Pricing the Priceless: The ultimate, maybe the only climate solution

New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

Paula DiPerna on solving the climate crisis and valuing our most precious assets.

Humanity is hardwired to value the valuable, to conserve even to hoard treasure. The atmosphere, the oceans, earth’s ecosystem are vital to life, yet we essentially view them as free goods. The inevitable result is overconsumption, waste and pollution. Paula DiPerna’s key insight in her new book, Pricing the Priceless, is that the only way to break the cycle that is obviously damaging, perhaps destroying the temperate environment that mankind needs to prosper is to pay for the environmental services we consume every day.

Why, she asks, do markets value companies like Uber—which provides a convenience that we can live without— at almost $100 billion, but the atmosphere essential to life that we are filling with toxic waste gases at $0?

DiPerna, who is a policy expert and author, recently joined host Alan Stoga for a New Thinking for a New World discussion of Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets.