Natural debt, the cost of resource over-development

If you catch all of my fish, do you owe me anything? Um, yeah. And now the debt is real because an economist said so.

I'm pleased to see this erudite exposition on the damage done by resource use, and it's unequal distribution. The result: harm does trickle down the income ladder to those on the bottom. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that harm and damage are what trickles down most effectively.

The project is a valiant step forward, and it will help legitimize the desire for correction that many people feel when they learn about unequal distribution of costs and benefits resulting from trade in many valuable natural resources, like fish. Now that the costs are quantified, perhaps they can be "internalized" which means the costs get chewed up and digested by our economic institutions so that they matter when people are making decisions.

An interesting sidelight, one of the authors bears a famous name from the history of economics, although some true believers in capitalism may think the name is taken in vain in this paper. I prefer to believe that the great thinker would blanch if he heard what's said in his name these days.

In my layman's view, the modern Adam Smith's "Debt of Nations" is the logical follow-on to the original Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," now that much capital has flowed since his seminal work. And fun to note that the modern Smith hails from UC Berkeley.

I think it's time for a new bumper sticker:

What debt-redistribution scheme would Adam Smith drive?

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runner's high proven, as if runners need proof

Here's a validation going out to all of you endurance athletes...

Runner's high proven by science.

Natural opiates were identified in the brains of runners after a 2 hour run, using a PET scan (positron emission tomography). In other words, runners really do get high.

Jonesing for a run? It's because you're a junkie and you need your fix. Thank goodness nobody has yet figured out a way to make it illegal. The story is in:

"The Runner's High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain" are published in the journal 'Cerebral Cortex'.

I don't know about you, but I read Cerebral Cortex every day.

Of course, any endurance athlete doesn't need this science to know the truth, we've all been there. Like the time I ran 5 1/2 hours in the hills east of Pebble Beach, or the SF marathon when I first ran under 3 hours. I'm not fast, but I've been a runner for a long time, and I grew up watching this guy on the right. Now he was an ATHLETE. RIP Steve Prefontaine, although peace is not the word that comes quickly to mind when thinking about Pre.

Now please excuse me while I step outside for a couple of hours

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Live fish shooters in red wine?

Care for some live fish shooters? It's a Flemish custom that's drawing ire from animal rights activists.

Take a close look at the photo, those are live grondeling in a saucer of red wine about to get slurped by the man at the left with the classic sideburns. And note the druid in the background, watching intently. This is not your father's fraternity party. It's actually an interesting pagan-derived, church-sponsored ritual with origins deep in the mists of the region's history, perhaps derived from ancient Celtic traditions.

There's been a serious fight over the drinking of live fish, including litigation and a temporary halt in 2001. And in Geraardsbergen, the tradition predates the foundation of Belgium, which was established only in the 19th century. "Belgium is a creation from 1830," a spokesperson said, "Geraardsbergen was founded in 1068, and people are a lot more interested in what their forefathers did than in Belgium."

The fish are important bystanders in the practice, which may be no more cruel to the little groundeling than what would happen if they were eaten by predatory fish.

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Carnival of the blue 10

Now live at Kate Wing's blog. Stop by for the best in ocean blogging and Kate's inimitable way of having some fun with a tough job.

Where else can you figure out what the following three things have in common?

-Molten iron chicken kimchee in space
-albino rock crab
-the Pope
-Charles Darwin

OK, four things, but Darwin and the Pope are kind of similar.

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New dams in the western US? Really?

Yes we need water, but dams come with a cost. We've learned many painful lesssons from the great dam-building era in the American west. Nevertheless, Western states are now out in the hills looking for new dam sites.

Killing salmon is one of the major results of dams in the northwest. Dams block habitat, kill fish directly, and make rivers a poor home for salmon.

We've learned these lessons, and even begun to remove dams from rivers when salmon restoration costs more than the dams are worth.

With this knowledge, it's a harsh bit of news to read that new dams are being considered. But we're in a tough situation. Just like proposals to generate electricity from ocean wind, tides, and waves, it's probably not right to just say not in my backyard (NIMBY) to all proposals for construction in rivers and the ocean.

Can we do dams right, knowing what we know now? Certainly not if we rely on the kind of planning we had in the last round of dam-building. We need to choose carefully where we build new large natural resource projects, and some important places should be strictly off limits. We need to talk openly and clearly about the tradeoffs and what's lost when we build. And people who care need to have a voice.

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