The Environmental Deficit: Applying Lessons from the Economic Recession

This Article explores three principal contributing factors and the lessons associated with each that make up this pathology of the economic crisis. The powerful lessons from this pathology apply with equal force to the growing environmental deficit, which this Article defines as the unsustainable spending-down of natural resource assets. This Article argues that the environment could benefit from a dose of the same medicine that has been suggested for the economy: enforcing rules through re-regulation, abandoning inaccurate models of cost-benefit analysis that trivialize risks, and limiting consumption to sustainable levels.