Environmental_Economics

Environmental Economics The first subject that comes up in Environmental Economics is private versus social costs. Private costs means costs are borne exclusively by the ones who incur them. Social costs means the full costs borne by a society whenever a resource use occurs. They can be measured by adding private costs to external costs. Some economic participants don’t pay the full social costs of their actions but only the smaller, private costs. Their actions are considered “socially unacceptable.” In the situations where there is divergence between social and private costs, we see too much steel production, automobile driving, beach littering and many more examples. When private and social costs differ, it is called an externality because the individual decision-makers are not paying all the costs. One method for correcting this problem is by making the decision-makers aware of their situation. For example, in the event of automobile pollution, taxes could be placed according to the amount of pollution they cause. But is it appropriate to place a tax on the amount of physical quantities of pollution one causes' A better choice in some situations might be to measure the amount pollution, costs, private, resources, property, rights, social, amount, air, resource, recycling, people, one, much, because, water, situations, scarce, problem, often, means, don’t, defined, being, agreements, without, unit, species, save, respect, quantity, price, place, physical, paper