By pure coincidence, I am the Founding President and Grand Poobah of the newly established National Center for the Valuation of Natural Capital at THE(tm) Ohio State University*

Thirty years ago, I proposed a dissertation topic to establish a set of national income accounts for Green National Income. It was rejected as too grand (and honestly, I had no idea what I was talking about at the time). Fast forward to news out of Davos yesterday:

President Joe Biden’s administration will launch an effort to more accurately count the nation’s natural resources in official economic statistics, saying the data are needed to give a true picture of US output.

This is the next big step in the evolution of the field environmental valuation, and a potential boon for recruiting PhD students to Universities that specialize in valuation (ahem).

*Not true, but I often (once?) tell people that TOSU has the largest collection of experts in environmental valuation at any University. I have no idea if that is true, but I’ve yet to be proven wrong.