The Nobel Prize for Economics has been won by carbon pricing advocates, William Nordhaus and Paul Romer.
This week has been a seismic shift in the fight against climate change and for CCL across the world.
In the same week as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said we had to move much more quickly with ‘pretty hard choices’ with just 12 years to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Policy Exchange launched their pro-carbon tax and dividend report, two economists working in the realm of sustainable growth and how the market economy interacts with nature have won probably the world’s most prestigious prize.
Prof Romer said: “I think… many people think that protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore [this].
“[But] we can absolutely make substantial progress protecting the environment and do it without giving up the chance to sustain growth.”
“I hope this can change the world,” said Jiang Kejun of China’s semi-governmental Energy Research Institute, one of the authors of the IPCC report. “Two years ago, even I didn’t believe 1.5C was possible but when I look at the options I have confidence it can be done.”