Destroying the Oceans Through the Tragedy of the Commons
This sounds fairly dire.
Oceans on the Precipice: Scripps Scientist Warns of Mass Extinctions and 'Rise of Slime'.
Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.
Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a bold new assessment of the oceans and their ecological health. Publishing his study in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Jackson believes that human impacts are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions in the oceans on par with vast ecological upheavals of the past.
He cites the synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, ocean warming, increased acidification and massive nutrient runoff as culprits in a grand transformation of once complex ocean ecosystems. Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish and disease.
As far as I know, private property doesn't exist in the ocean. No one can "own" a portion of the ocean or have clear property rights to fishers. Therefore, few people have a financial incentive to conserve the ocean's resources. Instead -- because of the tragedy of the commons -- they have an incentive to use as much of the ocean's resources as they can possibly grab. Nutrient runoff and trash are a problem because no one owns the water and can sue polluters.
What a shame.
We should privatize the oceans before it's too late to save them. Mother Earth is depending on us to do the right thing.
For more information on the tragedy of the commons, you may be interested in a conversation between Russ Roberts and Bruce Yandle on "cooperative ventures such as incorporating a river, the common law, and top-down command-and-control regulation to reduce air and water pollution". It's really not as dry as it sounds!
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