The effects of global warming are already visible. Average temperatures are only 0.8 degree Celsius higher today than in 1880. Yet there is already an increasing frequency of extreme weather events, rising ocean temperatures and disappearing corals, melting glaciers and shrinking polar ice caps, and rising sea levels. Public action has nevertheless been too feeble to cope with this looming disaster. The Paris accord has been signed and containing global warming is now on the policy agenda. Still, it is mostly business as usual both in private industry and in public policy. The Economist magazine, though a leading champion of free market liberalism, recently argued that our failure to address global warming is a great market failure and called for muscular government action. I
