The article presents a preface to the book "History of Environmental Economic Thought." This book arose out of the need to bring together in a historical context the major ideas on population growth, resource scarcity and environmental contamination. The author felt a suitable volume should aim to be reasonably comprehensible to a wide range of readers and so he has tried to avoid equations, excessive jargon and other technicalities as far as possible. In the run up to the Research Assessment Exercise, a feeling had developed among the academic community that the time and effort involved in book-writing was not cost-effective by comparison to that needed for the production of journal articles, and a number of university administrators were arguing that perhaps book-writing should be discouraged in favor of a few pages of journal articles. The author says that he is also grateful to R.D.C. Black, a professor of Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland who made valuable comments on the early parts of the book, and to Stig Wanden of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, who provided comments on the later chapters.