photo credit: Fool-On-The-Hill

A renegade environmentalist has stepped into the breach to stop one of GW’s last acts of terror – selling off pristine land for oil and exploration at bargain prices.

A bid to save pristine land:

Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old college student, had slipped into the auction room and saw a woman he knew, a fellow environmentalist observing the event. She was weeping as Utah’s wild lands were sold off parcel by parcel. DeChristopher decided he had to act. So he began bidding.

By the time BLM officials caught on, DeChristopher had bid $1.79 million he did not have to acquire the rights to 12 parcels totaling 22,000 acres. Federal authorities threatened to prosecute DeChristopher for bidding without cash in hand.

DeChristopher had an economics exam at the University of Utah that morning. The final question was whether the prices paid at the auction would represent the true cost of energy exploration. The answer, he wrote, was no: They would not take into account the environmental and public health effects of fossil fuels. Then he went to the BLM office to join the picket line.

A fairer way to ensure the community gets its fair share of any solar parks/ oil drilling is to ensure there is a 10% royalty paid to the community (based on the value of that land, reflecting oil or solar values) for the ownership of that land. Then those parcels that did get sold off to oil drillers would share some of the immense profit with the community, rather than shareholders receiving the majority.Expensive drilling with high upfront costs would be deterred.

If environmental easements were to be introduced, this would mean that the land could be preserved for its’ natural beauty, where an environmental trust would operate to benefit from the future carbon sequestration that vegetation would provide. These carbon negative revenues would pay the land rent fees. Read Capitalism 3.0 for more on environmental trusts.

Well done Tim for saving the commons using economic forces and a little activist know how!

As Obama blasts through his first day with strong words on lobbyists (phew), this unique summary of the 8 years of hellish politics we have gladly left behind is summarised like you would not believe. Please check this out.

photo credit: lrargerich

The Weekly Times reports that water traders are double dipping, claiming commissions on both buyers and sellers, something that is illegal in the real estate industry in Water brokers pocket liquid gold

An investigation by The Weekly Times has found many brokers have double dipped on commissions, a practice that is outlawed in the real estate industry.

Brokers have been charging both buyers and sellers 3 per cent commission on the back of the $1 billion of water traded across the southern Murray Darling Basin each season.

Last season, temporary water prices hit $1200 a megalitre, resulting in trades worth the price of a small house in Sydney.

The article also goes on to state that the long delays in water trade approvals meant that purchase money spent a considerable amount of time in water trader’s trust accounts, where they are earning interest, another principle not allowed in the real estate industry.

In a follow up article, Water trader pockets irrigators’ cash,

Mr Matthews said the interest earned should go into an industry fund, not brokers’ pockets.

Why don’t the principles that apply to one natural resource, such as land, apply to water and soon carbon? Senior bureaucrats must know what’s going on. If only there was more pressure on the water speculation that is occurring. Any student of speculative capitalism will tell you that traders are making thousands more than your average inventor trying to save the planet. One shuffles paper to make millions, the other is developing tools for humanity’s survival. Why is life so hard for the inventor?