HIstorical perspective and environmental cost-benefit analysis

Abstract

This article is concerned with the analytical as well as political strengths and weaknesses of the application of cost-benefit techniques in cases of environmentally sensitive projects, and highlights the historical perspective against which the rapid development of the modern age can be evaluated. When environmental conflict is considered in its historical/futurological dimension, a more deterministic point of view becomes acceptable. This point of view entails the notion that micro-environmental decision makers are compromised by macro-environmental parameters-both technological change and economic and demographic momentum-over which they have no control. Environmental policy, therefore, appears to call for macroenvironmental direction. In the absence of such direction, cost-benefit economists may find themselves forced to provide the right solutions for the wrong problems, with perhaps disconcerting prospects for the long-run future of the man-nature relationship.