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Originally Posted by alansmithee
The problem is that you can't quantify other costs associated pollution but a business can quantify the cost of reducing pollution. There might be benefits, but from a business perspective it's a risk. Also, this is a big problem with political science-the business doesn't absorb all the costs of pollution, but would absorb all the costs of preventing it. There is no incentive for them to reduce it.
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There's the rub... as long as we continue to use GDP as an indicator of the economic health of nations we will be behind the proverbial 8 ball...
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GDP, Gross Domestic Product, is the one of the most widely used indicators of the national economy. GDP is the annual aggregate production of all goods and services in a country. One problem with GDP is that it does not necessarily indicate the economic well-being of a country since activities that are detrimental to the long-term economy (like deforestation, strip mining, over-fishing, murders, terrorism) increase today's GDP. Therefore environmental degradation is rarely accounted for in GDP calculations. For example, the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill showed up as a net economic gain in the US because of the expenditures associated with the clean-up effort. These expenditures outweighed the eleven million gallons of oil spilled into Alaskan waters.
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We need a new indicator folks...