My new favorite country.

Norway is my newest favorite country in the world. I learnt from BBC on the way home today that the Norwegian Government has reached an agreement with Indonesia in which Indonesia promises not to cut down any more rain-forest in the next two years, and in exchange, Norway will pay USD 1 Billion dollars to the Indonesia Government. I have long wondered if something like this would be possible, since my University days, when I first learnt about Coase Theorem. I had a crazy idea that perhaps, we, the fortunate people who live in the developed world, could all contribute, perhaps, a dollar a month, and the money would go to countries like Brazil and Indonesia, for them to preserve their rain-forests from which we get our precious oxygen from. I had always thought something like this was too idealistic. Kudos to Norway for trying, and putting their money where their mouth is. It remains to be seen whether Indonesia will honour the agreement, but it's a start.