If you want to understand how an economist thinks about the biggest challenge our planet has ever stumbled up against, this book is an awfully good place to start!
Lessons in economics and global environmental problems, from a guy you’d actually talk to at a party.
This splendid book showcases why environmental economics is such an exciting field today. Who knew that an economist not named Krugman could write so well? I will buy my mom a copy.
For more than thirty years, I’ve been waiting for a book that would accurately embody an economic perspective on environmental policy and clearly present it to a truly broad readership. At last, Gernot Wagner has done it, and done it with style!
His explanations and commentaries are true to the underlying science and economics, and his prose make this not just a very interesting read, but an immensely enjoyable one.
Whether you are on the right or the left of the political spectrum – or stuck in the middle like me – this is a book that you should read, and later will be glad you did!
Global warming is a tough nut to crack. Gernot Wagner takes a pithy, fun, and enlightening swing, and he hits the mark. Read it and laugh—or weep. Either way, you will come away armed with powerful tools to separate serious thinking from the rivers of nonsense that too often pollute debate over what to do.
As the earth approaches runaway global warming, Gernot Wagner lays out clearly the moral and economic reasoning we will need to make the tough choices ahead. As you read this book you will be stretched; you will laugh; you may even shake your fist once or twice. But when you put it down you will realize you have encountered a coherent framework of disciplined thinking equal to this most difficult and consequential of planetary challenges.
Gernot Wagner underscores the “eco” in economics, showing how markets that have lifted millions out of poverty could lift our planet out of peril.
Wagner’s wry, witty prose brings rationality to an emotionally charged subject and urges us to take personal responsibility for the planet by demanding an economically sound solution to guiding market forces in the right direction, making it in our best interests to do the right thing.