ENVR101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Environmental Full-Cost Accounting, Genuine Progress Indicator, Cost Accounting

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Environmental Studies
• Course: ENVR101
• Professor: Veron Dana Elizabeth

Document Summary

Economy: a social system that converts resources into goods and services. Economies receive inputs from environment, process them, discharge outputs into the environment. People suffer from external costs - people who do not participate in a transaction suffer from external costs (health problems, property/aesthetic damage, stress, lower real estate value) Earth"s economic value of 17 ecosystem services each year equals trillion. More than gdp of all nations combined. We can measure progress with full cost accounting. Indicators that distinguish between desirable and undesirable economic activity. Conventional economic activity plus positive non monetary contributions such as volunteering and parenting. Negative impacts such as crime, pollution are subtracted. Full cost accounting - true cost accounting. Ethics, economics clarify how society can address problems. Government interacts with citizens, organizations, private sector. Tragedy of the commons: publicly accessible resources become overused and degraded when unregulated. 1780s - late 1800s, laws promoted settlement and extraction of resources.