ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
This economic concept weighs the positives of a policy against its negatives to determine if it should be implemented.
What is cost-benefit analysis?
This policy instrument involves taxing certain behaviors to act as a deterrent.
What are penalties?
This broad concept encompasses fairness in the distribution of benefits and burdens across society.
What is social justice?
This is an example of a commons.
What is a Pasture, sea, lake, etc.
This extraction method for natural gas involves injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure underground to crack rock and allow previously trapped oil and gas to escape.
What is fracking (or hydraulic fracturing)?
This term describes achieving the maximum benefit based on available information, or which policy offers the greatest difference between costs and benefits
What is efficiency?
This policy instrument involves privatizing the resource so it does not get overused.
What are property rights?
This term describes institutionalized discrimination against ethnic minority groups that creates disproportional environmental burdens for these communities.
What is environmental racism?
This type of good is excludable, but nonrival (think wi-fi).
What are club goods?
This 1974 federal law establishes standards for drinking water quality and requires public water systems to meet health-based standards.
What is the Safe Drinking Water Act?
Why cost-benefit analyses might be complicated in environmental policies.
What is the uncertainty?
These are financial incentives given to encourage certain behavior
What are subsidies?
This California lake, created by engineering mistakes in the early 1900s, represents ongoing environmental justice and policy challenges in a predominantly Latino community.
What is the Salton Sea?
This type of good is nonexcludable and nonrival.
What are public goods?
This environmental problem occurs when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides mix with water in the atmosphere, damaging forests and aquatic ecosystems.
What is acid rain?
This economic problem occurs when individuals benefit from a public good without contributing to its cost, often leading to underprovision of environmental protection.
What is the free rider problem?
These tradeable permits allow fishermen to catch a specific quantity of fish and can be bought or sold to create economic incentives for conservation.
What are Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs)?
This political philosopher developed the theory of justice behind the "veil of ignorance," arguing that fair policies should be designed without knowing one's position in society.
Who is John Rawls?
Clearly defined boundaries, congruence, and monitoring are examples of what?
Ostrom's Design Principles
This characteristic of environmental policy describes how authority is divided among multiple agencies and levels of government, sometimes hindering coordinated action.
What is fragmented authority?
This is used in cost-benefit analysis to convert future environmental costs and benefits into present-day values.
What is the discount rate?
What are market-based approaches?
These are the different ways people think about the worth and importance of the natural world, ranging from instrumental to intrinsic perspectives.
What are environmental values?
This is one of the flawed assumptions that Elinor Ostrom identified in Hardin's theory (just need one)
What is:
Phenomena like oil spills or chemical disasters, that can suddenly shift public attention and create windows of opportunity for policy change.
What are focusing events?