Lecture: Can We Afford the Future? Transformations: Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing

Frank Ackerman, senior research fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, will speak on how economists put a dollar value on intangible risks and rewards in "Turning Nature Into a Number: The Promise and Perils of the Economics of the Environment" Thursday, February 9, at 7 p.m. in St. Olaf's Buntrock Commons, Viking Theatre.

A critic of the unbridled use of benefit-cost analysis as a means of setting environmental goals, Ackerman is the author of Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, which presents the "transformation" that occurs when environmental assets such as clean air and water, or even human life are reduced to monetary values for the purposes of the seemingly objective exercise of benefit-cost analysis. Ackerman argues for replacing benefit-cost analysis with an environmental policy based on informed public debate drawing on moral, philosophical, and societal considerations beyond market-based assessments.