William D. Nordhaus

“Harry Truman complained that his two-handed advisers were always saying, ‘On the one hand, on the other hand.’ My suggestion for a carbon tax is a one-handed proposal.”

“There are some beneficial taxes. These would be taxes on bads, which can substitute for taxes on goods.”

“Is growth obsolete? We think not. Although GDP is an imperfect measures of welfare, the broad picture of secular progress which it conveys remains after correction of the most obvious deficiencies.”

“Green taxes are the holy trinity of environmental policy: they suppose valuable public services, meet environmental objectives efficiently, and improve efficiency.”

“As the world learned from the Carthaginian peace that settled World War I, the cost of a botched peace in Iraq may be even higher than the price of a bloody war.”

“To a first approximation, the economic value of increases in longevity in the last 100 years is about as large as the value of measured growth in non-health goods and services.”

“One of the oldest battles in economic growth involves the struggle between advances in technology and the drag from population and resource exhaustion.”

“There is basically is no alternative to a market solution for climate change. The reason is that the people who are going to solve our environmental problem are you, me, and seven billion other people.”

“At its core, economics is the science of choice.”