Introduction
William D. Nordhaus is an American economist and Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University. Sometimes called the “father of climate-change economics,” he is best known for his work on the economics of climate change and climate policy, which he has written about in books such as Managing the Global Commons: The Economics of Climate Change (1994) and The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World. His work in this area won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2018.1
Nordhaus has been a long-time advocate for taxing carbon emissions and his stance on climate policy has earned him praise and criticism. There are those who agree that taxation is an obvious solution to climate change;2 however, there are also many who argue that Nordhaus’ early work in the mid-1990s greatly underestimated the costs of inaction, and that his research has enabled climate denial and delayed responses to the crisis.3 However you might feel about Nordhaus’ conclusions, he pioneered an approach to climate change that integrates knowledge and insights from a number of different disciplines. Nordhaus also recognizes that there are human costs to trying to reduce emissions and a balance needs to be struck between extreme solutions.
Good policies must lie somewhere between wrecking the economy and wrecking the world.
– William D. Nordhaus, The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World
