More are noticing the "tragedy of the commons"

This is an editorial comment from a Flagstaff resident back in 2008 in the Arizona Daily Sun. I found it while doing some research at the office and felt it was thought provoking and wanted to share it with the class.

Editorial Board: Overpopulation beginning to threaten way of life

Topics of discussion this week at the advisory board meeting were: new forest fees; Wing Mountain snowplay area becoming crowded, with mountains of trash left behind, and adequate parking an issue; smog obliterating the pristine vistas of our Grand Canyon; Phoenix seeing a population growth of one million people since the last census. Added to the mix came my own sad realization of a current Flagstaff reality, gridlock traffic, which didn't used to exist, period.

What's behind all this? Ask the authorities who have done the studies — it's overpopulation. If we are not careful, humankind will become like so many rats in a maze. You think oil is a hot-button issue now? It won't be long until we will have water wars. After all, you can't drink oil. (And by the way, are you aware that when 19th century explorer, John Wesley Powell, first encountered the now- Phoenix desert, and was asked his opinion about its suitability for settlement, he answered, "No — there's not enough water."?)

I'm not completely up on what the candidates say about this issue, or if they even address it. I'm asking each individual reading this to start talking about it with others, and begin coming up with solutions. We are an amazing nation of doers and innovators, this is America!

And, yes, I remember that the Lord our God said, "Go forth and multiply." He said that when the Earth was EMPTY.

Heidi Nichols is a 32-year Flagstaff resident and a parent- educator.

Department of Interior - Climate Change - Alaska

The Department of the Interior announced this month its selection of the University of Alaska as the first of eight planned regional Climate Change Centers in the nation. Seven more will be selected in the next two years, all of which will be designed to give land managers more and better information to protect natural resources and cultural resources from evolving weather patterns.

This strategy also calls for 18 landscape conservation cooperatives that are supposed to look for practical solutions for managing migration patterns, threats to flora and fauna and other related impacts on a regional basin.

See: http://doi.gov/whatwedo/climatestrategy/index.cfm

Assignment #5 - The Task Part 2:

1. Other countries do not have the right to exploit forests and other natural resources as Europe and the U.S. did to increase their economic well-being. This concept reminds me of my mother telling me, “Just because your friends are jumping off the cliff, does not mean that you have to follow.”

Europe and the U.S paid and are paying the costs of the exploitation of their natural resources. While we are slowly “turning the tide,” to allow other nations to destroy the environment for the sake of economic wealth, just because we did is ludicrous. Although, as the author tells us, there is a growing resentment of poorer nations toward the environmental sermons from developed countries like the U.S. (Vig 303)

Ultimately, we globally need to look at the costs past, present and future. As Vig points out the case of China in Chapter 14, its rapid development (touted as economic miracle) is an environmental disaster. As we move to a greater global community, Vig points out in Chapter 15; scholars foresee even wider consequences of global environmental change for the international community. We, as a world population are spiraling out of control and close to catastrophe. (Vig 327) It is only as a global population that we can come together and work on the protection of natural resources to the benefit of all.

2. What expectations do you think industrialized nations should have for developing nations in the climate change debate? Industrialized nations should have high expectations for developing nations in the climate change debate. While Vig points out that the poorer nations are resentful of the U.S. and Europe, it is important to keep the feet of the developing nations to the fire of reducing climate change. The industrial nations should be looking for the developing countries to find cleaner and more efficient means of feeding their populations and stimulate economic development without destroying natural resources.

a) Should equity between industrialized and developing countries be a goal in this debate? Equity must be a goal in this debate. We are a world at risk, not just a nation at risk. The U.S., according to Vig, is working to follow Obama’s plan to reduce climate change. 1) the need for accelerated R&D on alternative sources of energy, including advanced biofuels; 2) the need to invest far more in existing renewable energy technologies, like wind generation; 3) the need to accelerate energy efficiency programs and conservation programs; 4) the need to create a national cap-and-trade program to control GHG emissions and 5) the need to reengage in international climate change negotiations and to restore U.S. leadership in this area. (Vig 354) The U.S. cannot do it alone. The Kyoto principle and other climate change commitments must be made globally. Of course, simply saying that you are interested in this goal will not do. Developing nations and industrialized alike must demonstrate a willingness to help one another to reach this crucial worldwide goal.


b) What if a developing nation values economic development more than slowing down global warming? In this case should they be required to participate in reducing emissions? Why or why not? A developing nation that values economic development over reducing emissions should still be required to participate in the global effort to reduce overall emissions. This is an all or nothing quest to save the planet and its valuable resources. As Vig discussed in the readings, China is a recent case study in what can happen when economic pressures outweigh environmental ones. As Vig points out, with China, the U.S. and the rest of the world will have to get much smarter about how to cooperate with China in order to assist its environmental protection efforts. Above all, Vig states that the U.S. must devise a limited and coherent set of priorities. China’s needs are vast (not unlike many developing nations) and its capacity is poor; therefore, launching one or two significant initiatives over the next five to ten years would do more good than a vast array of uncoordinated projects. (Vig 322) Industrialized nations need to reach out in significant ways to the developing nations and demonstrate restraint in their own nations to promote environmental change.

c) Conversely, what expectations should developing nations have for industrialized nations? Developing nations should also have high expectations of industrialized nations. They are the focus of much consternation and debate in the global market and they have a right to say, hey, you industrialized and wealthy nations need to help us reach the common goal of climate change control and natural resource development. Developing nations should expect and receive guidance and support from the industrialized nations as those nations continue to tweek and change their focus on protecting the environment. Vig points out in the text that within the U.S. there is an effort to find a more integrated approach to environmental regulation instead of the wide range of laws and agencies we have presently to work on the issues. (Vig 363) This point coincides with my opinion that developing nations have the right to demand assistance and guidance from the wealthier and more environmentally experienced industrialized nations. After all, we do not live in the same world that our grandparents did. We are slowly becoming a global state with a global economy. That means we all have to cooperate. It is life or death for the world.

Assignment #5 - Final Paper Topic

The bill that is the starting point of my environmental policy paper is is HR 135 - The Establishment of the 21st Century Water Commission.

Rep. Linder from Georgia introduced this bill again, for the fifth time since 2003. He hopes to establish a nine person commission with a three year life and a budget of nine million. The nine would compose commission and staff and be salaried. The hope is for the commission to study and come up with recommendations for a comprehensive water strategy for the U.S.

The commission is a good idea and would be focusing on strategy rather than policy. Linder would like the commission to focus on conflicts and duplication of effort in federal agencies and water quality issues. On the flipside, the bill indicates that the director will be appointed by the Speaker of the House. Shouldn't the commission of nine determine who is the director? The horizon of the commission is fifty years, which is really a drop in the bucket(no pun intended. It would be better to have a long range strategy of 100 years in my mind.

Passage of the Health Care Bill - Is it a symptom of Tragedy of the Commons?

This is more a question to my esteemed fellow students. Reading the article in the New York Times this morning, I was thinking about the tragedy of the commons for healthcare. I think that this dilemma too is linked to the population in our nation and the lack of medical resources to care for everyone (at a reasonable cost). Certainly there are other things at work here, politcs for one, and money for big business for another, yet I still keep coming back to the recent readings and wondering how we make all these issues work out for the current generations and those to come.

Assignment 4 - Environmental Justice

http://www.sfbayview.com/2010/showdown-hunters-point-shipyard-2010-a-good-offense-is-the-best-defense/

In San Francisco, California one of the old naval shipyards is loaded with hazardous contamination and sits at sea level, potentially affecting the lives of people and oceanic life in the area. "Uses of particular concern include federal and state designated Superfund sites, underground storage tanks, gas stations and vehicle garages, dry cleaners, heavy manufacturing and toxic industries." All of these hazardous land uses are present within the project area defined by the Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard Phase II Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) published on Nov. 12, 2009, according to the referenced article.

In California, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was enacted in 1970. It was enacted in response to the awareness that the environmental impacts of a development project in planning must be carefully considered to avoid hazardous, costly and unanticipated damage to human health, safety, property and the environment. The environmental impact report demonstrated that there were indeed hazardous materials that need to be removed, yet the report did not specifically address that there were segments of the population that would be harmed (according to the author).

According to the People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) the government is not effectively addressing the contamination issues and that there are several segments of the population at risk. The populations that will be affected are the poorer neighborhoods surrounding the shipyard, as there are new developments currently planned, there are daycare centers and schools nearby in which the group POWER is concerned with the potential contact with the hazardous materials. Additionally, while the clean up and construction efforts have been on-going for a least a decade, there are now a group of peligran falcons who have nested in the machinery on site which also have to be addressed.

"Working with land use attorney Sue Hestor, POWER has held education and strategy sessions to challenge the Phase II DEIR. In collaboration with a “Hail Mary Pass” coalition of environmental activists, POWER succeeded in extending the public comment period of the 4,400-page DEIR that was released as a deceptive strategy during the December holiday season to Jan. 12, 2010."

Vig discusses the dilemma of collective action for environmental protection. He says that these occur when individuals would be better off if they cooperated in pursuit of a common goal. I read this piece several times and it appears to be overly slanted from the perspective of a very concerned citizens' group that may not fully understand the science behind the EIR and the Phase II report. The situation is a little different in this story than in readings. This is an impact created by governmental use, the naval ship yard, and not private business. BUT, I think the outcomes are similar. The government is working with the public to clean up and restore the area for livability. Secondly, Argandona points out that ethical management systems are a set of internal efforts to formulate, plan and implement policies to achieve certain outcomes that will result in the company performing its ethical duties more satisfactorily and the people who work for the company (in this case the governmental agency, the Navy) improving ethically. Simply because my article is not based in environmental justice issues from private companies does make the obligations discussed by our authors any less relevant. To the contrary, the government should be held to a higher standard in their own efforts to protect human health and the environment. What is the old saying, "He who lives in a glass house, should not throw stones."

Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun

New York Times March 9, 2010
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

PUERTOLLANO, Spain — Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun.

Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.”

Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, had two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain.

Farmers sold land for solar plants. Boutiques opened. And people from all over the world, seeing business opportunities, moved to the city, which had suffered from 20 percent unemployment and a population exodus.

But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.

In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. Puertollano’s brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies and banks abandoned contracts that had already been negotiated.

“We lost the opportunity to be at the vanguard of renewables — we were not only generating electricity, but also a strong economy,” said Joaquín Carlos Hermoso Murillo, Puertollano’s mayor since 2004. “Why are they limiting solar power, when the sun is unlimited?”

Puertollano’s wrenching fall points to the delicate policy calculations needed to stimulate nascent solar industries and create green jobs, and might serve as a cautionary tale for the United States, where a similar exercise is now under way.

For now, electricity generation from the sun’s rays needs to be subsidized because it requires the purchase of new equipment and investment in evolving technologies. But costs are rapidly dropping. And regulators are still learning how to structure stimulus payments so that they yield a stable green industry that supports itself, rather than just costly energy and an economic flash in the pan like Spain’s.

“The industry as a whole learned a lot from what happened in Spain,” said Cassidy DeLine, who analyzes the European solar market for Emerging Energy Research, a firm based in Cambridge, Mass. She noted that other countries had since set subsidies lower and issued stricter standards for solar plants.

Yet, despite the pain that Spain’s incentives ended up causing, in many ways they fulfilled their promise, Ms. DeLine said.

“Even though incentives can create bubbles and bursts, without them this industry won’t take off,” she said. “The U.S. is really behind Europe on this, and if we wait until solar is cost-competitive on its own, we may miss the boat and an opportunity to shape the market.”

The most robust Spanish solar companies survived the downturn, have restructured and are re-emerging as global players.

For example, when the government changed course, Siliken Renewable Energy, originally a producer of solar panels, shut its factories for five months and cut its staff to 600 from 1,200. But after shifting its focus to external markets like Italy, France and the United States, and diversifying into solar support services, the company now turns a profit.

“We were a company that banks trusted, so we could make the shift,” said Antonio Navarro, a company spokesman. “But a lot of little companies disappeared.”

The period was particularly difficult because it coincided with the global economic crisis, he said.

To encourage development of solar power and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, Europe has generally relied on so-called feed-in tariffs, through which governments pay a hefty premium for electricity from renewable resources. Regulators in the United States have favored less direct incentives like requiring municipalities to buy a percentage of their electricity from companies making renewable energy, although a few cities and states, most notably Vermont, are experimenting with the feed-in concept.

When it was announced in the summer of 2007, Spain’s premium payment for solar power was the most generous anywhere — 58 cents per kilowatt-hour — with few strings attached.

In retrospect it was far too high. “Everyone from all over the world was installing in Spain as fast as they could, and every biologist who could add was working in solar,” said Pedro Banda, director general of the Institute of Concentration Photovoltaic Systems, one of the research institutes in Puertollano.

Even inefficient, poorly designed plants could make a profit, and speculation in solar building permits was common.

Although Spain’s long-term goal had been to produce 400 megawatts of electricity from solar panels by 2010, it reached that milestone by the end of 2007.

In 2008 the nation connected 2.5 gigawatts of solar power into its grid, more than quintupling its previous capacity and making it second to Germany, the world leader. But many of the hastily opened plants offered no hope of being cost-competitive with conventional power, being poorly designed or located where sunshine was inadequate, for example.

Designs for solar power plants vary. The most common type uses photovoltaic panels to generate electricity. Others, called thermal solar plants, use mirrors to focus the sun’s energy on a liquid that, when heated, drives a steam turbine.

In its haste to create a solar industry, Spain made some miscalculations: solar plants can be set up so quickly and easily that the rush into the industry was much faster than anticipated. And the lavish subsidies inflated Spanish solar installation costs at a time when they were rapidly decreasing elsewhere — in part because of increasing competition from panel makers in China, but also because higher volumes produced economies of scale.

In Spain, the tariff, now adjusted quarterly, is about 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity from freestanding solar power plants, and slightly higher for panels on rooftops.

Germany’s tariff, 53 cents per kilowatt-hour, is expected to fall at least 15 percent this summer, and there are proposals before Parliament to eliminate subsidies for solar plants on farmland.

The bonus payments required to make solar energy financially viable vary, depending on local sunshine and the cost of conventional energy. Experts predict that, possibly by next year, Italy will be the first place where solar-generated electricity will not need subsidies to compete with electricity from fossil fuel. Italy has abundant sun and sky-high energy rates, given that it imports most of its fossil fuel.

Even with the reduced incentives and local economic downturn, the solar industry gave Puertollano something of a face-lift and, potentially, a new economic future. Research institutes there are developing cutting-edge technologies. Unemployment, though now up around 10 percent, has not returned to the 20 percent figure. The city is home to a number of solar businesses: a new 50-megawatt thermal-solar plant owned by the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola created hundreds of jobs.

Although coal mines still dot the landscape and a petrochemical factory remains one of Puertollano’s largest employers, that new solar plant sits just next door, with more than 100,000 parabolic mirrors in neat rows on about 400 acres of former farmland. Clean and white as a hospital ward, it silently turns sunshine into Spanish electricity.

Comment:
This is an interesting article considering the huge push for solar in Arizona and the western U.S. now. Hopefully we can learn from Spain's mistakes in their rush to create solar energy and over-do subsidies.

Department of Interior -Water SMART Initiative

On February 22, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar signed a secretarial order establishing an initiative called WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America's Resources for Tomorrow). WaterSMART calls for water conservation actions to increase available water supplies of 350,000 acre feet by 2012 for agricultural, municipal, industrial and environmental uses. Several parts of the order aim at improving water management through conservation and assisting water managers to make wise decisions about water use.



More information at website:

http://doi.gov/news/pressreleases/upload/waterSMARTOrder.pdf