Motivation is both vexingly and wonderfully complicated!

One theory is that contra-freeloading occurs because it helps organisms gain information about the environment that might be useful later. If you know that pressing a lever gets you food, this might come in handy if other sources of food disappear. This does not seem like a very compelling explanation, however, because (under some conditions) animals will respond at a very high rate to get food in the presence of free food. It’s not like they’re just checking to see if the lever still works from time to time. (See also this elegant study showing that monkeys will work to get information about the size of the next reinforcer, even though this has no impact on whether they will get the reinforcer and gives them no long-term information.)

Facebook does not technically sell your data, for instance. Nor does Google. They sell the power to influence you. They sell the power to show you ads, and the power to predict your behaviour. Google and Facebook are not really in the business of data – they are in the business of power. Even more than monetary gain, personal data bestows power on those who collect and analyse it, and that is what makes it so coveted.

If you weren’t that important, businesses and governments wouldn’t be going to so much trouble to spy on you.

You might think you have nothing to hide, nothing to fear. You are wrong – unless you are an exhibitionist with masochistic desires of suffering identity theft, discrimination, joblessness, public humiliation and totalitarianism, among other misfortunes. You have plenty to hide, plenty to fear, and the fact that you don’t go around publishing your passwords or giving copies of your home keys to strangers attests to that.

People who love you might use your date of birth to organise a surprise birthday party for you; they’ll make a note of your tastes to find you the perfect gift; they’ll take into account your darkest fears to keep you safe from the things that scare you. Not everyone will use access to your personal life in your interest, however. Fraudsters might use your date of birth to impersonate you while they commit a crime; companies might use your tastes to lure you into a bad deal; enemies might use your darkest fears to threaten and extort you. People who don’t have your best interest at heart will exploit your data to further their own agenda. Privacy matters because the lack of it gives others power over you.

Representative Katherine Clar

By expanding the scale of an offset program to a wider jurisdiction, it can generate a larger quantity of emissions reductions than with an individual project. It also brings governments on board, adding accountability and enforcement. This is a critical element in getting large reductions in forest loss. Despite the recent surge in deforestation in the Amazon, Brazil’s government has actually slowed its rate of forest loss with government policies in recent decades. Between 2005 and 2014, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined by 70 percent.

One of the most prominent international offset systems is the United Nations’ REDD+ program, first formed in 2005. It’s aimed at reducing emissions associated with deforestation and at restoring natural areas, helping wealthier countries stay within carbon caps by routing funding to developing countries where these forests are located. But as Lisa Song at ProPublica reported, REDD+ has struggled in places like the Amazon, as pressures to cut down the rainforest overwhelmed the payments being issued to protect it, with many purchasers left none the wiser. That meant that a major carbon sink was being degraded and the associated emissions from the offset purchaser were continuing unabated, with little accountability on either side of the transaction.

the bigger issue is that taking more restrictive measures doesn’t compute with Switzerland’s distinct small-government philosophy. Lacking natural resources and little arable farmland due to its mountainous topography, the Swiss have traditionally recognized commerce as their only path to prosperity. The state’s constrained role in public life is also the result of the country’s creation from a quilt of formerly independent countries. The prime motivation for these cantons to federate was not brotherly love or building a European nation-state. It was to prevent getting swept up by one of the continent’s empires and to safeguard as much cantonal sovereignty as possible.

What went amiss in the Alpine country widely famous for its spotless streets and widely recognized for its safety, reliability, and good governance? In one sense, the answer is simple: The Swiss government has resisted taking the necessary restrictive measures to contain the virus. The reasons for that resistance, however, are rather more complicated because the Swiss have long cloaked the ideological motives informing public policy in purely pragmatic language.

el Distrito tiene identificadas 432 huertas urbanas en la ciudad, que en patios, terrazas, jardines, balcones y el espacio público han tenido cabida, tras procesos comunitarios, y se han fortalecido a tal punto que su producción es comercializable.