—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. His research, writing, and teaching focus on climate risks and climate policy.
Gernot writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate and has written four books: Geoengineering: the Gamble, published by Polity (2021); Stadt, Land, Klima (“City, Country, Climate”), published, in German, by Brandstätter Verlag (2021); Climate Shock, joint with Harvard’s Martin Weitzman and published by Princeton (2015), among others, a Top 15 Financial Times McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2015, and Austria’s Natural Science Book of the Year 2017; and But will the planet notice?, published by Hill & Wang/Farrar Strauss & Giroux (2011).
Prior to joining Columbia as senior lecturer, Gernot taught at NYU, Harvard, and Columbia. He was the founding executive director of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program (2016 – 2019), and served as economist at the Environmental Defense Fund (2008 – 2016), most recently as lead senior economist (2014 – 2016) and member of its Leadership Council (2015 – 2016). He has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a Senior Fellow at the Jain Family Institute, a CESifo Research Network Fellow, a Faculty Affiliate at the Columbia Center for Environmental Economics and Policy, a Member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a Coordinating Lead Author of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change, and he serves on the board of CarbonPlan.org.
Born and raised in Amstetten, Austria, Gernot graduated from high school in his hometown before moving to the U.S. for college. He holds a joint bachelor’s magna cum laude with highest honors in environmental science, public policy, and economics, and a master’s and Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard, as well as a master’s in economics from Stanford.
Gernot lives in New York City with his wife, Siri Nippita, a gynecologist at NYU Langone Health and the chief of the family planning division as well as the director of Reproductive Choice at Bellevue Hospital, and their two young children.
Gernot and I go back a few years from meeting online over sustainability issues, finding out that we lived about a mile from each other, then meeting in person. Our first meeting, we got annoyed at each other, but our second we found we agreed on more controversial topics and had a grand old time. We also ran into each other at the conference where I met his longtime collaborator Bob Litterman, who was a recent podcast guest. Gernot combined economics with sustainability before others did and kept at it, putting him at the forefront of environmental economics. As regular listeners know, I value experience and living by one's values, not just talking about it. How else can you gain relevant experience, credibility, integrity, and character? How else do you know what you're talking about? Gernot has acted plenty. He talks about living more sustainably in his personal life along with his family. (As a side note, you wouldn't believe how many people tell me living sustainably with a family is impossible. It's not impossible for him, nor was it for all humans for 300,000 years. What makes it hard is marrying someone who doesn't share your values, which is another problem from sustainability, but not for Gernot). He talks about how he renovated his loft here in New York City. He also led renovating the house he grew up in in Austria as a teenager. He also shares an experienced environmental economist's view of the world and life. He speaks in plain English, not academic-speak, so I find him engaging and enlightening.