Welcome back to SE after a well-deserved winter holiday. Contained within the winder vacation are the holidays of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day (in Western countries anyway), New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day (the world over). It is a time to be with family and friends, sitting around the fire, opening presents, eating & drinking, and spending time resting from the long year. It is now 2019, and I have the feeling it will be a very good year; I'm not sure what tells me this but I just have a gut instinct that says: 2019 is it!
When one thinks of the environment, many things come to mind: recycling, water shortages, food waste, atmospheric pollution, to name a few, and the list goes on and on. One doesn't often think of economics when one thinks of the environment, however. But make no mistake about it - the two topics are tightly intertwined. Then environment opens the way for economic activity to take place, such as in paying a fee to get into a wildlife refuge, paying to enjoy a zoo or a bird sanctuary, or our tax money going to upkeep a national park. With the influx of tourists to those places, though, natural things experience wear and tear, break-down, littering, pollution, and other negative effects. One good thing is that economics can be brought in to help combat these problems, too, such as in levying a carbon tax, instituting fines for littering, and administering government sanctions against countries who participate in less-than-positive environmental activities.
We will begin to focus on environmental economics in the next class, where we will read the passage, work on some vocabulary, write some sentences, answer some questions all under the topic of environmental economics. Then we will turn to our design projects as usual. What will our design project be? Can you imagine designing something that combines the environment with economics? Think about it. You will find out soon enough!
