Definitely harder to measure, but I think this is the basic premise of John Michael Greer's Wealth of Nature [1]: that what we refer to as the "primary" economy—resource extraction industries like mining, farming, and so on—are in fact secondary to the true primary economy of purely natural systems upon which those industries rest, and if we can devise means of valuing and pricing the contribution of that true primary economy, then we'll be much better positioned not to treat those resources (including things like the ability of it to absorb pollution) as bottomless.

On the one hand, it's carbon pricing ++, but I think it's quite a holistic way of looking at the matter, since it's also trying to consider the multitude of other ways that poor stewardship of the natural world ultimately impacts the survivability of the planet, in terms of things like over-fishing, deforestation leading to soil erosion, irresponsible pesticide use leading to monocultures, etc etc.

[1]: https://newsociety.ca/books/w/the-wealth-of-nature

Not really. The Global Carbon Project maintains a database of estimates of consumption-based emissions:

* https://www.icos-cp.eu/science-and-impact/global-carbon-budg...

It’s called “embodied energy” and is notoriously difficult to calculate due to globalisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy

Corporations promoted offshoring/outsourcing specifically to move their most pollutant/dangerous processes to the developing world — out of reach from the threat of western democracy and it’s environmental/labor regulations.

Using per capita production is a whataboutism psychological warfare tactic to derail climate/emissions discussions and point the finger at China etc, even though the developed world has always been responsible for the majority of the demand, and “embodied” energy/emissions.

It is harder, although people have tried to do it, e.g.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289373031_Environme...

It's got to be very close to per capita spending.