ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how to use insights from economics to better manage our shared environment. It finds that environmental concerns often present a valid justification for government intervention in markets and that a healthy economy and a healthy environment can coexist. The chapter discusses the policies that economists have developed to address environmental problems. Then the chapter ends with a focus on climate change, as it is widely recognized as the most important environmental issue of the twenty-first century. Nonrenewable resources are those resources that do not regenerate through natural processes, at least on a human time scale, such as oil, coal, and mineral ores. The vast majority of scientists have concluded that human activity is changing the planet’s climate.
