Making the Environment Count: Hearings Before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, September 16 and October 9, 1991 |
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accounting approaches accounting framework accounting system adjustments agricultural air pollution assessment assets billion capital changes column CONGRESS THE LIBRARY consumption Costa Rica costs degradation DELAND depreciation developing countries economic accounts economic activity economists efforts emissions energy environment environmental accounting environmental and natural environmental damage environmental protection environmental quality environmental statistics estimates example expenditures forest functions global greenhouse gas gross Hueting included increase Index of Sustainable indicators industrialized inputs investment IPCC ISEW land LIBRARY OF CONGRESS loss measure monitoring national accounts national income natural environment natural resource accounting Norway Norwegian output percent Peskin physical accounts policymakers Pollution Abatement problem production resource and environmental resource depletion satellite accounts sector SENATOR GORE soil Statistical Office stocks and flows subtracted survey Sustainable Economic Welfare tion trends United Nations UNSO World Bank
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Page 73 - Commission defined sustainable development as that which "meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
Page 13 - It shall be the duty and function of the Council (1) to assist and advise the President in the preparation of the Environmental Quality Report required by section 201 ; (2) to gather timely and authoritative information concerning the conditions and trends in the quality of the environment...
Page 131 - It is the clear duty of Government, which is the trustee for unborn generations as well as for its present citizens, to watch over, and, if need be, by legislative enactment, to defend, the exhaustible natural resources of the country from 1 Cf. my A Study in Public Finance, Part II. ch. x. rash and reckless spoliation.
Page 131 - But there is wide agreement that the State should protect the interests of the future in some degree against the effects of our irrational discounting and of our preference for ourselves over our descendants. The whole movement for "conservation" in the United States is based on this conviction.
Page 78 - The World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Page 105 - Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
Page 60 - Every major indicator shows a deterioration in natural systems: forests are shrinking, deserts are expanding, croplands are losing topsoil, the stratospheric ozone layer continues to thin, greenhouse gases are accumulating, the number of plant and animal species is diminishing, air pollution has reached health-threatening levels in hundreds of cities, and damage from acid rain can be seen on every continent.
Page 13 - ... (6) to document and define changes in the natural environment, including the plant and animal systems, and to accumulate necessary data and other information for a continuing analysis of these changes or trends and an interpretation of their underlying causes : (7) to report at least once each year to the President on the state and condition of the environment ; and...
Page 77 - Institute estimate based on Gregg Marland et al., Estimates of CO2 Emissions from Fossil Fuel Burning and Cement Manufacturing, Based on the United Nations Energy Statistics and the US Bureau of Mines Cement Manufacturing Data (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1989...
Page 58 - Day, in 1970, the world lost nearly 200 million hectares of tree cover, an area roughly the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River. Deserts expanded by some 120 million hectares, claiming more land than is currently planted to crops in China. Thousands of plant and animal species with which we shared the planet in 1970 no longer exist. Over two decades, some 1.6 billion people were added to the world's population — more than inhabited the planet in 1900.