This innovative, cutting-edge text takes a hands-on approach to the origins of environmental problems, their economic consequences, and the policies that address them. The text presents environmental economic theory and methods in the first five chapters and then applies and reinforces them with illustrations and applications in the subsequent chapters. No other text provides a stronger link between theory and applications ÍNDICE: 1. Introduction. 2. Economic Efficiency and Markets: How the Invisible Hand Works. 3. Government Intervention in Market Failure. 4. Valuing the Environment. 5. Environmental Decision-Making: Criteria and Methods of Assessment. 6. The Macroeconomics of the Environment. 7. Global Environmental Change: Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change. 8. Energy and the Environment. 9. The Use of Energy and the Environment. 10. Material Policy: Minerals, Materials and Solid Waste. 11. Fisheries. 12. Temperate Forests. 13. Tropical Forests. 14. Biodiversity and Habitat Preservation. 15. Water Resources. 16. Toxins in the Ecosystem. 17. Agriculture and the Environment. 18. The Environment and Economic Growth in Developing Countries. 19. Prospects for the Future.