Environmental Economics lecture 2

Environmental economics:
 Environmental economics examines the waste products or residuals from
production and consumption and how to reduce or mitigate the flow of residuals
so they have less damage on the natural environment and depletion of natural
capital.
Economy:
 The economy is a collection of technological, legal, and social arrangements
through which individuals in society seek to increase their material and spiritual
well-being.
 The two elementary economic functions pursued by society are production and
distribution.
Production:
 Production refers to all those activities that determine the quantities of goods and
services that are produced and the technological and managerial means by which
this production is carried out.
Distribution:
 Distribution refers to the way in which goods and services are divided up, or
distributed, among the individuals and groups that make up society.
Consumption:
 Distribution puts goods and services in the hands of individuals, households, and
organizations; the final utilization of these goods and services is termed
consumption
Residuals:
 Production and consumption activities also produce leftover waste products,
called “residuals,”
Ambient quality:
 Ambient refers to the surrounding environment, so ambient quality refers to the
quantity of pollutants in the environment, for example, the concentration of SO2
in the air over a city or the concentration of a particular chemical in the waters of
a lake.
Environmental quality:
  A term used to refer broadly to the state of the natural environment. This
includes the notion of ambient quality and such things as the visual and aesthetic
quality of the environment.
Residuals:
 Material that is left over after something has been produced. A plant, for
example, takes in a variety of raw materials and converts these into some
product.
 Materials and energy left after the product has been produced are production
residuals.
 Consumption residuals are whatever is left over after consumers have finished
using the products that contained or otherwise used these materials.
Emissions:
 The portion of production or consumption residuals that is placed in the
environment, sometimes directly, sometimes after treatment.
Recycling:
 The process of returning some or all of the production or consumption residuals
to be used again in production or consumption.
Pollutant:
 A substance, energy form, or action that, when introduced into the natural
environment, results in a lowering of the ambient quality level. We want to think
of this as including not only the traditional things, such as oil spilled into oceans
or chemicals placed in the air, but also activities, such as certain building
developments, that result in “visual pollution.”
Effluent:
 Sometimes effluent is used to talk about water pollutants, and emissions to refer
to air pollutants, but in this book these two words are used interchangeably.
Pollution:
 Pollution is actually a tricky word to define. Some people might say that pollution
results when any amount, no matter how small, of a residual has been introduced
into the environment. Others hold that pollution is something that happens only
when the ambient quality of the environment has been degraded enough to cause
some damage.
Damages:
  The negative impacts produced by environmental pollution on people in the form
of health effects, visual degradation, and so on, and on elements of the ecosystem
through disruption of ecological linkages, species extinctions, and so forth.
Environmental medium:
 Broad dimensions of the natural world that collectively constitute the
environment, usually classified as land, water, and air.
Source:
 The location at which emissions occur, such as a factory, an automobile, or a
leaking landfill.
Accumulative Pollutants:
 Accumulative pollutants stay in the environment for a long time. New emissions
are added to existing stocks of past emissions.
 Accumulative pollutants are harder to address as one must consider past, present
and future emissions
 Examples include: – Plastics – Radioactive Wastes – GHG •
Non-accumulative pollutants:
 Non-accumulative pollutants are short-lived – they disperse and assimilate
quickly in the environment.
 Examples include: – Noise
Local pollutants
 Local pollutants only affect one small area. The pollution is usually produced in a
specific area and the impact of the pollution does not travel to other areas. They
are generally easier to identify and deal with because both the polluter and those
affected are in one localized area.
 Examples include: – Noise – Land degradation – Ground Level Ozone (Smog)
Regional and Global pollutants
 Regional and Global pollutants can travel long distances from their source. They
are typically longer lived pollutants that can travel in the atmosphere or water.
 Examples include: – Acid rain – GHG
Point source pollutants
 Point source pollutants come from one or a few specific sources. It is possible to
identify the source of the pollution.
 Point source pollutants are easier to address as it is possible to identify and
monitor the source of the pollution.
  Examples include: – Power plant emissions – Pollutants from a major industrial
facility
Non-point source pollutants:
 Non-point source pollutants do not have a clearly identified source, or the
sources are so numerous it is hard to tell which exact emitter produced the
pollution.
 Examples include: – GHG – Stormwater run off from roadways – Nitrogen run
off in waterways
Continuous pollutants:
 Continuous pollutants involve a steady production of pollution. For example,
your car will produce pollution from the moment it is turned on.
 Continuous pollutants are easier to address they can be more easily measured
and monitored, and pollution control technology can be installed.
 Examples include: – Car emissions – Power plant emissions – Wastewater
emissions
Episodic pollutants:
 Episodic pollutants only happen occasionally. They may happen rarely. The issue
is to manage them to reduce the risk that an episode of pollution will occur. It
may be hard to estimate the likelihood of catastrophic event, or to have the right
supplies and equipment in place to deal with a situation that has not occurred
before or only happens occasionally.
 Examples include: – Oil tanker spill – Oil well blow out – Pipeline rupture –
Chemical spill

 Depending on whether a pollutant accumulates over time, it is categorized as

a cumulative or non-cumulative pollutant.
o For example, noise is a non-cumulative pollution.
o Nondegradable wastes, such as radioactive wastes and plastics, are
cumulative pollutants; they may bring inter-temporal problems.
 Noise is a local pollution, but acid rain is a regional pollution, whereas
greenhouse effect is a global pollution.
 Emissions from power plants are continuous, but oil spills and Chernobyl nuclear
disaster are episodic emissions
 Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
 Sulfur oxides (SOx)
 Particulate matter (PM)
 Ground level ozone (O3)
 Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)