Prof. Perelman, I believe, asked who wrote on the environment between  
Malthus and Jevons, and then after Jevons.  
  
Perhaps he meant to limit it to economists, but then, Malthus was not an  
economist, so perhaps not. Anyway, Justus von Liebig, an organic chemist,  
comes to mind. Europeans generally, and Germans above all it seems, were  
concerned with soil exhaustion. Von Liebig idealized an equilibrium with  
fertility held constant. Russian soilsmen pioneered soil studies and  
classifications, but not so much from a conservationist view.  
  
German foresters, meantime, worked on "going concern" models for forests  
with the stock held constant. Of the many names, Martin Faustmann is most  
familiar because of his expertise with capital theory.  
  
Von Humboldt studied what today would be called ecology, and he called  
Kosmos. I believe he communicated with Adam Smith, but the specifics escape  
me. Certainly the invisible hand and the ecology have a lot of parallel  
ideas.  
  
Arthur Young articulated what today is popularized as the tragedy of the  
commons, helping rationalize the enclosure movement in England.  
  
Mill, of course, idealized small Flemish farmers and their expertise with  
manures, but without Young's privatization spin.  
  
After Jevons, this preoccupation with maintaining soil fertility showed up  
in the economic literature.    It was one of the main criticisms used  
against the taxation of land values, e.g. by H.J. Davenport (although he  
later relented).  Walras refuted such ideas pungently and contemptuously in  
his Theorie d'Economie Sociale. L.C. Gray wrote an insightful article on  
rent under the assumption of exhaustibility. So did Hotelling. John Ise  
suggested monopoly might be justified to conserve resources.   
  
Marx noted the growth of "guano imperialism" as European powers seized  
guano-laden islands to replenish their failing soils. This passed away with  
the application of chemical fertilizers from phosphates, potash, petroleum,  
etc.  
  
Marshall proposed his "fresh air fund" to abate some damages from pollution.  
A.C. Pigou developed the effluent charge idea, still called "Pigovian". It  
was after 1960 or so, however, that the field exploded into several  
subfields.  
  
Of course the conservation movement produced waves of political activism,  
1901-15 or so, and there must be much in the journals of that era about it,  
although I do not think of any economists who might compare with activists  
of the time like John Muir, Elwood Mead, Wesley Powell, Gifford Pinchot,  
William Kent, et al. Water conservation at that time meant mostly harnessing  
the waters for power and irrigation: John Muir considered it  
anti-environmental.  
  
The 1930's brought a new wave of soil conservation activism; soils  
departments and soilsmen were ready, but not economists. W.C. Lowdermilk  
advanced theories about how soil exhaustion caused the fall of Rome, but not  
careful enough to be definitive. Kopp published an early book on economics  
and the environment, which I regret I cannot locate or remember much about.  
Maybe someone can help.  
  
The Paley Commission Report kicked off new studies of resource adequacy in  
the U.S.A.  Ford funded Resources for the Future, Inc., which came up with  
massive research leading them to a conclusion, which now looks a bit  
foolish, that resources would remain superabundant. Barnett and Morse  
digested the findings. So they considered that task finished, and moved on  
to quality of the environment, led by Allen Kneese. They pooh-poohed the  
Club of Rome Report, as did most economists - until the first OPEC oil  
embargo. Milton Friedman declared that all cartels fail soon, so it was not  
to worry, the market would solve all problems.   
  
Kneese was a neo-Pigovian at first, but Coase soon came up with his  
privatization panacea to let polluters off the hook, and here we are.  
  
The rest is modern history and I suppose Perelman did not ask us to go into  
it.  
  
  
Mason Gaffney