Green Accounting

Al Gore and David Blood write in the Wall Street Journal today:

Our current system for accounting was principally established in the 1930s by Lord Keynes and the creation of “national accounts” (the backbone of today’s gross domestic product). While this system was precise in its ability to account for capital goods, it was imprecise in its ability to account for natural and human resources because it assumed them to be limitless.

They go on to advocate environmental accounting which would favor Gore’s carbon tax from Earth in the Balance. This is good public policy, but rather than showing we are “operating the Earth like it’s a business in liquidation,” a sensible green accounting would show laws have curbed the dirtiest polluters, disease has subsided, pesticides and herbicides have fewer side effects, beautification campaigns have made our cities prettier and our parks more accessible, and our toxic sites have been cleaned up. In short, the Earth is now the best place to live it has ever been. Before the industrial revolution there was very dirty heating and lighting fuel, poor water sanitation, air filled with animal and human waste smells, poor food sanitation, poor isolation of pathogens, poor measurement and science of environmental hazards and few resources for transportation to or improvements of parks.

Taxing petroleum and especially coal when energy prices are on an uptick is politically tone deaf. A subsidy for carbon offsets might play OK. These would harvest additional greening without the heavy hand of central planning. But if they are written right, they might cheer the glad capitalists more than the sullen environmentalists.

I do think that it is wise for space enthusiasts to support green accounting–without it, it is unlikely that space solar or He-3 will ever be economically viable (which is not to say that they will be with it).