Climate Shock

The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet

By: Gernot Wagner, Martin L. Weitzman

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

If you had a 10-percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10-percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10-percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future - why not our planet?

In Climate Shock Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely it is that an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater.

What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help listeners understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance - as a risk-management problem, only here on a global scale.

Demonstrating that climate change can and should be dealt with - and what could happen if we don't do so - Climate Shock tackles the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2015 Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Grover Gardner, one of the most accomplished and experienced audiobook performers, presents the authors' clear-eyed and broad-ranging economic analysis of the consequences of climate change.... As always, Gardner's voice is clear and perfectly paced. He provides the listener with the time to absorb new ideas without seeming too slow. A great narration of an important book." ( AudioFile)

amazing narrative on the overview of climate chang

wonderful insights to the psychology and Future change in moral proclivity that is needed to combat climate change and the underlying causes

Fantastic Summary of The Climate Problem

From economics and politics to science and human behavior, this short audio book does a fantastic job of explaining the Climate Problem and the dilemmas we planetary occupants face. Unlike so many good climate books, this one does not require a college science degree to understand. I hope many others are able too get The Big Picture this book presents so clearly.

Stringent, credible and worrying

As an economist by training, businessman by profession and environmentalist by conscience; I must say this is one of the best, most detailed and most sound arguments for carbon taxation. The book takes the economics of uncertainty into account when explaining how the world ought to react to the unknowns of climate change. Strongly recommended.

Nuance, balance, risk management.

Embrace of Nordhaus and $40 carbon tax is dated - a 2024 update of this valuable work is warrented.

Too many numbers, reads like an academic paper

Too many numbers, reads like an academic paper. quoting how many degree Celsius of temperature rise / tonnes of carbon, over and over again, just gets tiring after a while. Might as well just go read an actual research paper