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Here is a list of the terms and definitions on each card.

Card 1:
Term: What is free-market environmentalism?
Definition: A fundamental theorem of welfare economics holds that under conditions of perfect competition the free market will maximize participant's welfare. Free-market environmentalism holds that we can correct market failures by expanding the domain of transferable property rights and thus perfecting the market.
Card 2:
Term: What is the tragedy of the commons?
Definition: One source of market imperfection is open-access resources. Where private ownership is not well-defined, self-interested behaviour by each individual will lead to the spoiling of the resource. In the tragedy of the commons, each farmer has an incentive to graze additional sheep beyond the carrying capacity of the common pasture because she gets a net benefit from each extra sheep and is able to externalize most of the costs of the extra sheep onto the other farmers.
Card 3:
Term: Should we privatize to prevent the tragedy of the commons?
Definition: Privatizing the commons is one way to prevent tragedy, but it may not be a fair and just way. Nor is privatization the only way to govern the commons.
Card 4:
Term: Why is pollution an external cost or negative externality?
Definition: A polluting individual does not pay all the environmental costs that the individual causes. The costs caused by an individual's actions, but passed on to others, are external costs. External costs may fall on other market participants, on distant people, on future generations, and on animals, plants, and ecosystems.
Card 5:
Term: How does the Coase Theorem work?
Definition: Ronald Coase argued that if there are well-defined, saleable property rights in environmental situations, then parties can always negotiate solutions to external cost situations that maximize net social benefits, provided transactions costs are negligible. If property rights are not saleable, then the parties cannot do this. The parties can achieve a socially efficient outcome regardless of whether one party initially owns the right to emit pollutants or another initially owns the right not to suffer from pollution.
Card 6:
Term: Why does the Coase Theorem often not apply?
Definition: The Coase approach does not work well when many parties must negotiate, when pollution is not point source, when pollution accumulates, when pollution crosses international boundaries, or when future generations are involved.
Card 7:
Term: Why is the socially optimal level of pollution not zero?
Definition: Because economic utilitarians take into account both the costs of pollution and the benefits of the productive activity that caused it, they do not believe that the best level of pollution is zero. The socially optimal level of pollution is the level where the marginal cost caused by an increment of pollution equals the marginal benefit of the additional goods produced by the activity that caused the increment of pollution.
Card 8:
Term: What are some ethical criticisms of the socially optimal level of pollution?
Definition: Other ethical approaches hold that the morally right level of pollution should be as close to zero as we can reasonably achieve. The concept of a socially optimal level of pollution is narrowly anthropocentric. It ethically neglects distant people, future people, and the non-human world. It permits violations of the right not to be harmed by other people's pollution, endangers the healthy flourishing of the planet. It encourages selfish, greedy behavior, and will result in higher levels of pollution than fully informed citizens would negotiate.


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