Nordhaus, William D. The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and Contagion in a Crowded World.

• Date: 01 September 2023
• Author: Wang, Yongsheng

Nordhaus, William D. The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and Contagion in a Crowded World. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021. 355 pages. Hardcover, $29.95.

This book is the latest collection from Dr. William D. Nordhaus, Nobel Prize-winning environmental economist from Yale University. It brings together a host of green economics topics and their intertwined conundrums in political and societal realms. The author addresses these complex issues of our time in straightforward language accompanied with storytelling style of presentation. Throughout the lines of stories, the nature of green economy as public goods is self-evident and the metaphysical essence of green directly connects with one of the fundamental challenges in economics on how to enjoy the power of the market while taming its wildness in need of common good: i.e., the Goldilocks rule of regulation, as the author put it. The author recognizes the need to find the appropriate balance between no regulation and draconian regulation and proposed that efficient policies such as carbon taxes, auction of public resources, and minimization of the role of command-and-control mandates are attainable. In conclusion, the author depicted how the goals of a green society should be nested...