Stand-up economist: Grading Economics Textbooks on Climate Change – InvestingsDontLie

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Stand-up economist: Grading Economics Textbooks on Climate Change

by InvestingsDontLie

January 4, 2021

Yoram Bauman:

This is the fifth such review I’ve been involved in and it is almost certainly the last review I’ll be doing, for the simple reason that the vast majority of textbooks now have excellent content on climate change! (If desired you can skip directly to the report card, or read on for some context and big-picture thoughts.)

The state of affairs today is very different from that of 10 years ago—my previous reviews were in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2017—much less 20 years ago, when I had an astonishing and hilarious email exchange with University of Houston professors Roy Ruffin and Paul Gregory about the wacky climate-skeptic claims (“no matter how much contrary evidence is presented, it just doesn’t matter”) in their now-defunct textbook.

In past years I have given out a Ruffin and Gregory Award for the Worst Treatment of Climate Change in an Economics Textbook, and I am pleased to say that no book merits that award this year.

This is good news … the economics profession won’t be participating (as much) in the training of undergraduates in climate skepticism.

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