BMr,

You are spot on provided one airbrushes significant environmental and social development concerns out of the equation (as traditional economic analysis does by seeing the environment and social impacts as 'externals' or 'free goods' for purposes of economics).

There is today increasing awareness that those impacts are not really externals or free goods but rather serious costs in many cases.  However, this increased awareness has not yet been matched by objective measures for factoring in these potential impacts when doing economic analysis.  Hence, too many of us who are deeply concerned with current trends in environmental degradation and climate change are reduced to making demands that radical measures be taken to stop a whole range of economic projects.

I try to avoid such good vs evil puritanism.