Global biodiversity: (biased) indicators of recent declines

Stuart H. M. Butchart and coauthors write in Science (Global biodiversity: indicators of recent declines):

Only three indicators address trends in the benefits humans derive from biodiversity (Fig. 1 and Table 1): (i) population trends of utilized vertebrates have declined by 15% since 1970, and aggregate species’ extinction risk has increased at an accelerating rate (as shown by the Red List Index) for (ii) mammals, birds, and amphibian species used for food and medicine (with 23 to 36% of such species threatened with extinction) and (iii) birds that are internationally traded (principally for the pet trade; 8% threatened). Trends are not yet available for plants and other important utilized animal groups. Three other indicators, which lack trend data, show (iv) 21% of domesticated animal breeds are at risk of extinction (and 9% are already extinct); (v) languages spoken by fewer than 1000 people (22% of the current 6900 languages) have lost speakers over the past 40 years and are in danger of disappearing within this century (loss of linguistic diversity being a proxy for loss of indigenous biodiversity knowledge); and (vi) more than 100 million poor people [suffering from undernourishment] live in remote areas within threatened ecoregions and are therefore likely to be particularly dependent upon biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides.

This is all they have to say about indicators of the benefits humans derive from biodiversity, and it is biased. They do not mention that we now have the highest ever (iv) rate of production of new animal breeds, (v) rate of production of biodiversity knowledge, as measured, for example, by the number of scientific publications, and (vi) number of people (more than 6.5 billion) who are "not particularly dependent upon biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides." They also fail to mention that food supply per capita and the number and proportion of well-nourished people have steadily increased since 1970.

Government subsidies that harm the environment

From here: $300bn for agriculture and fishing, $500bn for energy, $238-$306bn for transport and $67bn for water supply. These are worldwide annual figures. For comparison, the same article mentions that increasing nature protection on strategically selected locations from the current 12.5%-14% to 15% of all land and from 1% to 30% of the seas would cost $45bn a year.

Private, voluntary, peaceful nature protection

Canadian logging companies will set aside 300,000 square kilometers for boreal forest protection on land for which they hold leases. In exchange, Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy and other environmental groups will "suspend do-not-buy campaigns against the loggers' products and actively endorse them." There is more on Nature. This is unreservedly good news. I would only suggest converting those land leases into permanent private property.

Why libertarianism doesn't work

I agree with Paul Krugman that the free-market ideas advocated by Milton Friedman are not put into practice because people prefer the collectivist ideas advocated by Krugman and vote accordingly.

Happiness, prosperity and government policies

Does money bring happiness?

It has long been assumed that economic prosperity brings happiness. However, the evidence is to the contrary. Economic growth in developed countries has gone hand-in-hand with a rise in mental and behavioural disorders, family breakdown, social exclusion and diminished social trust. In China, for example, a 2009 study by German sociologists showed that the lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the 1990s has been accompanied by an alarming decrease in life satisfaction at every level of income, in both rural and urban areas.

[I]t is time to rethink the goal of politics: to promote well-being rather than wealth.

In her Nature review of The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being, by Derek Bok, Felicia Huppert argues that "most people are unaware of and need education about what will give them lasting satisfaction." If people only knew about the "increasingly solid body of evidence about the causes of happiness" they would vote for policies that would "promote well-being rather than wealth." I think that people actually vote for policies that hamper wealth. I am also skeptical that prosperity makes people unhappy. But let me examine Huppert's arguments under her own assumptions.

Huppert says that giving money to someone else makes people happy. No wonder, given that she thinks that having money makes people unhappy. The problem of her argument is that the happiness of giving money comes at the cost of bringing unhappiness to those receiving it.

[Bok] proposes the provision of universal health insurance and measures to strengthen marriages, such as premarital education and incentives to persuade low-income couples to marry.

I know of no "solid body of evidence" that universal health insurance makes people happier. Huppert's own evidence that poor people, who tend to lack health insurance, are happier than rich people, who tend to have insurance, suggests the opposite. I wonder what kind of incentives would be useful to persuade low-income couples to marry. You should not give them money because it makes them unhappy.

Huppert ends with more bad news for her own argument:

[H]appiness and social well-being are likely to bring economic prosperity.

Given that she thinks that prosperity brings unhappiness, what are we to do?

Goldman Sachs and the public opinion

Goldman Sachs offered two or three allegedly unsuspecting investors who should have known better the opportunity to bet on a risky financial product partly designed by the other side of the bet. Those investors lost $1 billion, which were later paid by British and German taxpayers, and three years later much of the public opinion portrays Goldman Sachs as the personification of evil.

Now governments around the world are about to force taxpayers to buy Greek government bonds for up to $160 billion. A third of this money will come through the International Monetary Fund.

At the same time the World Bank has committed $200 million to provide people in sub Saharan Africa with bed nets.

Thus, worldwide governments backed by the public opinion allocate $160 billion to protect the wages and pensions of 11 million Europeans and $0.2 billion to protect 25 million Africans from deadly malaria.

The public opinion does more evil than Goldman Sachs.