Climate change is a pretty scary topic, and those who write about it have, for the most part, been happy to play up the scariness. It is refreshing, then, to read books which look at the warming to come not as a frightful warning, nor as a fait accompli, but as something to which, at some levels of change, people will have to adapt—and which in some settings they may adapt to rather well.

The setting Matthew Kahn is interested in is the city, one of his preoccupations as an economist. Mr. Kahn suggests that city-dwellers have various advantages in preparing for the changes to come. The author has a good eye for the conflicts that can complicate his picture of rational people responding to risk.

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Published: Thursday, September 02, 2010

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