In “Economic Sustainability and the Preservation of Environmental Assets,” Foy explains that from an economic standpoint, sustainability requires that current economic activity not disproportionately burden future generations. Economists will allocate environmental assets as only part of the value of natural and manmade capital, and their preservation becomes a function of an overall financial analysis. In contrast, the ecologist will seek to preserve minimum levels of environmental assets in physical terms. He suggests that since an ecological approach will better characterize the present situation, it should serve to limit conventional economic reasoning to ensure sustainability. Economic sustainability should involve analysis to minimize the social costs of meeting standards for protecting environmental assets but not for determining what those standards should be.