On a topic such as the environment, communication among those from different disciplines in the natural and social sciences is both important and difficult. Economists themselves may have contributed to some misunderstandings about how they think about the environment, perhaps through enthusiasm for market solutions, perhaps by neglecting to make explicit all the necessary qualifications, and perhaps simply by the use of jargon. There are several prevalent myths about how economists think about the environment. By examining them here, we hope to explain how economists really do think about the natural environment.
