Climatopolis


Book Description

One of the worldÕs leading urban and environmental economists tells us what our lives will be like when climate change arrives




But Will the Planet Notice?


Book Description

You are one of seven billion people on Earth. Whatever you or I do personally—eat tofu in a Hummer or hamburgers in a Prius—the planet doesn't notice. In our confrontation with climate change, species preservation, and a planet going off the cliff, it is what several billion people do that makes a difference. The solution? It isn't science, politics, or activism. It's smarter economics. The hope of mankind, and indeed of every living thing on the planet, is now in the hands of the dismal science. Fortunately, we've been there before. Economists helped crack the acid rain problem in the 1990's (admittedly with a strong assist from a phalanx of lawyers and activists). Economists have helped get lead out of our gas, and they can explain why lobsters haven't disappeared off the coast of New England but tuna is on the verge of extinction. More disquietingly, they can take the lessons of the financial crisis and model with greater accuracy than anyone else the likelihood of environmental catastrophe, and they can help save us from global warming, if only we let them.




Green Cities


Book Description

"In Green Cities, Matthew Kahn surveys the burgeoning economic literature on the environmental consequences of urban growth. He discusses the environmental Kuznets curve, which theorizes that the relationship between environmental quality and per capita income follows a bell-shaped curve. The heart of the book unpacks and expands this notion by tracing the environmental effects of economic growth, population growth, and suburban sprawl. Kahn considers how cities can deal with the environmental challenges produced by growth. His concluding chapter addresses the role of cities in promoting climate change and asks how cities in turn are likely to be affected by this trend."--BOOK JACKET.




Adapting to Climate Change


Book Description

A revelatory study of how climate change will affect individual economic decisions, and the broad impact of those choicesSelected by Publishers Weekly as one of its Top Ten books in Business and Economics for Spring 2021 It is all but certain that the next century will be hotter than any we’ve experienced before. Even if we get serious about fighting climate change, it’s clear that we will need to adapt to the changes already underway in our environment. This book considers how individual economic choices in response to climate change will transform the larger economy. Using the tools of microeconomics, Matthew E. Kahn explores how decisions about where we live, how our food is grown, and where new business ventures choose to locate are impacted by climate change. Kahn suggests new ways that big data can be deployed to ease energy or water shortages to aid agricultural operations and proposes informed policy changes related to public infrastructure, disaster relief, and real estate to nudge land use, transportation options, and business development in the right direction.




The Zeronauts


Book Description

In the last century, Astronauts launched into the heavens, in search of new worlds to colonize, their adventures helping to catalyze the evolution of everything from non-stick frying pans and minicomputers to satellite telecommunications. Their work forced our species to recognize that our Earth is a very rare planet indeed and our only home for the foreseeable future. Now a new wave of explorers, adventurers and entrepreneurs is pioneering novel ways to create wealth in tune with the twenty-first century reality of a human population pushing towards 10 billion people by mid-century and with key elements of the planet's biosphere already coming apart at the seams. These are the Zeronauts. Featuring contributions by 25 of the world's leading innovators and drawing on interviews and surveys of many more, the book showcases the pioneers that are at the cutting edge of the global sustainability movement, which the author, John Elkginton, has helped create and lead over several decades. Elkington introduces the emerging disciplines of zero-impact design, engineering and management through the personal experiences and reflections of the leading practitioners putting us on a path to a zero impact economy: Zero Risk, Zero Emissions, Zero Pollution and Waste, Zero Biodiversity Loss and Zero Population Growth. Leading Zeronauts explain how they came to wake up to the challenges, they speak about the mistakes they have made along the way and the lessons they have learned in the process, offering their advice on how we can get others to the same point in terms of thinking and action. From this, Elkington distils a concise set of rules for success. Concluding with recommendations for governments, investors, innovators and educators, the book shares the lessons learned from scores of people worldwide who are helping define the scale of the challenges our species now faces and, crucially, developing and deploying at scale some of the solutions that will provide the building-blocks of tomorrow's economies and the foundations for some of the future's greatest fortunes.




Climate Shock


Book Description

How knowing the extreme risks of climate change can help us prepare for an uncertain future If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future—why not our planet? In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance—as a risk management problem, only here on a global scale. With a new preface addressing recent developments Wagner and Weitzman demonstrate that climate change can and should be dealt with—and what could happen if we don't do so—tackling the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.




The New Geography of Jobs


Book Description

Makes correlations between success and geography, explaining how such rising centers of innovation as San Francisco and Austin are likely to offer influential opportunities and shape the national and global economies in positive or detrimental ways.




Climate Change and European Security


Book Description

It is now commonly asserted that climate change will fundamentally change international relations. It has been predicted that global warming will increase conflict within and between states, intensify food insecurity, menace the global trading system and unleash waves of migration. As a result governments are beginning to incorporate these warnings into their foreign policy initiatives. The appropriateness of their incipient responses needs to be examined in finer detail. This book looks at the impact of climate change on European Union (EU) security policy. It explores how governments are reconfiguring their geo-strategy and broader international relations in the wake of climate change warnings. The book demonstrates that although many aspects of EU foreign policies have begun to change, ‘climate security’ is not yet accorded unequivocal or sufficient priority. In doing so, Youngs argues that if climate change policies are to have significant effect they can no longer be treated as a separate area of policy but must be incorporated into the more mainstream debates pertinent to EU common foreign and security policy (CFSP). This book will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners of climate change and policy, energy and environmental policy, EU governance and foreign policy, European studies, international relations, geography, security studies/policy and environmental economics.




Climate Change Geoengineering


Book Description

The international community is not taking the action necessary to avert dangerous increases in greenhouse gases. Facing a potentially bleak future, the question that confronts humanity is whether the best of bad alternatives may be to counter global warming through human-engineered climate interventions. In this book, eleven prominent authorities on climate change consider the legal, policy and philosophical issues presented by geoengineering. The book asks: when, if ever, are decisions to embark on potentially risky climate modification projects justified? If such decisions can be justified, in a world without a central governing authority, who should authorize such projects and by what moral and legal right? If states or private actors undertake geoengineering ventures absent the blessing of the international community, what recourse do the rest of us have?




Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World


Book Description

Climate change confronts us with our most pressing challenges today. The global consensus is clear that human activity is mostly to blame for its harmful effects, but there is disagreement about what should be done. While no shortage of proposals from ecological footprints and the polluter pays principle to adaptation technology and economic reforms, each offers a solution – but is climate change a problem we can solve? In this provocative new book, these popular proposals for ending or overcoming the threat of climate change are shown to offer no easy escape and each rest on an important mistake. Thom Brooks argues that a future environmental catastrophe is an event we can only delay or endure, but not avoid. This raises new ethical questions about how we should think about climate change. How should we reconceive sustainability without a status quo? Why is action more urgent and necessary than previously thought? What can we do to motivate and inspire hope? Many have misunderstood the kind of problem that climate change presents – as well as the daunting challenges we must face and overcome. Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World is a critical guide on how we can better understand the fragile world around us before it is too late. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, climate justice, environmental policy and environmental ethics.