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Summary: Environmental economics is the study of how the environment impacts the economy, because traditional economics doesn't account for externalities. Discover how environmental economics tries to incorporate externalities into assessing total economic impacts with help from an online campaign manager in this free video on environmental economics.
Bill Scher is a professional political blogger and one of the six original bloggers to have famously met with Bill Clinton at his Harlem office. He works for several Washington DC...read more
"What is environmental economics? Environmental economics is the study of how the environment impacts the economy because traditional economics does not account...doesn't automatically account for what are known as externalities. An externality is an impact of an economic transaction that does not impact the internal parties of that transaction. For example, a coal plant puts carbon into the atmosphere. It impacts the public by creating global warming and distorting our climate, which has costs to the public, but it does not directly impact the coal plant itself. And economics, generally speaking, does not account for those externalities. Environmental economics tries to incorporate those externalities into assessing total economic impacts and it helps to prevent market failure. Market failure is when the market does not account for such severe problems."
eHow Article: What Is Environmental Economics?