Climate Shock : The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet

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 an extreme event will happen.A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures.Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that