As an economist, how can the author not see that the hidden environmental costs are growing? As markets demand natural gas within a cost range while resources are limited, the solution becomes to pass this cost off on the environment. The environment doesn't have a powerful advocacy and can't fight back.
I am disappointed that economists buy these models so readily without doing real accounting as to all costs. I think this is a problem in modern economics — we can easily measure monetary costs through accounting and prices, but other costs are hard to measure so the model treats them as residuals. Then, they run predictions with their models that completely ignore environmental costs. Don't argue markets don't have a cost on the environment when you've failed to include environmental costs in your models.