Climate Change Economics

Economic growth is wrecking the planet. It's the engine driving climate change, pollution, and the shrinking of natural spaces. To save the environment, will we have to shrink the economy? Might this lead to a better society, helping us break free from an obsession with material wealth that only benefits the few? Alessio Terzi takes these questions as a starting point for a journey into the socioeconomic, evolutionary, and cultural origins of our need for growth.

Many of the central concerns of the twenty-first century—racial inequity, white supremacy movements, greater inclusiveness of diverse peoples—are rooted in facing and overcoming prejudices, both common and hidden. Another great challenge—the role of wealth and innovation in solving the climate crisis—is also riddled with disabling prejudices about how corporations work, and about the rights and needs of consumers and world citizens. In his twenty-first book, Bruce Piasecki argues that a set of five recurring prejudices, from 1900 to 2020, have held up real progress on climate action.