ABSTRACT
It is safe to say that mainstream economists have a peculiar conception of the natural environment, including how it should be utilized and managed. The primary aim of this chapter is to expose the axiomatic assumptions and, at the fundamental level, the analytical principles that are the cornerstones for the understanding of the standard mainstream economists’ conception of the natural environment and its interactions with the human economy. This is a crucial issue to address early on because it helps to identify clearly the ideological basis of neoclassical economics, the dominant approach to economic analysis since about the 1870s, as it is applied to the management of the natural environment.
