Economic

In a growing world economy, how do we protect natural resources to guard against "collapse"? International negotiations are unlikely to mitigate this clasic tragedy of the commons. Ecologists continue to try to educate the public about the consequences of the status quo in articles such as this and this in Science.

Here are our options;

1. Privatize the commons.

2. Draconian, credible punishments for poachers

3. Invent a perfect substitute for the depletable natural resource (keep in mind that PETA is investing in developing a substitute for meat ).

4. Educate consumers about the social consequences of their actions so that they engage in "voluntary restraint"

As a free market environmentalist, I do worry about the "in between" case in which we have ample "common property" and a growing world economy where there are more people with a taste to spend more of their income on tusks and tuna. This is a recipe for big natural resource depletion problems.

The optimist in me hopes that improvements in information technology such as satellite pictures and real time information creates credible means of protecting the commons.