ution and where the probability is high that any damage that occurs to the ecological system must be reversed in the future. In the first instance, wherein damage by pollution is irreversible, the benefits attainable through current pollution can never be recouped and can never exceed the value of a nor-restorable ecological resource, and, thus, marginal analysis will never produce a surplus. This line of reasoning underlies the endangered species act in the United States. There are, of course, many people who believe that saving a species of animal or plant is not worth current economic gain. That philosophy, however, is not the controlling philosophy in the United States. In the second instance, the high cost of restoration which must be considered as one of the input variables will preclude the reaching of a point in marginal analysis wherein one more unit of
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