CARBON SHOCK

Mark Schapiro takes readers on a journey into a world where the same chaotic forces reshaping our natural world are also transforming the economy, playing havoc with corporate calculations, shifting economic and political power, and upending our understanding of the real risks, costs, and possibilities of what lies ahead.

For almost two decades, global climate talks have focused on how to make polluters pay for the carbon they emit. It remains an unfolding financial mystery: What are the costs? Who will pay for them? Who do you pay? How do you pay? And what are the potential impacts? The answers to these questions, and more, are crucial to understanding, if not shaping, the coming decade.

CARBON SHOCK evokes a world in which the parameters of our understanding are shifting—on a scale even more monumental than how the digital revolution transformed financial decision-making—toward a slow but steady acknowledgement of the costs and consequences of climate change. It also offers a critical new perspective as global leaders gear up for the next round of climate talks in 2015.

Mark Schapiro is a veteran environmental journalist, who covers the intersection between the environment, economics and international politics. He was formerly editorial director and senior correspondent at the Center for Investigative Reporting. His work is published widely in magazines such as Harpers, The Atlantic, Yale 360, The Nation, Mother Jones and elsewhere. He has also worked as reporter/correspondent for the PBS newsmagazine show FRONTLINE/World; and for the public radio program Marketplace. He teaches at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.