Social Costs of Energy Present Status and Future Trends
Although present day politics seems to be preoccupied with questions of economic growth and full employment, the basic environmental problems stemming from the interactions of the economic sphere with global, regional and local environments persist and wi
- PDF / 50,757,581 Bytes
- 432 Pages / 481.87 x 685.962 pts Page_size
- 19 Downloads / 198 Views
Olav Hohmeyer Richard L. Ottinger (Eds.)
Social Costs of Energy Present Status and Future Trends
Proceedings of an International Conference, Held at Racine, Wisconsin, September 8-11, 1992
With 57 Figures
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest
Dr. Olav Hohmeyer ZEW, Zentrum fUr Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH Postfach 103443 D-68034 Mannheim, FRG Prof. Dr. Richard L. Ottinger Pace University School of Law Center for Environmental Legal Studies 78 Broadway White Plains, N. Y., USA
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-85122-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-85120-9 DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-85120-9 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights oftranslation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is only permitted under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9,1965, in its version of June 24, 1985, and a copyright fee must always be paid. Violations fall under the prosecution act of the German Copyright Law. © Springer-Verlag Berlin· Heidelberg 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 15t edition 1994 The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
4212202-543210 - Printed on acid-free paper
Preface
Although present day politics seems to be preoccupied with questions of economic growth and full employment, the basic environmental problems stemming from the interactions of the economic sphere with global, regional and local environments persist and will have an even greater impact in the future. If economy and ecology are not reconciled in the years to come, mankind will not have a sustainable future on Earth. The typical negation of environmental problems in times of economic crisis is partially due to the fact that environmental and health damages of economic activities are neither priced nor included in our market price system. This allows politicians to focus their attention on insufficient economic indicators which do not reflect the actual development of the welfare of society. If economic lead indicators like GDP or balance of trade figures were better integrated with information on the environmental and health costs caused by the seemingly beneficial economic development, politicians might have better guidance as to what policy choices would benefit society most. Recent attempts to identify, quantify, monetize and internalise such cost elements, referred to as external or social costs, can be seen as the first step towards translating the environmental and health impacts of economic activities into monetary units to make them more compatible with the prevailing, flawed economic indicators. Even though such monetized figures will never
