Environmental Resources and Economics

Identification

• The link between environmental resources and economics is an intimate one. Natural resources are used to create products purchased by consumers around the world. When humans create such products, they deplete resources and dump waste byproducts into the environment, which accounts for how pollution gets into the air, water, and land.

Government Intervention

• Government intervention often occurs in order to limit the harm that can come to the environment because of pollutants, which are typically the byproducts of commercial enterprises. By placing regulations, taxes, and penalties on polluters, government at the state and federal levels has its hands in both economic development and the preservation of environmental resources.

Values

• The economic free market allocates the value of environmental resources based on supply and demand, which is determined by factors such as scarcity, consumer tastes and trends, taxes, and prices of like goods. Humans also place more intangible value on wilderness and wildlife, and the two sets of values can often come into conflict, one example being efforts to initiate oil drilling in the federally protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). So far, ANWR remains undeveloped.