The Natural Wealth of Nations: Harnessing the Market for the Environment (Worldwatch Environmental Alert) - Softcover

Roodman, David Malin; The Worldwatch Institute

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393318524 ISBN 13: 9780393318524

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998

Synopsis

The Natural Wealth of Nations offers concrete solutions to environmental problems by showing how we can turn the tremendous power of market economics away from environmentally destructive activities and toward protecting natural wealth and human health.

Looking for some concrete proposals about how to clean up the world's environmental problems? In The Natural Wealth of Nations, David Roodman argues that a critical but often overlooked source of solutions lies in the prosaic world of government subsidies and fiscal policy. If governments overhaul how they raise and spend money, they can use the market to protect the environment without hurting economic growth. For starters, why are the world's governments spending over $700 billion a year to subsidize activities that harm the environment, from logging to mining to driving? Roodman shows how cutting these wasteful subsidies can boost the economy, save tax dollars, and help the environment. But governments can do more. Hidden subsidies are only one of several reasons that consumers get misleading signals from the marketplace about the true environmental costs of their activities. Roodman proposes raising taxes on harmful activities like air pollution while cutting taxes on payrolls and profits. This tax shift would discourage pollution and encourage work and investment. The creation of tradable pollution credits is another way to use the market to include environmental costs. These proposals are not far-fetched, having already been tested in the United States and overseas. In a global survey, Roodman provides examples from Sweden to Spain to Malaysia of the growing number of countries that are successfully using these market-based approaches to clean up their environments.

About this title

About the Author:

David Malin Roodmanwas a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development where he worked from 2002-2013 with a focus on microfinance, debt relief, and aid effectiveness. He is the author of Due Diligence and the Microfinance Open Book Blog.

The Worldwatch Institute is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit research and publishing organization dedicated to fostering the evolution of an environmentally sustainable society.

From Booklist:

Roodman is a senior researcher for the Worldwatch Institute, the environmental organization that annually issues the State of the World "report on progress toward a sustainable society." Worldwatch also sponsors the Environmental Alert series, of which this is the ninth title. Whereas conservatives often complain about excessive government regulation to protect the environment, Roodman looks at the other side of the coin. He argues that government subsidies in the form of giveaways of public land and resources, cash handouts and tax breaks, and infrastructure improvements encourage activities such as driving, mining, and logging that are harmful to the environment. He offers specific and detailed proposals that rely on "market forces" rather than on regulation to help combat pollution and other environmentally harmful activities. Roodman calls for polluters to be taxed and for incentives to be provided for nonpolluters, and he gives examples from other countries and various states where those ideas have been successful. David Rouse

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0393318524
• ISBN 13: 9780393318524
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308
• Editor: Starke Linda