy of our natural resource constraints. Discoveries have been declining for decades. And I fear the discovery of a new energy source which is cheaper, more abundant, and more convenient. What additional ecological destruction might we then create with cheaper energy? We are not expert gardeners and caretakers of this planet. I doubt that we ever can be, or will be given another chance to try.

Fresh water, clean air, toxic poisoning, trees, wild fish--these things are limited. Our drawdown is faster than nature can replenish or repair. Free markets cannot help us exceed our natual resource limits. But they can help us run up against those limits much faster.

Economics is another tool that humans can choose to apply. Yes, it is possible to apply tools to our short-term benefit today. However, like many tools economics can lead to actions with unintended consequences, and more commonly will be wielded for the creation of additional comforts and conveniences of those involved, with little concern for the long-term social and ecological consequences tomorrow.

Are the conveniences and comforts worth the obscure permanent costs? For those of us who have largely benfited, yes. To those who will live with more and more consequences over the benefits, they may see us as the generation who had everything and threw it all away.

As we become more aware of the planet's permanent ills, there will be increasing focus back on the human causes. Some of that analysis will be shoddy, naive, and technically inaccurate. We do not precisely understand all the damage we've caused. but this is the nature of the problem. Had we understood all the negative effects we would not have let the destruction continue for so long or on such large scales.

There are economists who do not understand ecology. There are granola-heads who sense these ecological problems without precisely understanding the causes. Best we work together to improve our precision and collective understanding, rather than divide each other over our differences.

[Eric H]

I have been reading some of the stuff put out by Amory Lovins, with other authors, and I find that the portrayal of economists and economics to be no more than a caricature. You can see similar straw creations at websites like dieoff. Economics, in their description, is like some third-hand Soviet characterization of Milton Friedman, combined with some misused terms cribbed from a freshman finance or accounting class. I generally recommend Tom Tietenberg's textbook as a better introduction to environmental economics than anything you can find from those ideologues.

After a discussion about The Monkeywrench Gang (I loved the book, it described my childhood haunts), someone tried to turn me on to the Sierra Club a few years back through their magazine. The cover story was a thinly veiled call for all-out socialism; it dealt with every environmental issue only in the most negative possible interpretation from the point of view of "the poor" or "workers", while completely ignoring the balancing viewpoint from the same people in their role as consumers (of food, medicine, energy, etc.). Apparently, things have only been getting worse for people every year since the dawn of man, and the planet is a hollowed-out, lifeless core ready to ignite. And the conspiratorial tone would have made a skeptic of Special Agent Mulder.

The magazine was shortly thereafter criticized for being printed on politically incorrect new, unrecyclable and unrecycled, glossy paper, which Karl Pope defended on the grounds that they had to depict the glory of nature in order to bring in more donors. The mask was off: the Sierra Club was more interested in raising money for left-wing politics than in sensible environmental policies. I'll stick with the Nature Conservancy, thanks (although their recent problems have been troubling and related to increased politicization).

[Duncan Brown]

I agree the Sierra club is often sort of air headed (and its tendency to take one political side can be damaging). But I think people who pretend the free market has every answer are just as self-deluded.

Answer me this: The Chesapeake Bay (which IS privately owned, right?) has been declining for the past 30 years and longer, owing to too many nutrients; destruction of waste-filtering wetlands, and too much development of its watershed. There are major fish kills every year, and the crab and oyster resources are essentially gone (we get oysters from Texas!). Water quality was the worst ever this summer (with huge "dead zones," of oxygen-depleted water owing to too much nitrogen and phosphorus going into streams throughout the watershed).

In 1999 the USEPA listed the Bay among the nation's "impaired" waters under the Clean Water Act because of these pollution problems. There's supposedly a federal-state recovery program with a deadline of 2010, but the states have not been enthusiastic about the spending the necessary money on sewage treatment plants and the like.

Can you tough-minded quantitative folks describe even in outline --even in priciple-- a free-market recovery plan?

Duncan

[Dano]

Thank you, Michael P, for a thoughtful comment free of reflexive fear-driven talking points such as 'socialism', 'Marxism', etc.

Best,

D

[Tim Haab]

Duncan,

The Chesapeake Bay is a common property resource and therefore the 'free' market will not solve its problems. That is exactly the point of the original post and the problem with tossing the free market label around.

Free markets--in the sense that markets should be left alone, unfettered by regulation, rules, etc.--cannot solve most environmental problems. And no environmental economist I know of would argue such. Markets can solve environmental problems once the associated MARKET FAILURE is corrected. No one (here anyway) is arguing to turn the environment over to big business and let them do as they please. That would be irresponsible to characterize the economic view in such a way and precisely why Jason took issue with the Sierra Club's presentation of the economic view (sorry Jason--please correct me if I misrepresented your stance).

In the case of the Chesapeake Bay for example, I would argue that individual transferrable quotas would help to restore the Striped Bass, possibly crab populations. Artificial oyster reefs with designated harvest areas subject to quotas (tradeable) would serve to restore oyster populations which in turn will help filter many pollutants. Also, oyster sanctuaries (free from harvest) will help restore some of the Bay's natural assimilative capacity. As for agricultural run-off, a number of economists have designed group contracts for the control of non-point source pollution that show promise. These contracts allow individual farmers to make production decision within the constraints of group performance standards.

My goal is not to lay out a comprehensive plan, but instead to point out that there are MARKET-BASED solutions to environmental problems that are feasible and show promise. It'a pretty clear that regulation based approaches haven't worked for the Chesapeake Bay. See, it is just as easy to blame poor regulation as it is to blame the market.

Tim

P.S. I grew up less than 10 miles from the Bay and nothing troubles me more than the sad state of the Chesapeake crab fishery. OK, some things trouble me more, but I have fond memories of the good old days of plentiful crabs.

[joshua corning]

"Thank you, Michael P, for a thoughtful comment free of reflexive fear-driven talking points such as 'socialism', 'Marxism', etc."

you say potato. i say potato..lets call the whole thing off. :)

[Madan Manoharan]

Jason:

I agree with your analysis about [certain] articles published in Sierra Club’s magazine.

I do NOT consider myself to be an environmentalist. However, I would consider myself to be a “middle of the road” guy who likes to listen to environmentalists before forming an opinion about proposed economic policies – I like to strike a balance between economic development and environmental damage. In trying to achieve this balance, I look for articles that provide a balanced factual analysis of situations; unfortunately, some of the articles in Sierra Club’s magazine and few of Sierra Club’s spokespersons “twist” facts “way too much” to forward their cause. While your concern was related to the article’s “misuse” of economic concepts, mine was related to the club’s “twisting” of certain scientific facts.

Between 1998 and 1999, I had an opportunity to listen to a series of four debates that engaged spokespersons from Sierra Club. After listening to these people twist scientific facts to make their case, I almost became a non-believer in environmental issues (I thought environmentalist were just a bunch of B.S.). Fortunately, I was able to find well-reasoned articles (without twisting scientific factual evidence) in other places that made me once again “listen” to environmentalists.

In short, instead of trying to make people like me believers in environmental causes -- one way is to make arguments based on factual information --, Sierra Club is succeeding in making people like me care less about arguments put forth by environmental groups. A few of my friends have had similar experience with the methods followed by Sierra Club.

I read your blog on a regular basis, and I appreciate your emphasis to provide a balanced view on this subject. Please continue your excellent work.

-Madan.

[Duncan Brown]

Thanks, Tim. I deserved that. I was getting a little angry there, and that's really not me! It is refreshing to find someone who is at least familiar with the problems I'm talking about. I've been thinking about them lately because the Virginia General Assembly has established a special committee to develop a new funding mechanism for improving sewage treatment plants on Chesapeake tributaries, (http://dls.state.va.us/statewaters.htm) trying to develop and the legislators and staff that I've talked to generally say that very few people care about the problem. So I guess the tragedy is in our political and education system.

Meanwhile I've been lurking around the PERC and Cato Institute and other libertarian [is that the right word?] web sites, which feature feel-good articles about simple solutions to idealized problems, to please their donor bases (backed by “intensive seminars” in Aspen or wherever for reporters and politicians.

It WAS irresponsible of me "to characterize the economic view in such a way." I have met lots of economists, and I know you're not all fools, or tools of Big Business. And I've read Adam Smith, and think he was one of the most acute analysts of human behavior ever, and that markets can solve a lot of problems if we don’t get in their way.)

But it's easier to say that "Markets can solve environmental problems once the associated MARKET FAILURE is corrected" than it is to point at a practical example of that happening in the Bay.

I'm all for "individual transferrable quotas," for example, but the fishing industry will hold that off until hell freezes over, arguing that the science is too uncertain. Virginia has just placed a catch limit on menhaden (an industrial fishery that involves spotter planes and huge seine nets), for example. (Rockfish eat baby menhaden.) In other words they are moving away from ITQs!

The economists who have “designed group contracts” are also to be congratulated. The theory of “allow[ing] individual farmers to make production decision within the constraints of group performance standards” is intriguing ! Who are these brilliant folks? But I’ll believe it when I see farmers and chicken producers delivering results with reductions in their nitrogen and phosphorus emissions. Meanwhile they will continue to drag their feet, abetted by political leaders. Automotive emissions of nitrogen and Cars and trucks (As you may have noticed American farmers are heavily addicted to federal subsidies, and not otherwise amenable to change.)

And the Bay will continue to decline. Like you, I remember when it was full of protein and exotic waterman culture. Annapolis, when I went to school there, was a living seaport, where people practiced oyster dredging in the winter (under sail!) and crabbing in the summer. The ecosystems that supported that life were intact. Now Annapolis is beautiful city that makes its living from tourism and as a bedroom for DC .

The romantic Chesapeake watermen, of course, were a fantasy. That life was built on poverty and ignorance. (It’s not something I would not want to do that for a living!) And Annapolis was also completely segregated racially.

And thanks also to Michael P for counseling cooler heads

Duncan

[Eric H]

It's worth pointing out that many of these problems exist even in non-market economies. Chesapeake Bay, meet Lake Baikal, the lower Danube, and Three Gorges. The problem (to simplify) is human activity, not any particular political or economic system.

"Developing a solution" in this context means "getting the incentives right." Economics is the study of incentives, tradeoffs, and human decision-making. Thus, any successful solution is going to require economic study, not simply legal or political analysis.

[Duncan Brown]

Well, yes. That's true, Eric. But not helpful. The real problem that this conversation revolves around around is why do economists and (say) biologists find it so difficult to talk about these things? I heard an exchange at the AAAS meeting last winter between a gang of population ecologists--all experts in the Chesapeake Bay systems--and a poor lonely panelist who insisted on bringing up the costs of restoring the Bay. One of the ecologists insisted that rhe integrity of natural systems is beyond price, and applying cost-benefit standards is illegitimate! I find this clash of world view very puzzling. Why can't a biologist (trained to think quantitatively, right?) at least entertain the notion that things have costs? The legal mind and the scientific mind have a similar incommensurabilities, I think.

Duncan

[David Garen]

Duncan, your last post (1 Nov., 09:07) is beginning to get to the heart of the issue. As I think about this whole environment vs. economy thing, I think there is a fundamental philosophical difference that needs to be brought right out into the open. See if you agree, even if this sounds a little stereotyped. (Keep in mind that I am an earth scientist / environmentalist, not an economist.)

I find that a business/economic viewpoint emphasizes the short term, whereas the environmental viewpoint is more long term. I also think that a business/economic viewpoint puts primacy on economic activity, whereas the environmental viewpoint puts primacy on preservation of our physical earth system. So, crudely put, primacy on business/economy would say, let's get as much economic output as we can, getting away with as much environmental damage as we can. Primacy on the environment would say, let's ensure the integrity of our physical earth system and allow only as much economic activity as will be compatible with this.

So, what comes first is different, and this issue is probably at the root of many of the arguments and differences of opinion about the environment vs. the economy.

Maybe these viewpoints are just two sides of the same coin. We do need to see things from both sides. I agree with much of this discussion that emotional, ideological arguments are not that helpful in finding solutions. Nevertheless, I would caution people from disregarding an emotional viewpoint just because it is emotional. This expresses a deeply held feeling and concern. If environmentalists perceive economics as too cold and soulless, requiring putting a dollar value on everything, then I would agree. It can seem like everything is for sale (or trade), things that for some people it is unconscionable to sell or trade.

So, the dialog must continue. If environmentalists and economists can see that they are on the same side, then we can make progress. If, however, distrust prevails, we will get nowhere. Articles like those you have seen recently in the Sierra Club magazine perhaps reflect such distrust. I must confess to such feelings myself (I too am a Sierra Club member and will continue to be one), and I don't think they are unjustified. Fortunately for me, my brother is an economist, so I have perhaps better opportunity than many to understand the economist's point of view.

So anyway, the point I am trying to make is that many of the arguments and differences of opinion actually have their roots in differences of philosophy and worldview. (Robert Frodeman has written a couple of excellent books on this that have been eye opening to me.) Can this idea help direct the discussion further?

[joshua corning]

"I find that a business/economic viewpoint emphasizes the short term, whereas the environmental viewpoint is more long term. I also think that a business/economic viewpoint puts primacy on economic activity, whereas the environmental viewpoint puts primacy on preservation of our physical earth system."

If the same enviornmental protection can be achived at a lower cost it would be hard to argue that the enviornmental view point has not been expressed...unless that viewpoint is not the preservation of the enviornment but to promote "other" values in the guise of enviornmental preservation.

see dano I didn't even use the word socialist. :)

[Eric H]

Hmmm. I didn't realize it, but I guess the problem John and Tim are facing here is the same one James Hamilton described a while back when trying to talk to geologists. If I understand this correctly, it sounds like the biologists would prefer to approach their issues with command & control regulatory terms. The problem is that the same thing that is true of ecosystems is also true of human systems: everything is connected. If you pull the wrong levers, or pull the levers the wrong way, you could end up with results that were opposite of what you intended.

In _Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species_, Charles Mann and Mark Plummer described two problems that might make this point. The first was the Nicrophorus Americanus, or American burying beetle, which blocked the building of a road from a remote part of the Choctaw reservation to the hospital facilities. Few would argue that the road wasn't valuable, even humanitarian, but the ESA doesn't recognize any prioritization of needs and wants. So the first problem, which everyone here seems to recognize, is that command & control regulation should at least have some flexibility to account for human needs. People resent these kinds of laws, and may attempt to thwart them with disastrous consequences. ESA basically condemns land where endangered species are found, so people have actually destroyed the habitat before the endangered species show up to keep control of their land. This is using the wrong lever.

The second problem is illustrated by the problem of Lycaides melissa samuelis, the Karner blue butterfly. It seems that in days gone by, we decided to protect forests by suppressing fires. Unfortunately, these fires and other disturbances created breaks in the trees that allowed lupine habitats to grow, which is where L. m. samuelis thrives. So, by fighting fire, people threatened one species to preserve others.

The first is an illustration of using the wrong lever, the second of throwing a lever the wrong way. You can ignore these types of problems, but only to the peril of the exact goal you are trying to accomplish. The economist, on the other hand, has a deep toolkit that helps guide him to the right levers, or at least prevents him from pulling too hard on the wrong ones.

Chesapeake Bay is an example of a commons problem. Pollution is an example of an externality (with relations to a commons problem). One way to address them is to command or forbid certain actions. However, this requires that the regulator have sufficient information to both understand the problem and to identify the solution. In a dynamic environment, where information about potential uses and available technologies changes quickly, the regulator is likely to pick the wrong solution technology; if not now, then it will be wrong later. A more sophisticated approach is to tax the activity causing the burden or stress to the ecosystem. Among the problem with this is that it requires the regulator to pick the correct tax level, and it doesn't necessarily compensate the victims of the activity. A yet more sophisticated approach is to define property rules and allow the affected parties to negotiate directly, but this still doesn't address situations where the primary victim is non-human. These aren't perfect, fail-proof tools, but they are a great deal more sophisticated than the blunt C&C regulation.

Incentives matter when dealing with people; they will tend to act in their own interest but also are capable of acting in the public interest to the best of their ability to figure out what it is. Resources are scarce and should be allocated in such a manner as to minimize disbenefits. The problem, then, is to figure out how to move the levers such that human interests are aligned with the public interest, and then the system becomes self-sustaining (or nearly so) in seeking the minimization of disbenefits. E.g. the SO2 cap & trade market.

[Duncan Brown]

Eric--

Your simple analysis--that the Chesapeake Bay is a "commons problem" and that the spectrum of possible policy approaches ranges (from C&C to defining Hayekian property rights")--isn't very satisfying. The complexity of the physical, legal social, economic, and ecological interactions in the Chesapeake system is staggering. (The model of negotiating with neighbors' who are pissing upstream or the SO2 cap and trade, doesn't really cut it.) At the same time, command and control regulations is impossible too.

Moving to the preferred ("more sophisticated") approach: How in practical terms would you define perperty rights in a systems like that?

That's really my question. If you take just the Chesapeake watershed, it includes thousands of tributaries of all kinds, and covers four or five states with thousands of local subsidiary authorities.

The estuary receives too many nutrients from a hellishly complicated combination of air emissions of nitrates and phosphates (from cars, power plants, and factories , watere emissions (both point-source such as sewage treatment plants and areal (from farmers's applications of manure and other fertilizer). The waters of the Bay itself are shallow and warm, and take a long time to flush chemical substances out.

I agree that "incentives matter." A little more concrete guidance would help.

Duncan

[Eric H]

I don't have time to give this the detailed answer it deserves, but I can point to a couple of examples. In England, fishermen are said to vigorously defend their tradable and extremely valuable fishing rights to streams and tributaries from transgressors - both non-owner fishermen and polluters. In Maine, the lobster fishermen had informal organizations (gangs) that defended their territory from poachers. In Spain, I knew of a group of similar gangs (really, families) in Catalonia that set up a system that protected their rights, at the same time increasing the value of the fish ("branding" and, essentially, cartelizing), thus reducing the temptation to overfish. This blog has repeatedly discussed Pigouvian fuel taxes as a way to reduce consumption; I see no reason why a similar approach couldn't be taken toward fertilizer. You have to be willing to understand that the correct amount of fuel and/or fertilizer is not 0 to accept those as solutions that minimize the disbenefit to society.

Those are actual, real world solutions, but these questions are always divided, to me, into "what should it look like?" and "how do we get from here to there?" The second question is really the harder of the two, since you have to satisfy hundreds of interest groups including EarthFirst!, the local municipal wastewater office, sportsmen, the local power company, and farmers just to get off the ground.

Sorry, I'm not going to write a dissertation on this. I thought we were discussing whether or not economists and economics were relevant to environmental problems, not detailing an actual plan of action for your pet project.

[Eric H]

My apologies if that last paragraph seem inflamatory. Instead of "pet project", please read "for something so obviously dear to you that you can raise many more issues than I can devote the time necessary to adequately address them."

[Duncan Brown]

No offense taken, Eric. It's quite accurate to call it my "pet project." That's the problem. Smart innovative economists shy away from it because it's so obviously huge and analytically intractable. Even EarthFirst doesn't give a shit. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Potomac Conservancy are fairly effective and sensible, but dull. And their prescriptions--like avoiding suburban sprawl--are as politically unrealistic as Hayekian solutions.

Economists have been quite heavily involved in estimating the cost of the water pollution improvements it will take to meet the 2010 goals of the federal-state Chesapeake Bay Agreement is pretty well known--$4 or $5 billion over the next decade or two.

So right now it's in the hands of state legislators and the US EPA.

Thanks again.

Duncan

[David Roberts]

J.S.,

I take your point, but it's worth noting that the quasi-socialist loopy environmental left is dwarfed -- both in size and influence -- by the quasi-libertarian wingnut right, whose near-religious worship of an abstraction called the "Free Market" betrays just as deep a misunderstanding of markets as anything you'll find in Sierra Magazine.

[joshua corning]

"environmental left is dwarfed -- both in size and influence -- by the quasi-libertarian wingnut right"

I am in the majority?!?!

Crap now I need to find a new wingnut phylosophy to mindlessly follow...it isn't cool anymore to be a freemarket wingnut.