ENV310H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Intergenerational Equity, Carbon Offset, Natural Capital
Document Summary
Principles and approaches: application of laws of thermodynamics and ecology to economics, staying within earth"s carrying capacity, economy embedded within environment, fair distribution of wealth, efficient allocation of scarce resources, opposition to discounting, non-substitutability of natural capital, valuation as commodification of environmental goods and services. Other things we could talk about: green accounting: factoring environmental costs into production costs, green economy: reducing environmental risks and scarcities, climate-resilient economy, carbon-neutrality, low-carbon economy, economic and environmental optimization models, economic tools for achieving environmental goals: carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, carbon offsets, etc. What does the economic domain (in a very broad sense) bring to our understanding of sustainability: distributional and intergenerational equity. Weak vs strong sustainability: challenges of common property resources, externalities and free riders, fundamental importance of natural capital, tools for valuation of environmental goods and services and for achieving environmental goals. An important example of social memory: some prefer the terms local or indigenous environmental knowledge instead of.
