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During this year’s fall Mellby Lecture, Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of the Environmental Studies Department Rebecca Judge will discuss the role of economic analysis — specifically, benefit-cost analysis — in environmental decision-making.

Though Judge describes herself as an “environmental economist who is unapologetically enthusiastic about the powerful insights that are the fruit of economic analysis,” her November 3 talk will aim to show the dangers of allowing environmental policy to be dictated by the simplistic outcomes of benefit-cost analysis.

Her lecture, titled Can Economics Save the Loon? Economics, Love, and the Environment, will be streamed and archived online.

Judge will argue that basing environmental policy on benefit-cost criteria will necessarily lead us to exchange too many irreplaceable environmental assets for replaceable assets whose scarcity and value will only to diminish over time.

“I’m concerned that our national and state environmental policies are increasingly relying on benefit-cost analysis to craft ‘reasonable’ or ‘defensible’ environmental policies, even though such reliance might itself be ‘unreasonable’ and ‘indefensible,'” she says. “I am hoping that people are inspired by this talk to trust the validity of their environmental commitments.”

She will use the loon to illustrate her argument.

“All we know is that loons, or any other irreplaceable environmental asset — by virtue of becoming more scarce — are likely to become more valuable, while whatever we’ve sacrificed them to — fossil-fuel-generated electricity, for example — is likely to become less valuable as replacements for this good become increasingly available,” she says.

“If we want to save the loon, or a couple thousand acres of boreal forest, or the quality of our air and water, or ecosystem stability, we cannot offer these entities the provisional support educed from the ‘reasonable’ conclusions of a benefit-cost analysis. Rather, we need to ‘love’ them,” she says. “We need to put them within a set of goods, like one’s voting franchise, whose allocation is determined, not by market principles, but in service to some other objective.”

Judge earned her bachelor of arts degree in music and biology from Smith College in 1976, her master’s degree in biology from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 1980, and her Ph.D. in economics from Duke University in 1987. She joined the economics faculty at St. Olaf in 1987, just in time to collaborate with a group of faculty who were preparing a proposal to launch the college’s environmental studies program. She remains active in both departments, currently serving as chair of the Environmental Studies Department, and having served as chair of the Economics Department from 2005 through 2012.

The Mellby Lectures
The annual Mellby Lectures are named in remembrance of St. Olaf faculty member Carl A. Mellby and were established in 1983 to give professors the opportunity to share their research with the public. Mellby, known as “the father of social sciences” at St. Olaf, started the first courses in economics, sociology, political science, and art history at the college. He was professor and administrator from 1901 to 1949, taught Greek, German, French, religion, and philosophy, and is credited with creating the college’s honor system.