Chapter 23: Economics, Environment, and Sustainability

Genuine progress indicator

GDP plus the estimated value of beneficial transactions that meet basic needs, but in which no money changes hands, minus the estimated harmful environmental, health, and social costs of all transactions.

Market price

Does not include indirect, external, or hidden costs.

Perverse subsidies

Lead to environmental damage and should be phased out.

Greenwashing

Deceptive practice and spin of environmentally harmful products as green.

Economic succession

New and more innovative businesses.

Economic growth

Increased capacity to supply goods and services, requires increased production and consumption, requires more consumers.

Green taxes

So that harmful products and services are at the true cost.

Gross domestic product

Annual market value of all goods and services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic, operating within a country.

Discount rate

Estimate of a resources future economic value compared to its present value.

Natural capital

Includes resources and services produced by the earth's natural processes, which support all economies and all life.

Natural capital

Includes resources and services produced by the earth's natural processes, which support all economies and all life

Human capital, human resources

Includes people's physical and mental talents that provide labor, organizational and management skills, and innovation

Manufactured capital, manufactured resources

Includes people's physical and mental talents that provide labor, organizational and management skills, and innovation

Economic growth

Increased capacity to supply goods and services, requires increased production and consumption, requires more consumers

Economic development

Improvement of living standards

Neoclassical economists

View the earths natural capital as part of a human economic system

Ecological economists

View human economic systems as subsystems of the biosphere, and believe that conventional economic growth will become unsustainable

Discount rate

Estimate of a resources future economic value compared to its present value

Market price

Does not include indirect, external, or hidden costs

Full-cost pricing

Includes estimated costs of harmful environmental and health effects of production

Perverse subsidies

Lead to environmental damage and should be phased out

Gross domestic product (GDP)

Annual market value of all goods and services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic, operating within a country

Per capita GDP

Annual gross domestic product (GDP) of a country divided by its total population at midyear

Genuine progress indicator (GPI)

GDP plus the estimated value of beneficial transactions that meet basic needs, but in which no money changes hands, minus the estimated harmful environmental, health, and social costs of all transactions

Green taxes

So that harmful products and services are at the true cost

Greenwashing

Deceptive practice and spin of environmentally harmful products as green

Environmental regulation

Control pollution and reduce environmental degradation

Poverty

People cannot meet basic needs

Developed countries

spend 0.7% of the national budget toward these goals