Governance & Forest Conservation

In light of the potential for REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) credits to enter the post-2012 climate regime, it is important to remember that officially-sanctioned forest activities are only a portion of the problem. Governmental and nongovernmental assessments estimate that illegal logging accounts for over half of timber extracted from the tropical forests of some major timber-producing nations.

Perhaps suprisingly, the question of forest (and other resource) governance recently received popular attention, thanks to reporter Andrew C. Revkin’s New York Times blog, Dot Earth. The post focused on a recent murder in Peru, retribution for reporting illegal timber activities. The story behind the post received attention in the U.S. weeks after the killing, thanks to mongabay.com.

This attention is critical. The potential carbon, biodiversity and human health benefits of REDD credits (and the likelihood of their creation) will be seriously undermined by poor forest governance. Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are prime examples of countries that could reap significant human health and biodiversity benefits from REDD, but face extreme governance problems very likely to undermine efforts to secure them. Countries with somewhat better governance frameworks, therefore, will be in better positions to benefit from REDD.

Governance problems have repeatedly plagued efforts toward sustainable forestry, yet international attention to the issue in specific contexts can affect the resources devoted by national authorities to improving governance and the extent of international support for such efforts.

Creationism at Mall of the Americas

According to the NYT, there was a screening of the new creationist film Expelled (oh, excuse me . . . "intelligent" design) at the Mall of the Americas. Apparently, the film's producer refused to let Professor P. Z. Myers in to the screening, though Richard Dawkins somehow made the cut. You can read Professor Myers account here. So much for welcoming discussion.

It continues to amaze me that we still have to waste time and energy defending basic biology. I remember a Doonesbury cartoon a few years ago poking fun at creationists.



At least the Florida School Board got it mostly right last month. Florida students will now be able to read the dread phrase evolution in their text books. Don't people see the connection between fighting over teaching basic science and concerns that the United States will lose our much-vaunted innovative edge?

Maybe Jurisdynamic's newest blogger Patrick O'Donnell would be willing to add a sound science reading list to his ambitious set of compilations?

The Encyclopedia Of Life Adds Pages

The Encyclopedia Of Life ("EOL") has a lofty goal: to collect every bit of information about every type of organism together in a single, user-friendly website. The last time Biolaw discussed the EOL ("Writing The Book Of Life", May 22, 2007), the website was a great idea, but lacked any substantial content. All of that changed on February 27, 2008, with the first release of EOL. As the press release trumpeted,

First 30,000 EOL pages unveiled online for public “alpha” test and feedback; placeholder pages for 1 million species built in 1st year of 10-year project

However, everything did not go smoothly. In fact so great was the interest in the newly-posted information about such rock-star organisms as the Humpback Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis gibbosa) and the Zygomycete fungus, Peridiospora reticulata, that the website crashed soon after its first release was posted. The fans of biodiversity had rushed the stage.

The EOL website is now back up, and functioning. However, its detailed biodiversity content has a distinctly fishy-smell so far, with a disproportionate number of the completed species pages covering ray-finned fish. These pages are wonderfully rich in information, data, maps, and photographs. Once the project adds more types of organisms the result is sure to be spectacular - if only the legions of biodiversity fans can control themselves.

Patrick S. O'Donnell's bibliographies on bioethics and on environmental and ecological worldviews

I am pleased to announce that Patrick S. O'Donnell, one of the smartest readers and commentators in the legal blogosphere, is now blogging at Ratio Juris. Patrick's first contribution includes links to two of his remarkably thorough reading lists, one on bioethics and the other on environmental and ecological worldviews, and a description of his storehouse of bibliographies. The first of these bibliographies to be posted are of special interest to readers of BioLaw: Law and the Life Sciences, and I commend them to your attention.

Please join me in welcoming Patrick to the Jurisdynamics Network.

The Ehrlich-Simon Bet At 38

The issue of whether natural resources and environmental amenities are depleted or improved over time is vital to the making of sound policy and law. In 1980 three prominent Bay Area academics (Stanford's Paul Ehrlich and Berkeley's Johns Harte and Holdren) bet business economist Julian Simon that the real (inflation-adjusted) price of five commodity metals (that is, chromium, copper, tungsten, tin, and nickel) would rise by the year 1990. Far from being metal-heads, Simon and Ehrlich et al. chose these metals to stand in as representatives of other natural resources.

Over the decade of the bet the price of each metal did, in fact, decline in real terms. Simon, a libertarian and economic optimist, won the bet, receiving almost $600 from Ehrlich et al.. Though losing the bet failed to dampen the highly successful academic careers of Ehrlich, Holdren (now at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government), and Harte, neither did victory raise Simon's profile significantly. There may be mathematical justice to this.

What if the bet had closed today rather than in 1990? Here are the prices of the five metals (per Kg) in 1980 and today (March 11, 2008):

1980 2008 (nominal) 1980 (real) Winner

Chromium $ 8.58 $ 1.69 $22.45 Simon

Copper $ 2.23 $ 8.56 $ 5.83 Ehrlich et al.

Nickel $ 6.74 $32.16 $17.64 Ehrlich et al.

Tin $ 1.92 $19.20 $ 5.02 Ehrlich et al.

Tungsten $32.26 $220.00 $84.41 Ehrlich et al.

Julian may have won the battle of the 1980's, but he is currently losing the longer-term war decisively. If these metals are indeed representative of other natural resources they paint an alarming picture of coming scarcity, a picture that is rapidly coming into focus as consumers around the world pay record high prices for such commodities as gasoline, bread, and milk.

Bad science, shrewd politics?

It’s indisputable that autism is on the rise among children. The question is, What’s causing it? And we go back and forth, and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines. — Senator John McCain

And with that pronouncement, Senator John McCain touched one of the most politically controversial questions in modern medicine. He's right on the increase in diagnoses of autism. He's wrong on the alleged link between thimerosal and autism:

Several large-scale studies have found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism, and medical groups including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics have publicly stated as much. In January, California reported an increase in autism cases, despite the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines.

In February, an international team of researchers, analyzing blood samples from vaccinated children, found that blood levels of ethyl mercury “fell rapidly and had largely returned to baseline levels by Day 11 after vaccination.” Those levels fell much more rapidly, for instance, than levels of the mercury people absorb by eating fish — suggesting that the injected thimerosal is less likely to build up in the blood, the researchers concluded.

But because the parents who fervently believe that the government and vaccine provenders have somehow conspired to cripple their children trust none of the science, Senator McCain's comment on autism arguably represented shrewd politics.

This is not the first time that the Republican presidential campaign has encountered a politically contentious scientific issue. At a May 2007 debate, three candidates — Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo — indicated that they did not believe in evolution:

The May 2007 debate	Mike Huckabee explains further

To his credit, Senator McCain did answer a simple yes when that question first arose.

Evolution denial has deep consequences for environmental policy. I'll go further: no person who denies the overwhelming scientific case for evolution has any business being President. As I write this, the last of the deniers in the Republican field is being eliminated — by Senator McCain, who has shown in an arguably less contentious context that he too can and will deny science when doing so confers a putative political advantage.

God save the United States.