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.