William Nordhaus
Leveraging markets to slow climate change, from carbon taxes to climate clubs
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
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.
