This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

The first thing is that people have to come to grips with the difficulties we face.

I think the scientists have and many of the people have but the

governments have to. Yale Universities William Nord House who on October 8th

shared the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for integrating climate change into long-run

macroeconomic analysis. He spoke by phone to a representative of the Nobel Prizes.

And then the second thing is most important is that we take some time of economic steps.

I have advocated for many years of carbon tax as a way of implementing policies.

And then the third thing is we'll have to have a as a way of implementing policies.

And then the third thing is we'll have to have a significant

technological transformation.

Of course, those first two would help the third, but those three have to go together you can't do without

public support but you can't do it without some kind of economic signals in the

form of a carbon tax and then all of those will help induce the technological changes that are necessary to make a transition to a low-carbon world.

Nordhaus shared the prize with Paul Romer of New York University for his work integrating technological

innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis. Nordhouse continued,

The most recent work I've done is studying actual trends in abatement and in policies suggest

we're doing much less than needs to be to reach any of the targets, whether it's a one and a half degree or two degree or even a three degree target.

There is, I think, the policies are lagging very, very far, miles, miles behind the science and what needs to be done.

But it's not too late, but the steps we have to take are more difficult now than if we'd

started earlier. For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Steve Merski.