Unit 0 - Chapter 18

Neoclassical economists: assume the potential for economic growth is essentially unlimited. They also assume economic growth is necessary to provide profits for businesses and jobs for workers. 

Ecological economists: point out that there are no substitutes for many vital natural resources. They see no substitutes for crucial ecosystem services. 

Environmental economists: favor adjusting existing economic policies and tools to be more environmentally beneficial over inventing new policies and tools.  

Environmentally sustainable economic development: uses political and economic systems to encourage environmentally beneficial and more sustainable forms of economic growth. 

Economics: The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Human Capital: the physical and mental talents of people who provide labor, organizational and management skills, and innovation.

Manufactured capital: the machinery, materials, and factories that people create using natural resources.

Economic development: Any set of efforts focused on creating economies that serve to improve human well-being by meeting basic human needs. 

 Full cost pricing: Economists and environmental experts call for including external costs of harm to the environment and human health in the market prices of goods.

Perverse subsidies: Environmental subsidies that end up causing harm to people or the environment.

Politics: The process by which people try to influence or control the policies and actions of the governments at local, state, national, and international levels.

Environmental policy:  Includes the enviro and environmental laws, regulations, and programs designed, implemented, and enforced by one or more government agencies. 

Lobby: An individual or group contacts legislators in person or hires lobbyists to do so, in order to persuade legislators to vote or act in their favor.

Environmental justice: The ideal whereby every person is entitled to protection from environmental hazards regardless of race, gender, age, national origin, income, or social class.

Environmental literacy:  The ability to understand and apply environmental knowledge and skills to make informed decisions that support the environment and society. 

Human centered worldviews: Focus primarily on the needs and wants of people.

Planetary management worldview: Sees humans as the planet's most important species. Believes that human species can and should dominate and manage Earth.

Stewardship worldview: Assumes people have an ethical responsibility to be responsible managers, or stewards of Earth, when people use Earth and future generations. 

Life centered worldviews: All forms of life have values as participating members of the biosphere, regardless of their potential or actual use to humans. 

Earth-centered worldviews: Humans are part of, not apart from, Earth, and are utterly dependent on Earth's natural capital.