Common sense stipulated it would be a failure, but common sense is often lost underneath moralistic grand standing.
Anyway, I have a better environmental story, which is basically an environmental organisation acting corruptly to get a bribe. While I was in New Zealand, I was chatting to a mining engineer at the pub. He was telling me about a $400 million mine that was under threat because environmentalists found 50 snails with slightly different shell markings, and then wanted to do research to ascertain whether it was a new sub-species.
The mining company told the environmentalists that they were free to take the snails away and relocate them, but this option was deemed to be unacceptable as the snails were not native to any other sub-habitat. Eventually, it was decided that they would need to be permanently housed in a climate controlled fridge that would mimic their natural environment, and they would have a personal full-time carer to monitor their breeding. Furthermore, the fridge would be based in a North Island city, rather than the South Island community where they snails belong. The reason? Because the environmentalists considered relocating one of their own to live on the south Island to be too onerous, even though delaying a $400 million development, and putting the jobs of 200 miners at risk was not too onerous.
And the cost of the whole snail relocation and care? $10 million dollars; paid for by the mine. That was going to work out at $10,000 per snail.
It should be stressed that there is no plan in place for any future relocation. Presumably, the snails will forever be North Island fridge snails now.
But there is a ray of sunshine. The snails are being collected as we speak, and rather then being a mere 50 snails, they have found around 500, so the cost has come down to $1,000 per snail.
As I said previously, there are many moralistic causes that are mere excuses to get money, and you can see them for what they are if you look at the lack of common sense in the solutions that they offer.