Praise for “But Will the Planet Notice?”

“If you want to understand how an economist thinks about the biggest challenge our planet has ever stumbled up against, this book is an awfully good place to start!”
— Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org

 

“Lessons in economics and global environmental problems, from a guy you’d actually talk to at a party.”
— Dan Shapley, The Daily Green

 

This splendid book showcases why environmental economics is such an exciting field today. Who knew that an economist not named Krugman could write so well? I will buy my mom a copy.
— Matthew E. Kahn, author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in Our Hotter Future

 

For more than thirty years, I’ve been waiting for a book that would accurately embody an economic perspective on environmental policy and clearly present it to a truly broad readership. At last, Gernot Wagner has done it, and done it with style!
His explanations and commentaries are true to the underlying science and economics, and his prose make this not just a very interesting read, but an immensely enjoyable one.
Whether you are on the right or the left of the political spectrum – or stuck in the middle like me – this is a book that you should read, and later will be glad you did!
— Robert N. Stavins, Director of Harvard’s Environmental Economics Program, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School

 

Global warming is a tough nut to crack. Gernot Wagner takes a pithy, fun, and enlightening swing, and he hits the mark. Read it and laugh—or weep. Either way, you will come away armed with powerful tools to separate serious thinking from the rivers of nonsense that too often pollute debate over what to do.
— Michael Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, Council on Foreign Relations

 

Idealism will not shift the choices of billions of people as effectively as self-interest. Gernot Wagner has written a lucid and enjoyable exposition of the underlying economics.
We must remove the incentives to treat scarce resources as if they were free. He respects the moral principles of the idealists who want to change behaviour by precept alone. But, as an economist, he knows that if we want less of anything, including pollution, we must raise its price.

Reaching effective agreements on how to change the incentives to create global pollution will be extremely hard. But there is no workable alternative.
— Martin Wolf, Chief economics commentator at the Financial Times

 

Gernot Wagner underscores the “eco” in economics, showing how markets that have lifted millions out of poverty could lift our planet out of peril.
— Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund, author of Earth: the Sequel

 

As the earth approaches runaway global warming, Gernot Wagner lays out clearly the moral and economic reasoning we will need to make the tough choices ahead. As you read this book you will be stretched; you will laugh; you may even shake your fist once or twice. But when you put it down you will realize you have encountered a coherent framework of disciplined thinking equal to this most difficult and consequential of planetary challenges.
His intellect is powerful, his style is engaging and humorous – but he is also rigorous and persistent, and he will stay with you till you “get it”. And that’s what we need.
He takes the most relevant insights of classical economics, behavioral economics, moral philosophy and even libertarian doctrine and fuses them into a consistent and brilliant analytic construct for thinking about the global environmental threats that face us.
— Peter J. Goldmark, Jr., Former Chairman and CEO of the International Herald Tribune

 

Wagner’s wry, witty prose brings rationality to an emotionally charged subject and urges us to take personal responsibility for the planet by demanding an economically sound solution to guiding market forces in the right direction, making it in our best interests to do the right thing.
— Publishers Weekly