NYU Wagner climate economist Gernot Wagner named to NYC Panel on Climate Change

NYU Wagner climate economist Gernot Wagner has been appointed to the fourth New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), a 20-member independent advisory board that synthesizes scientific information on climate change and advises New York City policymakers on local resiliency and adaptation strategies to protect against rising temperatures, increased flooding, and other hazards.

The diverse interdisciplinary panel will help the city expand is climate adaption efforts by providing authoritative, actionable science on future climate impacts, according to announcement June 11 by the Mayor’s Office.

“COVID-19 showed us in real-time – and on warp speed – how climate might play out: Runaway exponential growth; unprecedented economic impacts; untold deaths and suffering, especially among the poor and vulnerable. It will be crucial to take the lessons from COVID-19, and then some, and help tackle climate change, and even more important, systemic risk problem,” said Dr. Wagner.

Professor Wagner’s research, writing, and teaching focus on climate risks and climate policy. He currently writes the Risky Climate column for Bloomberg Green and has written two books: 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).

He teaches climate economics and policy at NYU, where he is a clinical associate professor at the Department of Environmental Studies and associated clinical professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Prior to joining NYU Wagner, Gernot was the founding executive director of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program (2016 – 2019), a research associate at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy. Before Harvard, Gernot 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 taught at Columbia, Harvard, and NYU, and has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.