The Biden administration aims to quantify the costs of ecological decay

Any sensible business has a balance-sheet that tracks all of its assets and liabilities. But governments do not. A growing number of economists argue that gross domestic product (gdp), a single number that guides a plethora of policies but counts only income flows, is too narrow—especially when it comes to the environment. No national measurement exists to tally the full economic costs of depleting America’s natural assets.