The problem that environmental economics aims to remedy is the following: people making economic decisions cannot rea...

BenMingov on May 7, 2020

Hi @Chris11, thanks for the question.

This is a very strange question that is asking us to determine the level of support the conclusion has.

The argument is basically saying that environmental economics has set out as its aim to help people make economic decisions while comparing environmental factors with other costs. The issue with this is that people can't do this. So their solution is to assign monetary values to environmental factors to aid in this endeavour. But this is another issue because, assigning monetary values to environmental factors requires them to compare costs and benefits in order to arrive at economic decisions.

With the added assumption in answer choice A, that without people making economic decisions based upon environmental factors, monetary values cannot be assigned, this argument is strongly supported.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions or would like me to elaborate further.

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on May 28, 2020

Could someone please break down the argument into premise and conclusion? I am still lost. Thanks

Emil-Kunkin on August 12 at 08:06PM

The argument is that since economics requires monetary values, and to assign monetary values people must be able to compare costs and benefits of various things, which is not possible for environmental factors. Thus, environmental economics has a core problem, it is impossible to assign values, which is at the heart of economics.