The Resilient World

Niall Ferguson thinks it is the way to go in the USA, according to his opinion piece in Newsweek. He's very careful to back away from any hint that he's advocating selling America's crown jewels like Yosemite or Yellowstone. But where does one draw the line? As much as I think he's a bit full of himself, I appreciate that he's raising this issue, because the USA has appraised the value of public lands very well. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that the government land managers actually have a very good account of the public goods provided by public lands in the form of ecosystem services.

So it worries me when I hear facile talk about selling off assets. And yet it is abundantly clear that the amount of discretionary spending available to the US government to administer public lands, including the National Park and National Forest systems is shrinking dramatically as non-discretionary spending in the form of entitlements and debt service climbs. Without a guaranteed stream of income, America's public lands will be in serious trouble. This is without even taking into account the anticipated costs of addressing climate change impacts such as storm damage, coastal erosion, invasive species, and increased wildfire risk.

What are our options? Besides the status quo, which doesn't look very attractive, and privatization, which could result in theme park type development or worse, is there a middle ground? The Second Century Commission, which was supposed to chart the path to the future for the National Park system, missed a golden opportunity to envision a new model for managing and financing protected areas, punted. Perhaps it was stacked with people so invested in the status quo that they couldn't envision an alternative.

A middle path may be to create a quasi-governmental foundation to manage protected areas, and perhaps other public lands, under Congressional or Executive supervision, with basic funding appropriated by Congress. A quasi-governmental body could be structured to raise money through private sources to match taxpayer contributions. Some work has been done on this, but conservationists have shown little backbone when it comes to serious consideration of alternatives to dependency on approriations. I say it is time to resurrect these ideas and consider alternative models before it is too late.

There are those who will not entertain any justification for public lands (aside perhaps from military reservations). Be sure that they are eying their main chance. Anyone who cares about public lands should be prepared to parry with counterproposals.

Amplify’d from www.newsweek.com

The conventional wisdom holds that, aside from resorting to inflation or default, debts can be reduced only through belt-tightening austerity measures—some mixture of higher taxes and spending cuts. And yet politicians are notoriously leery of proposing hikes or cuts big enough to make a real dent in the debt. President Obama’s latest budget proposal includes a five-year freeze on nondefense discretionary spending and tax increases on higher earners. But even if all goes according to plan, the gross debt will still rise above 105 percent of gross domestic product—and stay there.

Yet there is another fiscal option that neither party seems to be considering. The U.S. needs to do exactly what it would if it were a severely indebted company: sell off assets to balance its books.

In fact, the U.S. government currently has about $233 billion worth of nondefense “property, plant, and equipment,” according to the Treasury’s Financial Management Service. That is almost certainly an understatement. The government owns somewhere between 600 million and 700 million acres of land, or about 30 percent of the country’s land surface, much of it in the Western states, where as much as half the land is federally owned. Read more at www.newsweek.com