ABSTRACT
This paper is an evaluation of the environmental costs of economic growth in the United States—a complex issue that has appeared rather suddenly on the horizon of public affairs and therefore suffers somewhat from a high ratio of concern to fact. In addition, the issue is one that happens not to coincide with the domain of any established academic discipline. For, until rather recently, environmental costs have been so far removed from the concerns of orthodox economics as to have been nearly banished from that realm under the term “externalities.” And for its part, the discipline of ecology has also until very recently maintained a position of lofty disdain for such mundane matters as the price of ecological purity.
