Kayla Brock
November 20, 2016
American Public University
Course Summary There was much to learn in this course and I enjoyed taking it. This class covered many things and focused on many of the intricacies involved in environmental economics. I now have a better understanding of willingness to pay (WTP), cost-benefit analysis, pluralistic values, managing renewable resources, and comparing the prisoner 's dilemma to environmental issues. I think the material I liked reading and learning the most about was Solow 's position on environmental sustainability. It gave me a different perspective to think about mainly how hard it is to plan so far into the future when concerning environmental sustainability, what …show more content…
His view on environmental sustainability is one that takes a societal approach to environmental sustainability, one that benefits the society of mankind more than it does the environment (Solow, 1993). Solow says that sustainability itself is a concept that is vague and is a general guide of policies that govern resource use, investment, and conservation (Solow, 1993). There are more ways that the United States can gain more economic sustainability by keeping track of the rents on the non-renewable resources that the United States uses, this way we would know how much income is gained compared to the use of non-renewable resources (Solow, …show more content…
Solow addressed the problems with sustainability accurately and in doing so gave others ideas on how to address those problems; in my degree program which is concentrated in environmental sustainability I can address the issues that Solow brought to light such as, using up non-renewable resources and replacing it with another (Solow, 1993. My focus is to sustain the environment and while there may not be implications that are known to using up those resources there may be further in the future that we cannot predict. I like working in the concept of having our cake and eating it to, we can have energy that is sustainable and renewable all the while protecting the environment and using the resources in a conserving way. We can also have a economy that is sustainable while protecting the environment and conserving