news sciences: Skeptical Science New Research for Week #32, 2019

Clinical speech

From Barber and Burgiess' Scarcity and Safe Operating Spaces: The Example of Natural Forests

Scientists suggest placing planetary boundaries on human-induced threats to key Earth system sinks and resources. Such boundaries define a “safe operating space” on depletion and pollution. Treating any remaining “space” as a depletable economic asset allows derivation of optimal and actual rules for depletion. We apply this analysis to natural forests, and find that the critical asset is tropical forests. The size of the safe operating space and assumptions about the annual rate of tropical deforestation matter significantly. In the most critical scenario, actual depletion could occur in 11–21 years, whereas optimal depletion is 65 years. The optimal unit rental tax equates the actual price with the optimal price path. The tax rate and its amount vary with the depletion scenario and increases over time. However, if the environmental benefits of tropical forests are sufficiently large, the remaining safe operating space should be preserved indefinitely.

Hence we learn that "optimal depletion" of natural forests is best scheduled over 63 years. The specification of "optimal" in this case teeters on the summit of a mountain rooted in an orogeny of possibly adequate inference and deduction incorporating necessarily highly simplified models of human behavior and real world features. Errors in this vertiginous mental model are potentially quite costly.

Outside of formal economic concepts our notions of "optimal" continued existence vary by local culture and local exigencies. Discontinuities of cultural identity and immediate physical resource requirements, expectations and priorities are often found at international borders.

Meanwhile the term "planetary boundary" is not primarily about lines on a map circumscribing political units but refers to necessary limits on human behavior in order for Earth to continue functioning well enough for us not to experience a notably sub-optimal future. Thinking of Earth as a life support system (which it of course is), it's not really controversial to suggest that as a piece of machinery it has limited capacity, with various subsystems residing within brackets of maximum sustained performance. These are not radical concepts, not to we humans who are after all skilled builders and operators of machinery. Planetary boundaries are simply logical extension and application of what we already know about the successful maintenance of important equipment. Machinery has limits and needs to be attended.

Mutual agreement and acceptance of what are obviously mandatory planetary boundaries will succeed to the extent that international boundaries are softened and adapted for the specific purpose of mutually assured non-destruction. Operation of Earth within planetary boundaries will require some degree of relaxation and subordination of sovereign autonomy for every country on the planet; effective maintenance of the planet as an optimal living space will require building a planetary regulatory system, one resembling a conventional governmental system in some features as a matter of practical necessity. The need for operational technical systems governance of the planet's life support mechanisms is an inevitable conclusion arising from recognition of planetary boundaries, and such governance is implausible as a spontaneous emerged feature of a disorganized rabble of fully autonomous nation states.

We may either pull together a little more and have an easier future or we instead may choose the hard way.

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43 titles, 32 open access.

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Clinical speech

From Barber and Burgiess' Scarcity and Safe Operating Spaces: The Example of Natural Forests

Scientists suggest placing planetary boundaries on human-induced threats to key Earth system sinks and resources. Such boundaries define a “safe operating space” on depletion and pollution. Treating any remaining “space” as a depletable economic asset allows derivation of optimal and actual rules for depletion. We apply this analysis to natural forests, and find that the critical asset is tropical forests. The size of the safe operating space and assumptions about the annual rate of tropical deforestation matter significantly. In the most critical scenario, actual depletion could occur in 11–21 years, whereas optimal depletion is 65 years. The optimal unit rental tax equates the actual price with the optimal price path. The tax rate and its amount vary with the depletion scenario and increases over time. However, if the environmental benefits of tropical forests are sufficiently large, the remaining safe operating space should be preserved indefinitely.

We may either pull together a little more and have an easier future or we instead may choose the hard way.