{"title":"Atmospheric carbonization through private forestry","authors":"Marty Rowland","doi":"10.1111/ajes.12571","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Sequestration of carbon in forests is one method of reducing the accumulation of CO<sub>2</sub> in the atmosphere in order to delay climate change. But the ability of forests to perform this valuable ecological service may be hampered, particularly when private forestry dominates public policy. This article identifies several examples of lost opportunities for global society to benefit from carbon sequestration because markets for carbon credits are primarily designed to enable corporations to benefit from carbon capture schemes that are seldom adequately monitored. The recommended policy change is the ownership and management of all forests as common property, if not by legal title, then by collection of a tax on economic rent that could provide revenue to fund collective benefits.</p>","PeriodicalId":47133,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","volume":"84 1","pages":"89-102"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Journal of Economics and Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12571","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Sequestration of carbon in forests is one method of reducing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere in order to delay climate change. But the ability of forests to perform this valuable ecological service may be hampered, particularly when private forestry dominates public policy. This article identifies several examples of lost opportunities for global society to benefit from carbon sequestration because markets for carbon credits are primarily designed to enable corporations to benefit from carbon capture schemes that are seldom adequately monitored. The recommended policy change is the ownership and management of all forests as common property, if not by legal title, then by collection of a tax on economic rent that could provide revenue to fund collective benefits.
期刊介绍:
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) was founded in 1941, with support from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, to encourage the development of transdisciplinary solutions to social problems. In the introduction to the first issue, John Dewey observed that “the hostile state of the world and the intellectual division that has been built up in so-called ‘social science,’ are … reflections and expressions of the same fundamental causes.” Dewey commended this journal for its intention to promote “synthesis in the social field.” Dewey wrote those words almost six decades after the social science associations split off from the American Historical Association in pursuit of value-free knowledge derived from specialized disciplines. Since he wrote them, academic or disciplinary specialization has become even more pronounced. Multi-disciplinary work is superficially extolled in major universities, but practices and incentives still favor highly specialized work. The result is that academia has become a bastion of analytic excellence, breaking phenomena into components for intensive investigation, but it contributes little synthetic or holistic understanding that can aid society in finding solutions to contemporary problems. Analytic work remains important, but in response to the current lop-sided emphasis on specialization, the board of AJES has decided to return to its roots by emphasizing a more integrated and practical approach to knowledge.