Liberia signs 'transformational' deal to stem deforestation
bbc.com
bbc.com
The fertility rate is 5.16 in Liberia which corresponds to doubling the population about once every 25 years. Then if fertility ever drops back to steady state (2.1), you double the population at least twice more because of population momentum.
The hopeful factor in Liberia is that the fertility rate is dropping. IT was 5.85 in 2000. If it doesn't drop fast, no payment for forests will help. If it does drop fast, the locals will enjoy their environment and work to preserve it.
Right now Liberia has about the population and land area of Virginia, which means it's already overpopulated. Around mid-century it will have at least quadruple the population. Then -- if fertility drops very fast down to replacement level -- it will quadruple again. That will be sixteen times the density of Virginia. And that is the best case scenario.
What? Can you explain this? Sorry if it's obvious, but I can't seem to grasp what you mean by population momentum.
Then you will have a situation where the grandparent generation will have less population than the parents and the parents will be fewer than the children, e.g.:
2 80 year olds 6 60 year olds 15 40 year olds 40 20 year olds 100 babies -------- 163 people
One woman 80 year old had six babies with her husband. The three women in the next generation bore 15 babies. With a fertility rate around five, you will have a population pyramid where the babies outnumber the 80 year olds by about 50 to 1.
Then if fertility suddenly drops down to replacement level, the babies will eventually grow up to be 80 year olds in a country where the size of each generation is equal, e.g.:
100 80 year olds 100 60 year olds 100 40 year olds 100 20 year olds 100 babies ----- 500 people
So there's one more quadrupling (approximately) built in to the system even after the birth rate gets under control. Since the birth rate might not get under control until the resources run out in famine, war, or epidemic, we may be looking at a situation where high fertility countries are destined to have not only more people than they can support, but four times as many as they can support and chronic disasters for humanity. The only relief is thinking ahead and family planning, which is not necessarily our strong point as a species.
First, that assumes Virginia is 'optimally populated'.
Second, according to Google, the population of Liberia is 4.294 million (2013) and the population of Virginia is 8.186 million (2012), so using your Virginia-baseline, Liberia can about double its population before being considered over-populated. The Indian state of Kerala, meanwhile, has 34.8 million (2012) people in a smaller area (~38k mi^2 vs ~43k mi^2).
It wasn't successful: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/23/ecuador-a...
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/julie-...
It never ceases to amaze me that political parties who fundamentally believe in the importance of "the market" don't trust it for reducing emissions. Hypocrisy at it's worst.
As for handing out billions of dollars of emissions credits to current polluters that they can then sell, this is completely false. The way the initial allocation works under most proposals is to give current polluters credits to cover part of their current emissions upfront. Then if they reduce their emissions beyond their allocated emissions they can sell the excess credits. This is what makes cap and trade so efficient, there are huge profits to be made by companies that can create technologies to reduce emissions the most efficiently.
Then over time the total cap decreases, and the amount of credits allocated to existing polluters also decreases, so that all companies will have to buy whatever credits they need at a yearly auction or whatever.
A heavy carbon tax might add 1 cents a gallon to gas prices, which would basically be ignored by most people / companies, but the same tax would make new coal power plants unprofitable. In the end it let's the markets decide the most efficient approach even if that's to do nothing.
A tax doesn't force everyone to reduce emissions by the same amount. If cutting emissions is less profitable than paying the tax, you pay the tax, otherwise you cut emissions.
>> As for handing out billions of dollars of emissions credits to current polluters that they can then sell, this is completely false. The way the initial allocation works under most proposals is to give current polluters credits to cover part of their current emissions upfront. Then if they reduce their emissions beyond their allocated emissions they can sell the excess credits. This is what makes cap and trade so efficient, there are huge profits to be made by companies that can create technologies to reduce emissions the most efficiently.
How about if they just shut down their production and sell the credits? Giving the credits to incumbents is a large barrier to entry for competitors and a give away. If you are going to have credits rather than a tax, the credits should be auctioned.
How would the auction solve the problem?
Sure, but that's not an inherent feature of cap and trade. The only reason why most current proposals include this is because it's the only way the legislation has a realistic chance of passing. And there is at least a decent justification for it, in that it reduces any initial financial impacts, and then still transitions into a full auction over a few years.
Why?
The revenues from these auctions could be used to cut income tax to make up for the increase in prices to consumers.
The income tax is progressive (affects the rich more than the poor), while a tax that raises prices isn't. Why do you favor a regressive tax policy?
It's not like they just ask to stop and give them cash, like the headline suggests.
FTA:
The country agrees to place 30% or more of its forest estate under protected area status by 2020. It will also pilot direct payments to communities for protecting the forest. Ultimately the Norwegians will pay for results, with independent verification that trees remain standing.
Edit: Found it on the gov. site . The one related to this article also includes Peru: http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/smk/press-center/Press-rele...
Sometimes #3 can be solved by #2. "Hey corrupt minster/police chief/army general, want more of that bribe? Get your corrupt police officers/soliders to stop those people cutting down trees! Since you don't have to obey the law that much, beat up those peasants who are chopping down trees"
> Under the terms of the agreement, Norway will help Liberia to initially build up the capacity to monitor and police the forests.
> Liberia will refrain from issuing any new logging concessions until all existing ones have been reviewed by an independent body.
> Ultimately the Norwegians will pay for results, with independent verification that trees remain standing.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/24/us-norway-oilwealt...
Well, indirectly it might be, as some of the profits from invested oil money are made available to the government to spend each year.
[1]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-11/russia-writes-off-9...
More likely than not a majority of the people cutting trees down in Liberia are going to continue cutting trees whether the government wants them to or not.
And I doubt any low level worker will get real money,given the insane level of corruption there.
And for god sake,why would Norway care? this constant meddling into african politics by the west is upsetting.It's not help,it's arrogance.
The headline is sensationalist, what they are doing it paying for the government not to issue more logging licenses (easy to verify) and putting forests on "protected" status (as well as other concrete, targeted projects).
It's not like they are handing out cash to the government against a promise.
If countries like Norway feel that standing trees provide a service to them, they should pay to keep them up.
It's not charity, the trees are providing a marketable good by processing CO2 emissions.
While I'm not an environmentalist, I do believe in markets as a way of solving larger problems and I think it would be interesting if a market was built on resource preservation.
For instance, if a type of tree processes more CO2, they should be worth more than one that does not and that can be expressed in whatever this marketplace would be. If I had more connections at a government level, I might be interested in such an idea but as it stands now the sales cycles would be too long to get a market like that going.
Thus the dollar worth of clearing CO2 emissions doesn't clearly align with the self-interest of doing so over buying trees to make paper and other goods. (The self-interest, of course, is in not dying in the future from some climate change related disaster.
That's why worldwide governmental intervention is needed to make sure the dollar value of keeping those trees up aligns with actual self-interest.
We're already seeing this as several big companies and funds are suddenly putting real money into "green energy."
It'll always be harder for for-profits and bottom-line driven funds to pay to not have action, but nations are now apparently doing this. I wonder how much of that is accounted for in known corruption. (In the U.S. we call it lobbying.)
Edit: trying to clear up the "externalized" sentence. What I mean is that "external costs" aren't so external at a certain point.
You have too much faith that by the time people view the threat as 'imminent' there will be anything that can still be done.
Additionally, I'll mention that I agree with blaabjerg's response: it's worth maintaining biodiversity for the fun of it.
See, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_cascade
You can use "incredible complexity" on literally anything. Everything is complex. Humans manage.
Corollary: I don't see how a broadly conservative approach to managing biodiversity can be discounted because it isn't specific enough.
You might want to look into libertarianism, as it has been saying that for a long time now, and it has very good arguments as to why it works better than the alternatives.
You can try and adapt your thinking that way, but it is never as smooth as a principled theory. In other words, the buy-up-land thing cannot work without changing our form of government, as you'd have to at least do away with the concept of eminent domain.
Off-topic, but was this a good example of a "non-smooth unprincipled adaptation"? I was taught evolution by Catholics and it never seemed incongruous, but I'm not versed in the history.
There is no difference in English. When someone says "Manchester United scored three goals", it is understood that individual players on the team so named kicked the balls into the net. Noone is under the impression that the corporation Manchester United plc pushed the balls using psychokinesis.
Further, democracy is far from a simple Y/N vote on every issue. People trade favors so it's Y/N on (trees)+(healthcare)+(police)+... and you vote on those blocks. At first glance this seems worse. However people don't care about all issues equally so trading a weak no for a vary strong yes is worth it to people. In the end it's the same basis for all forms of trade as people don't value everything equally so trade ends up as a net benefit.
I doubt anyone cares if Mr. Random goes into the wood with his axe, chops down a tree he can carry and runs off with it.
Enforcement is definitely going to be a challenge, but hopefully they have a good plan in place.
Oh boy - been in the CS business too long: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_(computer_science...