This book, based on lectures on natural and environmental resource economics, offers a nontechnical exposition of the modern theory of sustainability in the presence of resource scarcity. It applies an alternative take on environmental economics, focusing on the economics of the natural...

1 The Classical Roots of Resource Economics -- 2 Optimal Depletion of Exhaustible Resources -- 3 Renewable Resources -- 4 Environmental Resources: Dynamics, Irreversibility and Option Value -- 5 Resources, Growth and Sustainability -- 6 Climate: The Ultimate Resource?.

A question has arisen concerning the relationship between the financial theory of options and the concept of option value developed in the literature on environmental preservation. This article presents simple models in each approach and then demonstrates their equivalence. The conventional,...