This book considers the possibility of adjusting traditional economic measures of income and welfare to account for natural resource extraction and environmental degradation.It presents and reviews the limitations of an operational method for measuring income from resource extraction in both open and closed economies. In addressing closed economies, the discussion centres on the relationship between income and global sustainability. The book also considers the measurement of social welfare in relation to environmental issues and resource extraction, especially changes over time and comparison between countries. Theoretical material is complemented by case studies on petroleum extraction in Norway and soil degradation in Tanzania, to which the pragmatic methods are applied. The author challenges the view that environmental degradation is best included in welfare measurement and argues that many of the proposals for adjusted welfare measurements are better interpreted as adjustments of national income. Economic Growth and the Environment will be indispensable to environmental accountants, environmental organizations interested in green accounting and students studying sustainability issues.

In Nordic literature a remarkable discussion of the northern light appears in Kongespeilet (The King's Mirror) a thirteenth-century Norwegian chronicle. It is described in vivid detail as the following translated excerpts demonstrate: These northern lights have this peculiar nature, that the darker the night is, the brighter they seem, and they always appear at night but never by day, most frequently in the densest darkness and rarely by moonlight. In appearance they resemble a vast flame of fire viewed from a great distance. It also looks as if sharp points were shot from this flame up into the sky; these are of uneven height and in constant motion, now one, now another darting highest; and the light appears to blaze like a living flame. Three different theories for the origin of the northern light were suggested in this book. Numerous naturally occurring heavenly phenomena have been observed and enjoyed as long as the Earth has been inhabited, but hardly any of them has stirred man's imagination, curiosity and fear as much as the northern light. The northern light is certainly one of the most spectacular of nature's phenomena.