Climate shocks – and the many negative climatic tipping points – are all too real. So are positive, economic ones pointing in the right direction. The climate race is on, and despite the best attempts by some, there’s no going back. Low-carbon, high-efficiency technologies will only get better and cheaper over time. Oil, coal, and gas, meanwhile, are commodities, whose prices will always fluctuate due to geopolitical vagaries and other factors out of our control. The best medicine for addressing “fossilflation”? Getting off fossil fuels.

In this collection of over a dozen globally syndicated columns, written over the past year since the US Inflation Reduction Law became law, climate economist Gernot Wagner takes a sober look at both unmitigated climate risks and the trillion-dollar business opportunities of the clean-energy race. Not every company or country will win. The one clear winner: the planet.

Wagner lays out in clear, crisp language what it takes to take advantage of the opportunities, how to avoid some of the pitfalls, and how the EU and the rest of the world should respond to the US.