The January 2025 fires in Los Angeles demonstrate that climate change can have devastating effects even in highly prosperous areas, and the prospects for future occurrence are such that the 2024 United Nations Emissions Gap report warned that “climate crunch time is here”, with a risk that the world will “plunge headlong into climate disaster”.

Even so, environmental issues are often under-represented in economics. A 2024 analysis by E4F International on the coverage of “the top 300” economics journals found 93% publishing less than 1% of their total articles on climate change, and 95% of them publishing less than 1% of their articles on natural capital, ecosystem services, and biodiversity. Such figures do not reflect the subject’s importance, or interest. Environomics (subtitled How the Green Economy is Transforming Your World) shows that the economics literature is ignoring a rich picture of technology, customer behaviour, industrial strategy and geo-politics influencing the changes (and lack of changes) in meeting the climate change challenge.

Written by Dharshini David, Chief Economics Correspondent for BBC News, this relatively short book of 250 pages is keen to address a wide audience with the writer reassuring her readers that “economics isn’t just a load of dull men (or even women) in suits talking about statistics on the radio – it’s the very fabric of our lives, the physical world that we touch, taste, smell every day”. In a clear, lively, and succinct style, Environomics covers the interplay between environmental, political, and economic features of a selection of themes – energy, fashion, smartphones, transport, plastics, food, finance, construction and palm oil.

A likeable feature of the book (somewhat tempered by a lack of footnotes on sources) is a frequent citation of punchy statistic. For instance, I found it both staggering, and worrying, to read that there are 5 trillion pieces of discarded plastic in the oceans, or that the UK is among the five worst offenders – along with China, Russia and Italy – on the practice of dragging fishing nets along seabeds, damaging marine environments. Yet for those looking for hope on environmental issues, David’s book outlines substantial efforts to be greener, such as the city of Oslo aiming for a 95% reduction in Oslo’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 relative to 2009, or the development of seaweed-based alternatives to plastic straws.

If anything, Environomics understates potential achievements of technology. There have, for instance, been major recent innovations in batteries www.batterytechonline.com/designmanufacturing/12-promising-battery-tech-innovations-in-2024, while Althoey et al (2023), in a paper for Developments in the Built Environment, showcases a variety of advancements in recent years in low-carbon concrete. On the other hand, cautious signs of optimism supported by technological developments are now, since 2024, heavily over-shadowed by radical policy shifts between Presidents Biden and Trump. So while the book is of interest, for example, to students exploring career choices, and readers desiring a general overview, Environomics is very much a slice-in-time perspective on what can be done – and what has to be done – to avert climate catastrophe.