By Luis Garicano
Michael Greenstone is Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and has a PhD in Economics from Princeton University. During the Barack Obama administration, Greenstone was the chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers. In fact, he is one of the greatest experts in the economics of climate change.
For this reason, the economist Luis Garicano interviews him within the cycle ‘Capitalism after the Coronavirus,’ a series of conversations by the Spanish MEP with economists and social scientists about the situation after covid-19.
This time, Greenstone talks about carbon emissions policies and buying them. He assures that although “the enemy is carbon”, he is concerned that “we apply policies that will make us feel good about ourselves” but that do not help the planet.
For Greenstone, one of the problems is that “we are facing global climate change and the capacity of the United States or the European Union to influence other countries is limited.”