ABSTRACT
The previous chapter focused on the way that the dominant economic paradigm has responded when confronted with environmental problems. To some extent, environmental economics works within the same paradigm and accepts many of the techniques and tools that neoclassical economics has developed. Environmental economists concern themselves with two main issues that arise from the recognition of planetary limits: environmental pollution and the depletion of scarce resources, including species. Environmental economics was initially a distinct sub-field of natural resource economics – which had a longer pedigree – but the two are now generally studied together.
