Analysis of US Environmental Laws, Economics, and Ethics, Slides of Environmental Science

Download Analysis of US Environmental Laws, Economics, and Ethics and more Slides Environmental Science in PDF only on Docsity!

Chapter 2

Environmental Laws, Economics and Ethics, Part II

Readings last Week and

this Week:

Chapter #1 – “Hooknose”

Chapter #2 – “The Five Houses of Salmon”

US Environmental Legislation

• Environmental Protection Agency
  • Est. 1970
• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
  • Cornerstone of Environmental Law
  • Requires Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for any proposed federal action - Ex: highway or dam construction
  • EIS must answer many questions (next slide)
  • Revolutionized environmental protection in US

Environmental Impact Statements

Economics and the Environment

• Economics- study of how people use limited

resources to satisfy unlimited wants

• Analytical tools include models

Precepts to study Economics

• Economics is utilitarian
  • Goods and services have value that can be converted to currency
• Rational Actor Model
  • Assumes all individuals spend limited resources to maximize individual utilities
• Ideal economy
  • Resources are allocated efficiently

Economic Optimum Level of Pollution

Private vs Social Cost of Pollution

Critiques of Environmental Economics

• Difficult to assess true costs of environmental

pollution and abatement

• Impacts of pollution on people and nature is uncertain (not anymore!)
• Ecosystem services have no known value (not quite!)
• Utilitarian economics may not be appropriate
• Dynamic changes and time are not considered
• Based only on monetary value – what is monetary value of clean earth? (A better question: what is the value of a polluted, damaged Earth?)

National Income Accounts

• Estimates of National Economic Performance

and used in Politics

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
• Net Domestic Product (NDP)
• Environment may be overexploited to yield a

higher GDP in developing countries (Tragedy

of the Commons)

• EPI (Environmental Performance Index)
  • Assesses a country’s commitment to environmental and resource management

Case Study- Environmental Problems in Eastern Europe

• Fall of Communist governments revealed large

environmental destruction

• Soil and water poisoned
• Unidentified leaks in dumping sites
• Industry with air pollutants causing acid rain
• Children with chronic asthma, bronchitis, and heart problems

Case Study- Environmental Problems in Eastern Europe

• Meeting industrial quotas took precedence

over environmental concerns

• Switch from communism to market

economies- need to improve environment

• Will take decades to clean up polluting economics of communism
• Success varies by country
• Romania- EPI = 90 th
• Czech Republic- EPI = 4th

Societies and Sustainability

Ecological systems

(“Ecosystems”) and the services

they provide to economic systems

are interdependent.

Society (^) Sustainability

For economies, societies and cultures to be sustainable, extraction of resources from ecological systems must not exceed the biological populations’ (and ecological systems’) ability to produce them. Societies and cultures have multiple purposes:

Recreational Cultural Aesthetic Economic Educational

Societies and Sustainability