cover image The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong—and How to Fix It

The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong—and How to Fix It

Dieter Helm. Yale Univ., $35 (304p) ISBN 978-0-300-18659-8

Helm’s credentials couldn’t be more impressive and include service as special adviser to the European energy commissioner and as chair of the advisory group on the EU 2050 Energy Roadmap. The book’s introduction could hardly be more saddening and frustrating. As Helm writes: “despite innumerable conferences, summits, proclamations, agreements and policy interventions, so far nothing much has been achieved, and indeed some of the interventions may have made things worse.” Against this backdrop, which Helm details in accessible prose, he pragmatically concludes that fixing climate change requires that consumers be “willing to vote for politicians who will force them to pay” the costs of a transformed energy policy. Such candor is rare, and if that’s the prerequisite to stave off potentially catastrophic global temperature increases, hope must triumph over experience. Helm superbly articulates why some of the alternate energy sources touted as solutions (such as wind power) aren’t cost efficient, and how countries claim to have reduced harmful carbon emissions only by increasing carbon imports that don’t add up to a net reduction. This intelligent though depressing tome should inform future debates. (Nov.)