Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2011
What makes climate change such a difficult problem to solve is that it is so pervasive: it is global but with very different effects on regions and nations. It stretches through time to many future generations. Its causes are ultimately the growth of population, the structure of production and growing consumption: greater numbers require ever more to make them happy.
2 There are of course numerous shades of green, depending on the view taken of the hardness of the constraints on economic growth. Here a simplified and stylised ‘straw man’ is used for exposition purposes.
3 The concept of market failure begs the question: failure in respect of what? In mainstream neo-classical economics, the answer is: the Walrasian general equilibrium model of perfect competition, which is also Pareto optimal.
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