GEOG 216 Lecture Notes - Northern Canada, Commodification, Economic Equilibrium
5 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
Usually, natural resources are given prices and externalities are given a cost. Geographers are used to dealing with the human-natural context. Environment: all external conditions, abiotic and biotic that affect an organism or group of organisms. Natural realm as distinct, measurable and quantifiable (a commodity: gold rock into jewelry. Seek equilibrium price in markets through supply and demand. Problem (criticisms: monopolies setting prices, subsidies can be added, taxes can be added, environmental taxes, regulation. Damage rarely incorporated into the price of the commodity. Techniques of this approach are severely limited qualitative issues. Costing environmental degradation involves viewing nature as an object: part of the problem. Nature: a provider of inputs to an economy, a receiver of outputs (waste and pollution) Resources are socially created: demand for a substance leads to a commodity with an assigned value. The environment is not socially created, but resources are: people are indirectly responsible for the environment, we control and manage resources though.
