Colleagues, apologies for the self-promotion, but pleased to announce publication of:
Economics and the Environment, 8th Edition
John Wiley & Sons. September 2017, ©2018
Request a Review Copy and more details here, _______
This eighth edition of Economics and the Environment is the second to include Dr. Stephen Polasky as a co-author, who brings to the text a reworked and stronger focus on natural resource economics and ecosystem services. This book was first published in 1992, as the Rio Earth Summit was concluding. Global warming had been brought to national and global attention only 4 years previous by James Hansen's famous congressional testimony. The first President Bush would soon sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. At the time, CO2 in the atmosphere stood at 356 parts per million.
Twenty-five years later, CO2 levels are over 400 parts per million and climbing. Climate change remains front and center, now understood less as an environmental problem than as a potential challenge to civilization. As in the first edition, global warming remains the topic that launches the book and provides the framing example for a comprehensive look at environmental economics. With Steve's help, the book now provides a stronger resource and ecosystem processes lens for exploring climate change and other critical environmental issues.
The book retains the three interrelated advantages of its earlier incarnations: broad content; pedagogical clarity; and timely, well-integrated examples. There are a few significant additions to the content, several new end-of-chapter problems and exercises, a set of PowerPoint slides, and updated examples and information throughout. For chapter-by-chapter suggestions for teaching from this book, please see the Instructor's Manual, online at www.wiley.com.
Major changes to this edition include:
• A refocus of the climate change discussion throughout on to the Paris Climate Agreement and the Trump election.
• Inclusion of the Flint, Michigan case in the discussion of environmental justice.
• Addition of a new section on Behavioral Economics, and insights for policy change within organizations and communities.
• Anew section on the the application of the Clean AirAct to greenhouse gas regulation, and the basis for Executive Action behind the Paris Climate Agreement.
• A discussion of the 2016 TSCA reform-an interesting switch from an (unworkable) efficiency standard to a (weak) safety standard.
• Updated and in-depth discussions of California's CO2 emission trading, and the EU ETS.
• The new UN Population forecasts-1 billion more people now expected by 2100.
• Areframing of the final section of the book around theUN's SustainableDevelopment Goals.
• A look at the "Climate Club" model recently developed by William Nordhaus.
____________________
Dr. Eban Goodstein / Director, Graduate Programs in Sustainability
Bard College