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The color of money--is it green enough?

By Mannix, Brian
Publication: Regulation
Date: Saturday, January 1 2000

NATURE'S NUMBERS: Expanding the National Economic Accounts to Include the Environment

by William D. Nordhaus and Edward C. Kokkelenberg (editors) 262 pp. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999

Last year, the National Academy of Science's National Research Council (NRC) published

Nature's Numbers, a review of socalled green accounting methods for the National Income and Product Accounts. This book-length study is the report of NRC'S Panel on Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting. It endorses ongoing efforts, both in the United States and abroad, to supplement the standard measures of economic activity with measures of environmental health, services, and inventories. The annual gross domestic product (GDP) would be adjusted downward, for example, to account for the depletion of oil reservoirs, the cutting of forests, or the pollution of lakes. It would be adjusted upward to account for the creation of wetlands, the reduction in smog, or the recovery of bald eagles.

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