I wandered into environment and development economics through an initially disconnected series of interests in the environment, development and, finally, economics. Family camping trips instilled in me a love of nature from an early age, but growing up in the US industrial heartland in the 1960s also exposed me (literally) to serious pollution problems. My home state of Ohio is famous for having a river that caught on fire. It is also on the shores of Lake Erie, which was the source of my family's Friday fish dinners untilmercury contamination closed the fishery. About the only business in my rural hometown was a waste dump, which contaminated all the wells in the town and forced the town to develop a more costly water source.