HL.b.2—Environmental economics

Environmental economics applies economic reasoning to environmental scarcity, external costs and policy choices, but conclusions depend partly on environmental value perspectives.

Perspective tendency	Typical economic emphasis	Main caution
Technocentric	innovation, efficiency, pricing and substitution can manage scarcity	prices and technology may not respect hard ecological limits
Ecocentric	restrain throughput and protect intrinsic value and ecosystem integrity	monetary incentives may be treated cautiously or rejected as incomplete

A carbon price may make climate damage visible in a fuel choice, while an ecocentric evaluation may also set a non-negotiable habitat or emissions limit.

Using prices does not prove nature is only monetary, and valuing intrinsic nature does not remove allocation trade-offs.