The Regulatory Approach

• Government established regulatory standarts

• The consensus was emerged was that society had two opportunities :
1. As consument
2. As citizens
This approach will prove inadequate over the
long term?

Underestimate :
1. The influences that business can have in establishing the law
2. The ability of business to influence consumer choice

From Enviromental standpoint :

The economic growth is environmentally and ethically benign

1. the nature of economic transactions in terms of a
flow of resources from businesses to households
and back again.
2. First, it does not differentiate natural resources
from the other factors of production and does not
explain the origin of resources.
3. this model treats economic growth as both the
solution to all social ills and also as boundless.
4. this growth-based model will be inadequate
because only source for all this economic activity
is productive capacity of the earth itself.
1. model recognizes that the economy exists within a
finite biosphere that encompasses a band around
the earth that is little more than a few miles wide.
❑ First law of thermodynamics
the conservation of matter/energy
2. Energy is lost at every stage of economic activity.
❑ Second law of thermodynamics
Entropy increased within a closed system
3. this model no longer treats natural resources
as an undifferentiated and unexplained factor
of production emerging from households.
4. it recognizes that wastes are produced at each stage Over the long term, resources and energy
of economic activity and these wastes are dumped
back into the biosphere. cannot be used, nor waste produced, at
rates at which the biosphere cannot replace
or absorb them without jeopardizing its
ability to sustain (human) life.