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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   25719 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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The SEC has proposed a new type of company, a Natural Asset Company (NAC.) As the main proponents, Intrinsic Exchange Group, state:

By taking a NAC public through an IPO, the market transaction will succeed in converting the long-understood – but to-date unpriced – value of nature into financial capital. This monetization event will generate the funding needed to manage, restore, and grow healthy ecosystems around the world and bring us closer to achieving a truly sustainable, circular economy.

While there are also criterion for farmland and mixed use lands to qualify, it sounds like they expect the public to buy shares of land to pay the owners to not develop it in certain ways. I'm not sure how popular this idea will become. Carbon credits are a thing so there might be some buy-in from the public.

Margaret Byfield at Real Clear Markets takes a dimmer view of NACs:

The best comparison would be using the air we breathe as a cryptocurrency of sorts. And, these natural assets that collectively belong to all of us would now belong to corporations run by what many would call environmental special interests.

Based on just this first sentence, I'm not sure she knows what a cryptocurrency is. Maybe she means it will be subject to a speculative bubble. However, the consequence that most concerns her is that other countries could own stakes in our Natural Parks:

Another feature of these new companies is that the land belonging to sovereign nations and private landowners alike can be subject to the control of NACs. Sovereign nations, such as the United States Government, can provide their lands to private investors, including those outside the United States. China, for example, may be able to invest in an NAC and effectively be a stakeholder in our national parks. Russia could assume control of lands currently leased to produce oil and place them off limits for future natural resource development.

Both supporters and critics seem to think that an NAC will be big deal. The IEG believes that, "The financing gap for biodiversity is estimated between US$598-824 billion per year, for climate change about US$5 trillion dollars per year, and for the transition to a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable economy, orders of magnitude larger."

But I have a hard time conceptualizing how a NAC will tap into all that wealth and power. What is the expected impact for the average Joe and for international politics? Will I no longer be able to "breathe the free air," as real life starts to resemble the Lorax movie? Will foreign countries strategically buy land and prevent Americans from accessing resources?

I honestly expected NAC to include various mining and farming companies.

The EU had a set aside policy in order to reduce over-production and help environmental issues; very broadly, farmers were paid for taking some of their land out of cultivation.

It eventually ended due to shortages of cereal crops (and so they needed the land back in production) and of course, some people will always try to game the system: large producers entering and leaving set aside as suited their financial needs, only marking the unproductive land they wouldn't grow anyway for set aside, etc.

The emphasis now is on "sustainable development" and eco-schemes, rather than plain "money not to grow crops".

...

Why can't the EU make work what the US does as standard procedure since the 30s? Why does it get its own wiki article? Weird.

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