How Cities Adapt: A Q&A With Climatopolis Author Matthew Kahn

There are plenty of dire predictions about what will happen to our cities if the worst predictions about global warming were to come true: flooding, droughts, famine, chaos and massive death. But Matthew Kahn, an economist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, sees a different future. Kahn looks to the past for clues to how cities adapt to changing circumstances.

To read the full New York Times Q&A with Professor Kahn by Stephen J. Dubner click here.

How to get rich when the planet heats up

What will we urban dwellers do when the planet heats up? This is the question at the centre of UCLA economist Matthew E. Khan’s new book Climatolopolis: How our Cities will Thrive in the Hotter Future. Climate change is inevitable; cities will bear the brunt of the changes it brings and therefore we need to think of a plan for how to cope in that new, hotter world, he argues. Seems like a reasonable premise.

His answer appears in the first few pages. It was the capitalist machine that created the greenhouse-gas epidemic and it will be capitalism that solves the problems; it’s the nature of the system.

To read the full Toronto Star review by Mary Albino click here.
 

Published: Monday, October 11, 2010

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