Environmental Economics essays

Environmental Economics essays In this essay I am going to discuss some extremely important and controversial topics to the study of environmental economics. Among the topics are wildlife preservation, the global warming debate, asteroids, dumping v.s. recycling, the decreasing numbers of fish, and mutually destructive plants. In July of 1991 a naturalist by the name of Jim Tolisano and 14 others went on an expedition in order to prove that grizzly bears still inhabit the state of Colorado. The discovery of a bear or any other evidence of their inhabitance would result in a ban of hunting and a study of the bears conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If a shortage was found, then additional bears might have to be added from Montana or Alaska to supplement the population. Many sectors of industry would be altered if the grizzly were to be found. Logging operations would be shut down due to the possible threat to the bears habitat. This would mean thousands of acres of land would be free of logging. The tourism industry might also take a staggering blow if the proposed East Fork Ski Area near Pagosa Springs, a potentially lucrative resort, is unable to open because of these ongoing studies. Many loggers and sawmill workers are worried about their future prospects of employment if these va st amounts of forest are designated as critical habitat. Some experts have predicted that if this were to happen, the logging industry would lose billions of board feet of timber annually. This, in turn, would cost the industry as many as one hundred thousand jobs. Some economists, like Michael Copeland, executive director of the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, believe that some protected species serve no economic or practical application for mankind. Spoken like a true economist, Copeland says that if it doesnt have market value then why protect it? Billions of dollars have been spent to preserve species such as the Ha...