Monthly, globally syndicated columns for Project Syndicate, translated into a dozen languages.
In the face of a massive financing gap for climate-change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, everyone accepts the need for more "creative" measures to unlock and redirect private capital. But proposals like carbon credits must be understood merely as stepping stones, rather than as lasting solutions.
With more governments embracing industrial policies to transform their economies, picking the right technologies to subsidize will become a key challenge. To navigate the minefield of entrenched interests, techno-hype, and political pressures, policymakers must embrace a mix of openness and caution.
Although businesses and investors stand to make a lot of money if they can properly navigate the new risk environment, no one seems to have a good explanation for why we are where we are. Climate risks, in particular, have been systematically underestimated, and thus mispriced, for decades.
While no legislation is perfect, the US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will be a game changer for the transition to clean-energy sources, both in America and around the world. By doubling down on forward-looking industrial policy, the US is suddenly poised to give Europe, China, and others a run for their money.
Although climate change is primarily caused by excess greenhouse-gas emissions, there are many links in the chain between economic activities and the real-world effects of planetary warming. Each of these can be addressed in different ways, and all options should at least be on the table.
Project Syndicate Panel Discussion and Q&A with International Media
With its fixation on equilibrium thinking and an exclusive focus on market factors that can be precisely measured, the neoclassical orthodoxy in economics is fundamentally unequipped to deal with today's biggest problems. Change within the discipline is underway, but it cannot come fast enough.
The green transition comes with costs; but they are well worth it, and they pale in comparison to the costs of inaction. The ever-falling costs of renewables have not eliminated the politics of climate change. But they certainly have made our choices much easier.
If $40/t CO₂ were the "right" price, tax carbon and move on. $40/t isn't the right price. The Exxon-backed tax isn't it.
My Covid-climate thoughts organized in one place, in reverse chronological order
Whether the problem is COVID-19 or climate change, the market on its own will not produce a sufficient quantity of goods – like therapeutic drugs or environmentally sustainable growth – that benefit society. Capitalizing on America’s private-sector dynamism will require the state to create incentives to produce such “social goods.”
If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that delaying prudent policymaking does not merely result in higher marginal costs down the road. Rather, it puts us on an entirely different trajectory – one that all too easily can end in catastrophe.
The power of compound growth has long been recognized as essential to economic development. But in both the COVID-19 pandemic and the slower-moving climate crisis, this same mathematical force is cutting the other way, revealing dangerous shortcomings in how we manage externalities.
A $40 carbon dioxide price? Try $100, $200, or possibly more.
It would be barking mad to take up smoking simply because an experimental cancer treatment showed some promise on a lab rat