Environmental Econ: An Introduction

Seeing as I get asked this quite often (not that I mind), I figured I'd start with a basic definition of what is environmental economics?

Quoting Wikipedia:

Environmental economics is a subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues. Quoting the National Bureau of Economic Research's Environmental Economics Program:

[...] Environmental Economics [...] undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world [...]. Particular issues include the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming.

Additionally, from John Whitehead* over at Environmental Economics:

Environmental and natural resource economics is a sub-field of economics that includes elements of public finance, industrial organization, international trade and macroeconomics. Its roots are in the market failure theory of negative externalities, public goods and common property resources.  Much of the focus is on the economics of pollution control, the intertemporal allocation of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources and applied welfare analysis (i.e., benefit-cost analysis). With increasing population growth, the potential for climate change and numerous other environmental issues negatively affecting society, environmental and natural resource economics is one of the most important areas of economics.

In brief, environmental economics takes into account basic economic principles to deal with:

• Negative externalities and overuse, "corrected" using market based instruments -like taxes- or command and control -like quotas-.
• Sustainable development.
• Monetary value of environmental resources.

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*John Whitehead and Tim Haab have a great repertoire of Introductory Env Econ topics, as well as their daily posts which make for quite an interesting read.