Economics and the Global Environment investigates if and how environmental resources, such as global climate, genetic diversity, and transboundary pollution can be managed in an international system of sovereign states without a Global Environment Protection Agency. It also considers traditional international economics--theory and policy--and explores how they can be expanded to accommodate environmental values. Until recently, trade theory and trade policy neglected pollution and environmental degradation. This situation has changed dramatically, and the controversial and corrosive issues of...

Economics and the Global Environment investigates if and how environmental resources, such as global climate, genetic diversity, and transboundary pollution can be managed in an international system of sovereign states without a Global Environment Protection Agency. It also considers traditional international economics--theory and policy--and explores how they can be expanded to accommodate environmental values. Until recently, trade theory and trade policy neglected pollution and environmental degradation. This situation has changed dramatically, and the controversial and corrosive issues of...

Economics and the Challenge of Global Warming is a balanced, rigorous, and comprehensive analysis of the role of economics in confronting global warming, the central environmental issue of the twenty-first century. It avoids a technical exposition in order to reach a wide audience and is up to date in its theoretical and empirical underpinnings. It is addressed to all who have some knowledge of economic concepts and a serious interest in how economics can (and cannot) help in crafting climate policy. The book is organized around three central questions. First, can benefit-cost analysis guide...

For much of its history, human population growth increased at a glacial pace. The demographic rate only soared about 200 years ago, climaxing between the years 1950 and 2000. In that 50-year span, the population grew more than it had in the previous 5,000 years. Though these raw numbers are impressive, they conceal the fact that the growth rate of population topped out in the 1960s and may be negative later this century. The population boom is approaching a population bust, despite the current world population of seven billion people.

In On the Cusp, economist Charles Pearson...