As I broadly understand it, this is progressive green-type cost-based economics.
What I think is needed to evaluate it and have some theoretical underpinning, is to relate it to the system of exchange value and Value that lies behind it.
Economic costing that takes into account renewing raw materials and the environment, could be related to the socially necessary labour time for doing so, i.e. remaining from a Marxist point of view linked to human social labour power. I would be interested to know whether a marxist perspective on this would produce rather different models than an arbitary green idealist perspective.
There could be an overarching concept to debate this with non-marxist greens. The marxist law of value concerns human social labour energy worked up in commodities. And the law of value determines how the product of this social labour is divided in the society.
The German expression for labour-power in the Marxian texts is "Arbeitkraft" and as far as I can see from the dictionary, Kraft also has connotations of energy.
So we are talking about matter and energy that is human.
Other energy that is used by humans for use-values, is animal energy, plant energy, fossil energy, mineral energy, and solar energy.
I am not quite sure how to take this further at this stage, but I would be interested in comments.
To bring it back to politics, the latest issue of New Scientist (UK) (5th Sept) has another somewhat subversive editorial, on the Carbon Tax.
"The problem with global warming is that it is global. It seems just too big for any individual to make an impact.
"But there is, we have been told, something everyone can do. Governments and environmentalists have been nagging us for years that we should be less wasteful in the way we use energy.... Sadly, this is wishful thinking. A study by a respected environmental analyst shows there is little chance that we will save the world by making our homes and appliances more energy efficient."
"... if increased efficiency causes energy prices to drop, energy-using equipment comes within the reach of people who could not previously afford it, actually increasing demand."
".. The government should now realise that the only way to stop people using more energy is to make that energy more expensive by imposing a carbon tax. ..
"A free market cares little for the environment."
Chris Burford
London