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  1. Risk assessment provides an orderly, clearly stated, and consistent way to deal with scientific issues when evaluating whether a hazard exists and what the magnitude of the hazard may be. It includes the probability of risk, the consequences of risk, and the economics of risk.


  2. A cost-benefit analysis includes identification of the project to be evaluated, determination of favorable and unfavorable impacts, determination of the values of those impacts, and calculation of the net benefit.


  3. Criticism of the cost-benefit analysis is based on the question of whether everything has an economic value. If economic thinking dominates society, then even noneconomic values, like beauty, can survive only if a monetary value is assigned to them.


  4. Sustainable development is criticized as being ambiguous and open to a wide range of interpretations. There is confusion between the terms sustainable growth, sustainable use, and sustainable development. In addition, since it requires a balance between economic requirements and ecological concerns worldwide, some believe that the world should not impose environmental protection standards upon poorer nations without also helping them move into the economic mainstream.


  5. External costs are costs not borne by the entity the causes the problem. Pollution of air and water are often external costs since the people who cause the problem do not pay to clean it up. Erosion damage by improper logging and abandoned waste sites are other examples.


  6. Pollution-prevention costs are those incurred either in the private sector or by government to prevent the pollution that would otherwise result from some production or consumption activity.


  7. Common-property resource development generally leads to overexploitation and misuse because effectively no one owns the resource. Common ownership of air makes it virtually costless for any industry or individual to dispose of wastes by burning them. There is also a lack of enforceable property rights to commonly owned resources.


  8. In 1987, Conservation International, bought $650,000 of Bolivia’s foreign debt in exchange for Bolivia’s promise to establish a national park.


  9. Subsidiesmay include consumer rebates for purchases of environmentally friendly goods, loans for businesses planning to implement environmental products, and other monetary incentives designed to reduce the costs of improving environmental performance. The cost of government management of federal forests is a subsidy to the forest products industry. Market-based instrumentsinclude: Information programs provide consumers with information about the environmental consequences of purchasing decisions, Tradable emissions permits, Emission fees and taxes, Deposit-refund programs, and Performance bonds Life cycle analysisis the process of assessing the environmental effects associated with the production, use, re-use, and disposal of a product over its entire useful life. It includes assigning dollar costs to such items as: pollution, disposal, energy costs and useful length of life.


  10. People generally willingly accept risks with which they are familiar and which they encounter daily, such as: the risks associated with automobile travel and the risk associated with alcohol use.


  11. Renewable: wildlife, soil, forests, freshwater, etc. Nonrenewable: iron ore, oil, coal, land, mountains,etc.


  12. The economic cost of environmental degradation is often not included as a factor in economic analysis used to justify a project or action. However, the costs become obvious with the passage of time. For example, cutting the trees on a hillside often leads to increased erosion, which affects down-slopeenvironments.







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