131–140 of 185 posts
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Water usage combined with weather information likely gives competitive advantage is futures markets.
I'm sure it could but why would the farmers care about the futures market, unless they are using futures to hedge against their own crops?
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I get that you're being facetious. But if purified air became sufficiently expensive, and it was the only way to breathe, everyone really would get serious about polluting less.
Would they? The whole point of a polluted commons is that no one actor is able to make an impact from their own choices. Only collective action can make a difference, and that requires an enforceable agreement to cooperate plus enforcement to make sure that no one cheats. In a world of unbreatheable air, the most rational individual action is not to reduce polluting; rather, it's to pollute as hard as possible in ord…
But how do you motivate collective action and fight apathy? High prices are one way to do it.
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Being able to "price" something requires existence of a functional market. Markets can only exist when contracts can be enforced. Being able to enforce a contract requires monitoring and ability to issue fines, you also needs appropriate laws. All of the above does not exist when it comes to ground water harvesting - especially in India and even in a police state like China.
Yet companies build plants on the Great Lakes, hoover up all the water, filter it, bottle it, and sell it to the unsuspecting, who happily buy it. I never ever saw bottled water as a kid in Europe. It wasn't until I moved to the US where it appeared to be commonplace. When I went back home to England last year, they've got it in every supermarket I visited. Sad, really. I still just drink out of the tap here in Texas…
I can't speak for every state, but here in Michigan (The Great Lakes state!), companies like Nestle have to apply for a license that subjects them to regular inspections to make sure they're not over-burdening the local groundwater supply. They pump from wells on their own private land using their own facilities. Their license fee is pretty cheap, something like $300USD.
This seems like a common-sense regulation that doesn't overly burden either the company or the regulator.
I buy Ice Mountain spring water with a clear conscience.
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What does it use _“block-chain”_ for?
Anonymity, presumably. That said, you'd think there would be no reason that whatever real-world authority is ensuring no one extracts more than their purchased credits allow would already have all the secret information and could just be the clearing house for the transactions.
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Great idea. Then when the air gets dirty we can just charge people for purified air.
I get that you're being facetious. But if purified air became sufficiently expensive, and it was the only way to breathe, everyone really would get serious about polluting less.
If this were actually a serious issue, we would be discussing NAWPA again for real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... The original blueprint used nukes to dig the trenches, but conventional explosives work just fine.
Actual water resources researcher focusing on climate change here. My job is focused on what can we do to continue to deliver water to society under future scenarios (and what steps we can take to get there) from policy to infrastructure investments. The article doesn't present anything new for us but the problem is that the general public isn't informed. While we're the oldest engineering discipline, remember that e…
It's really about (massively) increasing US (and therefore world) food production. If first world municipalities run out of water, people can always move. If the third world runs out of food due to price increases, they die in very large quantities. And I promise you, human beings will certainly decide to destroy a very great deal of habitat before letting a few billion people starve in the face of climate change.
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Why not just price water to reflect supply realities? Why would anyone care about saving water when it's so dirt cheap? "Awareness" seems like a waste of time in comparison.
Does market economics work if there's no way to prevent the tragedy of the commons?
I'm hoping one day something like that will happen with fisheries, e.g. someone will own fisheries or maybe even schools of fish. Anything less seems doomed to tragedy.
Note that government management of a previously 'commons' resource is, in theory, the same basic arrangement. In practice tho, the very different incentives shaping government organizations doesn't seem to as reliably protect resources as for private entities.
('Markets fail'. Governments fail too. What's the expected difference in the rate of failure of the two?)
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I'm sure it could but why would the farmers care about the futures market, unless they are using futures to hedge against their own crops?
That's exactly what the commodity futures markets are for. There's a reason why the big commodity trading floor was in Chicago (it's essentially all electronic now of course).
I assume the farmers aren't trying to make money from the futures, they're just trying to not lose money. Their profits come from actually growing food. The futures are just there in case something bad happens. Right?
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Why not just price water to reflect supply realities? Why would anyone care about saving water when it's so dirt cheap? "Awareness" seems like a waste of time in comparison.
A lot of people outside of cities have their own groundwater wells, which is at least part of what the article is talking about. How do you price water people are pulling directly from the ground with their own equipment?
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Why not just price water to reflect supply realities? Why would anyone care about saving water when it's so dirt cheap? "Awareness" seems like a waste of time in comparison.
Great idea. Then when the air gets dirty we can just charge people for purified air.