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A Radical View on Climate Economics FitzRoy, F. R., E. Papyrakis. 2010. An introduction to climate change. Economics and policy. London: Earthscan. 214 pp., 25.99 EUR, ISBN 978-1-844-07809-7
This book emphasizes the urgency for big steps in climate policy, stressing the differen tial effects of climate change on rich and poor people. The solutions the authors propose are unconventional and some what biased as they do not give full credit to other, more conservative, approaches. In particular, they suggest massive changes in agricultural practices and reforestation to achieve carbon neutrality.
You may place books on climate econom - ics on a line from leftto right according to their general viewpoints. Take the Stern Review (Stern 2006) as the middle of that line. Then you may have books to the right such as Nordhaus' A Question of Balance (2008)orSinn's Das grüneParadoxon.Plädo - yer für eine illusionsfreie Klimapolitik (2008), or, even further to the right, Lombog's Cool It (2007). To the leftare books like Ackerman'sCanWe Afford the Future?Economics for a Warming World (2009). On this line, FitzRoy and Papyrakis definitely are quite a bit to the leftof the Stern Review.
The book gives an introduction to the economics of climate change; as an introduction it uses only elementary forms of argument.It is well written and clearly has benefited from the authors' experience in teaching climate economics courses to beginning students. But it is somewhat partisan in its style. Opinions with which the authors concur are quoted extensively and in a matter-of-fact way; opinions dif ferent from those of the authors are almost always attributed to a "lobby", like the "coal lobby" or the "nuclear lobby". Is there no wind power lobby, no photovoltaic lobby? After all, a lot of money can be made from government subsidies for these technologies.
Ethical Considerations
On ethical grounds, the two economists are critical of the cost-benefit approach that is taken, for example, by the Stern Review or by Nordhaus and many other economists. This approach is considering the costs of climate change and of climate change miti gation only, ignoring distribution effects. And, the authors argue: "(...) trying to put a monetary value on the lives of large numbers of people in future generations (who cannot participate in these decisions), and...