Alligators in the Arctic and How to Avoid Them
Science, Economics and the Challenge of Catastrophic Climate Change

Integrating science, economics and policy, this book explains the urgency of sticking to a strict carbon budget.

Peter Dorman (Author)

9781316516270, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 July 2022

300 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.6 cm, 0.68 kg

'… [an] exceptional, outstandingly useful guide to climate change policies … The first part of the book is brilliant and witty. Later discussion evolves into careful analysis, including complexities that make greater demands on the reader, drawing substantively on Dorman's native economic expertise … Highly recommended.' F. T. Manheim, Choice

Climate change is a matter of extreme urgency. Integrating science and economics, this book demonstrates the need for measures to put a strict lid on cumulative carbon emissions and shows how to implement them. Using the carbon budget framework, it reveals the shortcomings of current policies and the debates around them, such as the popular enthusiasm for individual solutions and the fruitless search for 'optimal' regulation by economists and other specialists. On the political front, it explains why business opposition to the policies we need goes well beyond the fossil fuel industry, requiring a more radical rebalancing of power. This wide-ranging study goes against the most prevalent approaches in mainstream economics, which argue that we can tackle climate change while causing minimal disruption to the global economy. The author argues that this view is not only impossible, but also dangerously complacent.

Introduction: When Alligators go north
Part I. Carbon Accounting for Planet Earth: Part II. The Risks of Climate Change, or Why Carbon Budgets Need to Be Binding: Part III. Measurement: Myths and Distractions: Part IV. It's About Fossil Fuels: Part V. Costs and Consequences: Part VI. The Carbon Policy Toolkit: Part VII. The Global Dimension: Part VIII. Political Economy for Alligators.

Subject Areas: Meteorology & climatology [RBP], Environmental economics [KCN]