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

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.

What is a green city? What does it mean to say that San Francisco or Vancouver is more "green" than Houston or Beijing? When does urban growth lower environmental quality, and when does it yield environmental gains? How can cities deal with the environmental challenges posed by growth? These are the questions Matthew Kahn takes on in this smart and engaging book. Written in a lively, accessible style, Green Cities takes the reader on a tour of the extensive economic literature on the environmental consequences of urban growth. Kahn starts with an exploration of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)—the hypothesis that the relationship between environmental quality and per capita income follows a bell-shaped curve. He then analyzes several critiques of the EKC and discusses the implications of growth in urban population and surface area, as well as income. The 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. As Kahn points out, although economics is known as the "dismal science," economists are often quite optimistic about the relationship between urban development and the environment. In contrast, many ecologists and environmentalists remain wary of the environmental consequences of free-market growth. Rather than try to settle this dispute, this book conveys the excitement of an ongoing debate. Green Cities does not provide easy answers complex dilemmas. It does something more important—it provides the tools readers need to analyze these issues on their own.

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.

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.

Written during a period of acute economic stagnation in 1980, The Zero-Sum Society discusses the human implications of economic problem solving. Interpreting macroeconomics as a zero-sum game, Thurow proposes that the American economy will not solve its most trenchant problems-inflation, slow economic growth, the environment-until the political economy can support, in theory and in practice, the idea that certain members of society will have to bear the brunt of taxation and other government-sponsored economic actions. As relevant today as it was twenty years ago, The Zero-Sum Society offers a classic set of recommendations about the best way to balance government stewardship of the economy and the free-market aspirations of upwardly mobile Americans.

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.