What Adam Smith would say about the climate crisis – Economy

Adam Smith was born 300 years ago. Man-made climate change was not even imaginable at the time. Nevertheless, the findings of the founder of modern economics are also useful for dealing with the climate crisis.

What would Adam Smith do today? climate change say? In his time, that couldn’t be an issue. When the Scottish founder of modern economics published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, his compatriot James Watt had just patented the model of a steam engine. The industrial age had not yet begun, and in the mid-eighteenth century it was beyond all imagination that the use of fossil fuels by steam engines and other machines might one day endanger human life on earth. But what Smiths wrote then is of such fundamental importance that his findings are still highly relevant two and a half centuries later. They can also be applied to present-day problems, including dealing with climate change.