I'm using Tietenberg and Lewis, Environmental Economics and Policy, in my sophomore level environmental and resource economics class this semester. I haven't taught this course in awhile so it seems very fresh. As such, I had some fun with planning out the order of topics. Here it is:
Chapter 1 – Visions of the Future
Handout: The Market Forces of Supply and Demand
Chapter 2 – Valuing the Environment: Concepts
Chapter 4 – Property Rights, Externalities, and Environmental Problems
Chapter 5 – Sustainable Development: Defining the Concept
Chapter 7 – Natural Resource Economics: An Overview
Chapter 14 – Environmental Economics: An Overview
Chapter 8 – Energy
Chapter 15 – Stationary‐Source Local and Regional Air Pollution
Chapter 17 ‐ Transportation
Chapter 16 – Climate Change
Chapter 9 – Water
Chapter 11 – Agriculture
Chapter 18 – Water Pollution
Chapter 12 – Forests
Chapter 13 – Common Pool Resources: Fisheries
Chapter 10 ‐ Land
Chapter 19 – Managing Waste
Chapter 5 – Valuing the Environment: Methods
Tietenberg and Lewis first cover the basic welfare economics and intertemporal allocation of nonrenewable resources (under the guise of sustainable development). They then present a natural resource economics overview and march through natural resource topics. Next, they present an environmental economics overview, which is really a misnomer since all of the meat and potatoes of environmental policy analysis is contained in this chapter, and then march through environmental topics.
My rearrangement first covers the basic welfare economics and intertemporal allocation of nonrenewable resources. I pushed the valuation chapter 5 to the end of the course for two reasons: (1) I'm not sure my students really need to know this stuff in detail and (2) I just finished teaching it in my Fall semester benefit-cost analysis course and am a bit burned out by it (i.e., "hypothetical bias, blah, blah, blah"). Then I'll run through the natural resource economics overview chapter quickly and spend plenty of time on the environmental economics "overview".
My guess is that we'll be about halfway through the course at this point. The rest of the course is divided into four modules:
- Energy and the environment - energy econmics, air pollution and climate change
- Water resources - water allocation, agriculture and water pollution
- Renewable resources - forestry and fisheries
- Land resources - Land use and waste disposal
I tacked on valuation at the end just because at that point I'll bet I'm ready to talk about it (if not before), but I doubt that we'll be able to get that far.
That is the plan. Comments are most welcome, especially if you see a problem with how I've rearranged the chapters.
