Rethinking Climate Policy: Innovation and the Economics of Resource Creation - Hardcover

Jean-François Mercure , Hector Pollitt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1009708376 ISBN 13: 9781009708371

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

Policies designed to address climate change have been met with limited success. Multilateral treaties, agreements and frameworks linked to the UN and COP meetings have so far failed to limit the rise in average global temperature. Rethinking Climate Policy suggests that one of the most important reasons for this is that we are looking at the economics of climate change in the wrong way, arguing that we need to look at climate change as a problem of resource creation, not resource allocation. It identifies problems in current climate policymaking, breaking many taboos in standard economics, to offer a bold proposal for effective and achievable public policy to achieve a zero-carbon economy. Underpinned by both a sound economic and complex systems analysis, this book develops a groundbreaking metric of economic resilience to measure the capacity of economies to transform without breaking down and accordingly how to best design climate policies.

About this title

About the Authors

Jean-François Mercure is Professor of Climate Policy at the University of Exeter's Business School, UK. He was Senior Climate Economist at the World Bank. He researches the economics of climate change and advises on policymaking. He has lectured at University of Cambridge, Radboud University and University of Exeter. He is an economist, innovation scholar and complexity scientist, and works on varied topics from energy systems to quantitative finance to geopolitics. He has authored over eighty peer-reviewed articles and the textbook Complexity Economics for Environmental Governance (2022).

Hector Pollitt is Senior Climate Economist working at a major international organisation, and focusing on climate policy solutions in East and South East Asia. He was previously the head of modelling and Chief Economist at Cambridge Econometrics, a consultancy based in the UK. He has twenty years of experience working with macroeconomic models and providing policy advice on climate policy to national governments and international organisations. He has co-edited two books on sustainability policy in East Asia and has co-authored more than forty peer-reviewed journal articles.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009708376
• ISBN 13: 9781009708371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 370