ABSTRACT
It has always been known that human economic activity affects the natural world. But until recently it has been the habit of economists to regard this as an ‘external’ phenomenon and not, strictly speaking, something with which economic theory should concern itself. The rise of environmental or ‘ecological’ economics, however, fuelled by increasing concern at both the degree and kind of human impact upon the natural world, signals the fact that many economists no longer regard this attitude as acceptable. Their response has been to look for ways of registering environmental impacts in economic terms. The most favoured way of introducing the natural world into economic thinking to date has involved the proposal to represent nature as capital, and the natural world as a set of marketable commodities. Adverse impacts can thereby be expressed in economic terms as diminutions of capital or decreases in commodities.
