Introductory economics textbooks: what do they teach about sustainability?

In response to accelerating ecological deterioration, many universities have made commitments to ensure they graduate ecologically responsible citizens and to integrate sustainability across the curriculum. This study involves a content analysis of how Econ101 textbooks address environment-economy linkages. In North America, introductory economics courses ('Econ101') are standardized and rely heavily on textbooks. A small number of textbooks dominate this market. Orthodox Econ101 textbooks in current use in British Columbia, Canada were included in the study as well as three leading US textbooks. These were contrasted against a pair of micro/macro texts explicitly written to address sustainability. The orthodox textbooks are found to largely ignore or misrepresent ecosystem-economy linkages and to include content that is unhelpful in furthering student understanding of sustainability and in providing them with the tools to contribute to its achievement. Universities that have made a commitment to integrate sustainability across the curriculum should examine carefully the textbooks used in their introductory economic courses and consider adopting textbooks that have explicitly integrated sustainability-relevant content throughout the text.