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Various aspects of the environmental values debate are first examined within the wider context of the sustainable economic development strategy and goal. Next, an expanded values classification is set out in order to define the limits of the conventional environmental economics concept of total economic value (use plus non‐use values). Particular attention is paid to the definition and measurement of bequest and existence values, as well as to some recent findings in the newly emerging ‘ecological economics’ literature that have implications for resource systems valuation. The chapter concludes with some environmental conservation policy implications.

This chapter presents an overview of the five chapters (Chapter 2-6) in Part I of the book. It discusses the economic models that study the link between economic growth and the environment. It focuses on a class of models in which economic activities lead to environmental degradation, and through this economic activity negatively affects the utility of households or the production activities of firms.

This chapter evaluates the validity of economic rationale as a justification for environmental protection. It examines the limitations and problems with this justification. These include economic capital and interest, the economic valuations of the environment, and the vulnerability of economic rationales. In addition, environmental economics is dependent on the assumption that the free market works perfectly and that alternative uses are not subsidized to the point that they become more attractive options.

The chapter shows how the ecological limits to economic scale affecting the human well-being have been accommodated and analysed in the micro and the macroeconomic theory by treating the consequent problems of resource scarcity and environmental degradation essentially as ones of externalities and public good in the context of allocation of resources. It reviews the approaches of the two schools of thought - environmental economics and ecological economics – that emerged in response to the challenges posed by the ecological limits on economic development. The environmental economics treats the natural environment as a separate sector for internationalizing the externalities, while the ecological economics takes a more interdisciplinary approach of integrating the ecological factors governing resource regeneration and waste absorption into the economic models. It further shows how the framework and the methodological approach of neoclassical economics are amenable to such modifications so as to adequately address such interdisciplinary issues.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study of different justifications for environmental protection. It highlights the limitations and problems of the commonly used justifications including respect for life, land ethics, and environmental economics. It describes multiple instances which have recognized the growing recognition of intrinsic values, ecological interdependence, and the necessity for having holistic outlooks within the international environmental arena.

This chapter explores two of the most popular explanations of environmental degradation currently found in environmental and public-policy circles: environmental economics and consumer-oriented environmentalism. According to the consumer sovereignty argument, consumers are the main drivers of the global environmental crisis. On the other hand, the environmental economics argument blames the crisis on poorly functioning markets and too much government intervention. The chapter discusses the fundamental flaws of both explanations, particularly their tendency to downplay, ignore, or inadequately theorize inequality, power, and democracy as well as the social structures that maintain inequality and power. It also considers the role of inequality and power in influencing government policies, how effective these policies will be in achieving progressive social and environmental goals, who these policies will most benefit and harm, and how strongly these policies will affect business behavior.

Eager to regain control over the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Nixon administration claimed a new White House prerogative to review administrative rulemakings before they became law, citing the potential economic disruption of expensive new mandates as justification for this regulatory review. Fearing that the influence that business representatives seemed likely to wield on the process and the possibility that the White House would use the new process to water down congressional mandates, environmental organizations turned to Congress and the courts to push back against regulatory review. Caught in the middle and eager to protect the EPA’s ability to fulfill legislative mandates, the EPA’s senior leadership increasingly turned to economics to understand and moderate the adverse impacts of its regulations and to justify a strong intervention program to the White House and the American public.

This chapter studies the relationship between taxation and two major issues in environmental economics: renewable resources and harmful stock externalities. In the overlapping generations (OG) model, it is possible for agents using competition to acquire large assets, such as resource stock. People will acquire assets, but this will drive down the returns of their investment below their optimal level. A general income tax, such as capital income tax, will lower the return of the acquiring asset and may improve welfare if it moves the competitive economy closer to the optimal expansion path. Consumption and production result in damage to the environment and actions by the government is needed. The government uses the tool of taxing capital in the long run if a production externality is present. Moreover, a consumption tax that is imposed on general consumption to clean up the environment allows the economy to support optimal allocation.

This chapter explores the area of environmental finance. Specifically, it sets out the intersection of households, the economics of environmental management, and the environmental consequences of economic investment. The analysis is organized into four main elements: the first section begins by exploring the main themes in environmental economics. Next, it goes on to investigate the link between environmental investing and financial return and then proposes a framework for understanding the different forums in which environmentally oriented investment occurs. The second part proposes ten key propositions on how environmental concerns are connected to financial investment. Section three focuses on one particularly tangible domain—real estate—and includes three case studies to illustrate existing strategies for incorporating environmental value into real estate investment. The final section presents conclusions and recommendations for further research.

Animated by the contrast of rising prosperity and declining environmental quality in the 1960s, the modern environmental movement pushed local and state authorities and then the federal government to take responsibility for restoring and safeguarding the environment. Central to that expanded federal role was the establishment of science-based national air quality standards in the Clean Air Act of 1970. Economists too came to focus on pollution as a key threat to public welfare and laid the groundwork in the 1960s for what would become a politically compelling monetization of the costs of air pollution and environmental degradation. But whereas environmentalists tended to describe clean air as a natural right, to be secured regardless of the cost, economists approached clean air as a natural resource, to be managed for its measurable contributions to a monetized notion of public welfare.

This book examines how organizational and institutional inequality as well as elite-controlled organizations and mechanisms cause social and environmental harm. It presents a series of case studies that highlight four substantive topics—globalization, modern agriculture, mining, and U.S. energy and military policy—to demonstrate how local, national, and global social structures give rise to a variety of social and environmental crises ranging from economic underdevelopment and widespread poverty to deforestation, desertification, and climate change. It offers a critique of environmental economics and consumer-oriented environmentalism and argues that the world's social and environmental problems are largely the product of organizational, institutional, and network-based inequality, or OINB inequality.

This chapter applies the concepts of environmental economics to the problem of climate change. It highlights the fact that using unilateral measures to address climate change represent only a partial solution because they will not achieve the desired level of emissions reductions. The chapter also critiques, in economic terms, the approach of dividing countries into developed and developing as an ineffective approach to addressing climate change. It further develops the idea of creating an index of countries that evolves as conditions change, called the ‘Climate Sensitivity Index’ (CSI).

Chapter 1 introduces the concept and intuitive explanation of entropy law and shows how it plays a unifying role in the sustainability of the processes of development—economic, social, and environmental. It points out that the speed of extraction of resources and their uses in the finite planetary ecosystem have become unsustainable today. This is due to the speed of extraction exceeding the capacity of resource regeneration as well as the absorption of waste generated from the extraction and usage of resources, resulting in a state of increasing disorder. The chapter further points out that the combining of social and environmental sustainability with the process of economic growth would require the development of a social investment perspective for the economy along the lines of welfare statism. Thus it outlines a short history of welfare statism since the days of the Swedish welfare state in the last century in order to understand the changing compulsions of sustainability over time.

This introductory chapter presents an overview of the main themes covered in this book. Integrated assessment (IA) modeling of climate change is a leading research topic while game theory is a leading research methodology in environmental economics. Despite the common premises, however, IA framework and game-theoretic modeling have limited intersection. The RICE (Regional Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) model is an excellent platform for bridging IA modeling and game-theoretic solutions. This study is the first attempt at integrating the IA modeling and game-theoretic solutions comprehensively, drawing on a wide range of research results from scholars on both sides.

From its creation in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) played a key role in struggles over the responsibility, authority, and capacity of the federal government to safeguard the public welfare against the ills of industrial society. But despite this centrality, the EPA largely remains a cipher in modern American history. In opening up the EPA’s history through an examination of the agency’s governance of air pollution from 1970 to the 1990s, this book shows how administrative agencies came to structure core aspects of our everyday lives. The enduring power of the EPA depended on its adoption of a monetary approach to environmental goods, and this book explores the translation of different notions of environmental value into policy as a key space in the evolution of core ideas about the environment and the public welfare.

This chapter considers the future ocean: how it will be used by humanity, the threats from marine pollution and other synergistic human pressures. By 2050, the global population will have doubled in less than 100 years. Thus, more food, energy, transportation and waste disposal will be required. Increasing demands will be placed on ecosystems and their natural resilience will be tested to the limit. The oceans are complex dynamic systems and predicting their future state is difficult. Adaptation to these changes will require a robust scientific understanding of human impacts, their nature and scale and the options for remediation. As new materials are developed the challenges to marine pollution science continue to arise. However, as demonstrated in this book cost-effective technological solutions are not always possible. It is therefore critical that natural scientists, engineers, economists and social scientists work together to make marine pollution ‘a solvable problem’.