Environmental Economics

In 1980, the iconoclastic economist Julian Simon challenged celebrity biologist Paul Ehrlich to a bet. Their wager on the future prices of five metals captured the public’s imagination as a test of coming prosperity or doom. Ehrlich, author of the landmark book The Population Bomb, predicted that rising populations would cause overconsumption, resource scarcity, and famine—with apocalyptic consequences for humanity.

Surviving the Future is a story drawn from the fertile ground of the late David Fleming's extraordinary Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It. That hardback consists of 404 interlinked dictionary entries, inviting listeners to choose their own path through its radical vision. Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure can be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has selected and edited one of these potential narratives to create Surviving the Future.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe.

Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and supply-chain crisis. Puerto Rico, with over 70 years of critical manufacturing experience, is in an ideal position to lead this fight with the United States. Puerto Rico is also about to receive the largest allocation of federal relief funds in US history—over 80 billion dollars to construct thousands of homes, critical infrastructure, renewable energy, and other vital projects. In addition to relief funds, Puerto Rico has created a series of tax incentives to bring in new businesses and people to the island.

Albin Kaelin’s book embodies the core principles of sustainability, offering insights and strategies for transitioning towards a more environmentally responsible and resilient future. Listeners will be empowered to redefine their approach to business, driving positive impact and shaping a sustainable future. Don’t miss your chance to be at the forefront of the sustainability revolution.

Solving the world’s biggest problems - from climate catastrophe and pandemics to wildfires and corporate malfeasance - requires, more than anything else, coming up with new ways to manage the powerful interactions that surround us. In The Spirit of Green, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus describes a new way of green thinking that would help us overcome our biggest challenges without sacrificing economic prosperity, in large part by accounting for the spillover costs of economic collisions.

In this compelling journey through twenty-six countries, Simon Mundy traces how the struggle to respond to the climate crisis is rapidly reshaping the modern world–shattering communities, shaking global business and propelling waves of cutting-edge innovation. Telling unforgettable human stories, meeting scientists and business tycoons, activists and political leaders, this is an account of disaster and survival, of frantic adaptation and groundbreaking innovation, of hope, and of the forces that will define our future.

Green Giants examines nine companies that are merging social responsibility with wild profitability - and reveals the six factors responsible for their success, including: iconoclastic leadership fueled by deep conviction and a rebellious streak; disruptive innovation that uses sustain ability to spur the development of radically better products and services; a higher purpose that ignites the company - when the mission leads, profits follow.

From the man that the New York Times calls “the most important person you’ve never heard of,” renowned Cambridge University economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, comes a paradigm shifting treatise, asking a simple yet profound question—what if we put a value on nature, just as we put a value...

Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson's mission to bring together the fight against climate change and the global struggle for human rights has taken her all over the world. It also brought her to a heartening revelation: that that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself.

An extraordinary exposé of the industry flooding our world with plastic—and now ramping up to make more than ever “Deeply researched, sharply written, and totally compelling.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the The Sixth Extinction “It is impossible not to compare Beth Gardiner’s...

How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification.

Toyota would like us to think that Mother Nature drives a Prius, Ford wants us to Join the Green Revolution,” and McDonald’s has painted its golden arches green. But are big brands and the celebrities endorsing them really as green as they claim? In The Greenwash Effect, Guy Pearse looks behind the corporate façade in the tradition of Fast Food Nation and No Logo - and what he finds will startle you.

The world must reach negative greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Yet no single plan has addressed the full scope of the problem - until now. In The 100% Solution, Solomon Goldstein-Rose - a leading millennial climate activist and a former Massachusetts state representative - makes clear what needs to happen to hit the 2050 target: the manufacturing booms we must spur, the moonshot projects we must fund, the amount of CO2 we'll have to sequester from the atmosphere, and much more.

Russell Gold, a brilliant and dogged investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has spent more than a decade reporting on one of the biggest stories of our time: the spectacular, world-changing rise of "fracking". Recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for his work, Gold has traveled along the pipelines and into the hubs of this country’s energy infrastructure; he has visited frack sites from Texas to North Dakota; and he has conducted thousands of interviews with engineers and wildcatters, CEOs and roughnecks, environmentalists and politicians.

Bestselling author Bethany McLean reveals the true story of fracking's impact -- on Wall Street, the economy and geopolitics. The technology of fracking in shale rock -- particularly in the Permian Basin in Texas -- has transformed America into the world's top producer of both oil and natural...

Within every company, there lies a sleeping giant. Companies have long been viewed as either the primary cause of environmental destruction, or as a deep-pocketed funding source for people trying to confront it. But with their access to innovation, new technology, and intellectual firepower, most companies are built to tackle the challenges our planet faces in a way smaller organizations and foundations can’t. What would happen if executives stopped looking at sustainability as a side project for the PR team and saw it instead as a way to benefit the planet and their profits?

In Building Tomorrow, Paddy Le Flufy brings together six organizational technologies being developed and implemented by pioneering experts. Each of them fundamentally redesigns a key element of our economic system. Together, they form a holistic vision of a new system–one that can help us avoid the catastrophe looming on the horizon.

Winner of the American Meteorological Society's Louis J. Batton Book of the Year Award From a writer and expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than thirty years, a brilliant, big-picture reckoning with our shocking failure to address climate change. Fire and Flood focuses on...

The floods that devastated large parts of Kerala in 2018 were not an isolated, freak phenomenon; rather, they signalled something graver-the ecological devastation of the Western Ghats.Made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, the Ghats have become increasingly vulnerable to serious ecological...