Since part of the "mission" of this blog is to be a conduit for informing non-economists about how economists think about the environment the way they do, I should post the occasional "primer" on the subject, as they come to hand. Conveniently, I happen to have a couple I can post here.
So, firstly, I can link to something I wrote myself for the Australian Economic Review some years back. It's written with students in mind, which means it's meant to be readable and to not assume much in the way of knowledge of the discipline. Download it here.
Secondly, a longer treatment can be found here -- an entire downloadable book titled "What Environmentalists Need to Know About Economics".
As The Economist magazine remarks (quoted on the linked page) "Academic disciplines are often separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension, but the deepest and widest may be the one that separates most economists from most environmentalists...What underlies this is not so much disagreements about facts as disagreement about how to think."
I do hope this blog serves to lessen that disagreement to some measure. I'm also pleased to see other economists (like Jason Scorse, the author of the book linked to above) writing explicitly for non-specialist audiences.