Gernot Wagner (1980 in Austria) is a climate economist at

Columbia Business School Columbia Business School (CBS) is the business school of Columbia University, a Private university, private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one ...

. He holds an AB and a PhD in political economy and government from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, as well as an MA in economics from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. A founding co-director of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program (2017-2019) he joined the faculty of

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

in 2019, moving to

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 2022. Wagner writes a monthly column for

Project Syndicate Project Syndicate is an international media organization that publishes and syndicates commentary and analysis on a variety of global topics. All opinion pieces are published on the ''Project Syndicate'' website, but are also distributed to a wi ...

, and is the co-author, with

Martin L. Weitzman Martin Lawrence Weitzman (April 1, 1942 – August 27, 2019) was an economist and a professor of economics at Harvard University. He was among the most influential economists in the world according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). His late ...

, of ''Climate Shock'', a Top 15

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

McKinsey McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...

Business Book of the Year 2015.

Climate and energy policy

Wagner was an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund from 2008 to 2014 and lead senior economist from 2014 to 2016. While there he was a member of the faculty of the

School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University (SIPA) is the List of schools of international relations in the United States, international affairs and public policy school, public policy school of Columbia University, a pri ...

, and he wrote ''Climate Shock'' (2015), a book emphasizing the importance of risk and uncertainty for prompting action on climate change. Wagner was a member of the six-person lead author team, including

Suzi Kerr Suzi Clare Kerr (born 1966) is a New Zealand economist. She joined Environmental Defense Fund in 2019 as its chief economist. Biography After completing a BSc at Canterbury University and a PhD at Harvard University, she started Wellington-bas ...

, that wrote the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

'
Emissions Trading in Practice : A Handbook on Design and Implementation
"Risk" and "uncertainty" in climate change are often mentioned as reasons to delay action. Wagner's ''Climate Shock'', joint with

Martin Weitzman Martin Lawrence Weitzman (April 1, 1942 – August 27, 2019) was an economist and a professor of economics at Harvard University. He was among the most influential economists in the world according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). His late ...

, emphasizes that the "known unknowns" and potential "unknown unknowns" instead increase the need for action. This contrasts with work done, for example, by economists Bill Nordhaus,

Richard Tol Richard S. J. Tol (born 2 December 1969, Hoorn, the Netherlands) is a professor of economics at the University of Sussex. He is also professor of the economics of climate change at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a member of the Academia ...

, and others. Nordhaus, in turn, favorably reviewed Wagner and Weitzman's book in the New York Review of Books. Wagner's latest academic work on this topic, joint with Kent Daniel of

and Bob Litterman of Kepos Capital further emphasizes the importance of pricing

climate risk Climate risk refers to risk assessments based on formal analysis of the consequences, likelihoods and responses to the impacts of climate change and how societal constraints shape adaptation options. Common approaches to risk assessment and risk ...

and uncertainty.

Geoengineering

Wagner was the founding co-director, joint with

David Keith David Keith may refer to: * David Keith (novelist) (1906–1994), pen name of American scholar Francis Steegmuller *David Keith (actor) (born 1954), American film and TV performer and director *David Keith (physicist), Canadian-born Harvard Profess ...

, of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program founded in 2017 as an interfaculty research initiative. His

geoengineering Climate engineering (also called geoengineering) is a term used for both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM), also called solar geoengineering, when applied at a planetary scale.IPCC (2022Chapter 1: Introduction and F ...

research focuses on economics, governance, policy, and public perception, including the

chemtrails conspiracy theory The chemtrail conspiracy theory is the erroneous belief that long-lasting condensation trails are "chemtrails" consisting of chemical or biological agents left in the sky by high-flying aircraft, sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to t ...

. Together with Dustin Tingley, Wagner finds that in a U.S. public opinion survey conducted in October 2016, 30 to 40% of the U.S. public believed in a version of the conspiracy. The paper also describes what the authors call a "community of conspiracy" in online discourse, in particular on Twitter and other anonymous social media. On November 23, 2018, Wagner published an open-access article on "Stratospheric aerosol injection tactics and costs in the first 15 years of deployment." The article was noticed by

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

, where the journalist said: "Scientists are proposing an ingenious but as-yet-unproven way to tackle climate change: spraying sun-dimming chemicals into the Earth's atmosphere." The proposal "estimated the development costs of a

stratospheric The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air hi ...

fleet of

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

-releasing aircraft at $3.5 billion. This theoretical program would start in 2033 with two aircraft and 4,000 annual flights, increasing over 15 years to nearly 100 aircraft flying hundreds of flights a week," and would cost annually to operate "roughly $2.25 billion".

Books

Gernot Wagner has written four books: * 2003: ''Der Rest der Welt. Ein Reiseführer für überzeugte Daheimbleiber'', Wien, Ueberreuter-Verlag 2003, * 2011: ''But Will The Planet Notice?''. New York, Hill & Wang/Farrar Straus & Giroux, * 2015: ''Climate Shock'', joint with

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

2015, (

Top 15 Business Book of the Year 2015. Translated into several languages, including German, which has been awarded Austria's Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres erman, 'Natural Science Book of the Year'2017.) * 2021: ''Stadt, Land, Klima: Warum wir nur mit einem urbanen Leben die Erde retten'', Brandstätter 2021, .

Family

Wagner is married to Siripanth Nippita, a gynecologist at

NYU Langone Medical Center NYU Langone Health is an academic medical center located in New York City, New York, United States. The health system consists of NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Long Island School of Medicine, both part of New York University (NYU), and m ...

and the chief of the family planning division as well as the director of Reproductive Choice at Bellevue Hospital.

References

External links