Our society’s environmental discourse is entwined with notions of economic efficiency and equity associated with the impacts of regulation, preservation, and restoration. Society’s notions of economic efficiency, especially the effects of both negative and positive externalities, form much of the substance of this rhetoric. This rhetoric also includes the distributional effects of these externalities, i.e. how they impact the lower strata of our society. Consequently, this chapter reviews some of the neoclassical economic rhetoric of efficiency and equity as it pertains to both positive and negative externalities. It also addresses the issue of government power as it affects the provision of environmental amenities, particularly in the context of society’s demands for inclusive reasoned public discourse in consideration of environmental projects of restoration and preservation.