Environomics: How the Green Economy is Transforming Your World

by Dharshini David

Economics isn’t just people in suits talking about statistics – it affects every aspect of your life, from the clothes on your back and the bread on your table, to the steel in your office block and the fuel for your car. And there are huge changes afoot as the global green revolution sweeps across our world.
Following the course of an average day – from the moment we flick on the light to the daily commute, and even where our savings are going – in this vibrant and eye-opening book, economist and broadcaster Dharshini David explores the green economic changes and challenges and opportunities facing us all.
From sustainable materials to ethical practices, from government policies to corporate greenwashing, she reveals the biggest factors driving innovation around the world, the wide-ranging ripple effects, and the issues we urgently need to overcome for a sustainable future.
If you’ve ever wondered what green issues really mean for our day-to-day lives, this book is for you.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment

288 pages, Hardcover

Published June 24, 2025

About the author

Dharshini David is an economist and broadcaster. From 2009 she fronted Sky News' daily financial coverage from the heart of the City, as well as co-presenting the channel's flagship Sky News Tonight programme. Before joining Sky, Dharshini advised Tesco's board on broadcast media. Prior to that, she was the face of the BBC's Wall Street coverage in New York, from where she presented a daily business show, and covered business, economics and consumer issues in London across the BBC, from the BBC1 Ten O'Clock News to Panorama and Radio 4's Today programme. Dharshini was recruited by the BBC while working on HSBC Investment Bank's trading floor as its UK Economist. This is her first book.

Reviews

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

As frightening as it is, this book describes not only the problem areas and the time window we have left (or even don't have left) to deal with the situation, but more importantly, it describes in a timely manner what has already been done or still needs to be implemented from an economic standpoint. Given that the literature on the subject currently oscillates between utter despair and complete denialism, this is refreshing news.

Per quanto spaventoso, questo libro descrive non solo le aree problematiche e la finestra temporale che ci resta (o anche non ci resta) per gestire la situazione, ma soprattutto descrive in maniera puntuale quanto é stato giá fatto o deve essere ancora implementato dal punto di vista economico. Considerato che attualmente la letteratura sul tema oscilla tra la disperazione piú totale e il negazionismo completo, é una piacevole novitá.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

[Jemima Pett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Environomics is a very readable account of what impacts underpin the simplest things in our existence. The author makes most of her focus the environmental side, especially climate change, pollution and land/sea use. But she also raises the social impacts as well, which is vital if transitions are going to be acceptable in our lives.

We start gently, by waking up and turning on the light. Plenty to analyse there. We start with the whole electricity and renewable energy system. While at times it feels like moving a mountain, it is clear that globally, we are making progress to cleaner systems. And cleaner light bulbs. After a diversion into clothing, we get back to the energy sector with our drive, bike or train to work. We are definitely making progress, but with some cautions…and especially when it comes to batteries. That leads into the battery impact of our phones, computers, laptops, etc., and the problem of rare earth metals, which, if you’ve never heard of them, are a Problem: scarce, geographically sparse, and extremely polluting to extract.

Let’s get back to clothes. This is probably the section where I learned most. The fashion industry needs much more attention, because it’s the one the consumer can really influence. In fact the average clothes buyer is probably the only person who can get the industry to change from its wasteful over-consumption of both natural and man-made fibres, all of which damage the environment.

Environomics goes on to examine palm oil, which is worth buying the book for even without the rest of the information. It also covers construction, shipping, the impact of next-day deliveries, and teases out some misconceptions in the process. And banking…payment systems and bitcoin. It’s pretty hard to think of any stone she has left unturned, although I think I found one… entertainment. How do you allocate the carbon emissions of downloading a film? Maybe that’s why she didn’t go there. Maybe the TV and Film industry does not figure that highly in sectoral emissions.

The good news is: most industries, governments and innovators are making great strides towards reducing their impact on our world. The bad news? Not fast enough, not enough investors, and they didn’t start soon enough. Very little in this book was not in prototype 20 years ago. Some of the solutions currently being developed will probably need 20 years to reach commercial status. Unless something even more urgent pushes them forward, we are sunk in our own mess.

The author does not reference her work here, although does give ‘further reading’ which is a tip of the iceberg (melting, obviously). I think for balance, anyone reading this should finish with the last section of David Attenborough’s ‘witness statement’ in which he cites more initiatives and countries who are playing a different, greener game. It makes economic sense to them.

[Saurabh Varanasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Highly prized commodities are always highly priced commodities” - my favorite line from Environomics said in the context of available alternatives to reduce our carbon footprint

This is one fabulous book. It’s a breezy yet utterly informative read. The book is fundamentally about bringing the readers head on with the ground reality of environmental damage caused by our actions in the form of statistics, current trends (although there are fleeting paragraphs on backstories, the book focuses more on ongoing initiatives rather than history of development of the topics under scrutiny), success and failure stories undertaken by different nations and much more.

The author isn’t interested in wasting a lot of time opinionating on these issues. Yet, the book feels much more than just a bunch of newspaper clippings. It has a strong narrative; the chapters are designed in such a way that it traces our journeys right from when we begin our day, have our morning cup of coffee, travel to work, etc. cleverly woven with the environmental impacts of our day to day actions in the broadest sense. There are, of course, a couple of chapters in between that do not hit the mark as hard as most other chapters, but which book can deem to be flawless?

Personally, I learnt a lot from all the chapters. I don’t think the author has presented pathbreaking findings or anything of that sort, but the book serves as a much-needed reminder of what governments across the world can do, and more importantly what we can ourselves do to reduce the carbon footprint from so many of our life enabling tasks that often go unnoticed. My favorite concept from the book is the Kuznets curve (named after the person who formulated the concept of GDP). Roughly speaking, it says that the general trend is that the economic prosperity of a nation increases in the first few years at the cost of environmental damage, but once the nation reaches a certain prosperity level it can afford to invest more resources in saving the environment. But, today, owing to the climate goals set for 2030 or 2050, many developing nations are also expected to equally participate in this investment without having reached that so-called prosperity limit. Is that fair? Don’t developed nations have a larger moral responsibility to shoulder more of the burden of saving the planet?

The book left me with a lot of questions to think about, but also with immense satisfaction for being more enlightened than I was yesterday.

[Vee Glessner · Rating 4 out of 5]

How lovely to be the first reviewer! My thanks to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.

This is quite the informative book and it covers a variety of topics from fossil fuels to plastic to smartphones, following the thread of how caring for the environment can or should be intertwined with the economy. I found it very educational, quoted many of the facts as I was learning them and overall a great "breadth" style book on environmentalism.

There are some editing oversights and it does not cite sources, in the version I got. The book reads more like an essay or dissertation, and the author overuses certain pet words or phrases throughout that get repetitive. I would still highly recommend it for the learning value and clear research put into preparing this lens.

[GM · Rating 2 out of 5]

pros: easy to read
cons: needs some infographics. there's also a ton of unsourced material - "A study" is mentioned too many times and she doesn't include the sources in the appendix.

p78 - Grey hydrogen is formed using fossil fuels to power the process. Blue hydrogen = Grey + carbon emitted when producing the hydrogen is removed from the atmosphere using carbon capture and storage. Green hydrogen = relies on renewable generation.

p91 "If SUV drivers formed a nation in their own right, a study by the International Energy Agenc suggests they'd rank seventh globally for carbon emissions."

p173 "Rice produces the equivalent gases to all of China's 1,000+ coal-fired power plants and uses 40 per cent of the world's irrigation water. Bacteria n the waterlogged soil of flooded paddy fields churn out methane, particularly when the rice straw is left behind to decompose in the water after the crop has been harvested, accounting for about 12 per cent of global emissions of methane."

p189 "China is not just the world's workshop and factory, it's also the dominant source of bitcoin mining, accounting for about 65 per cent. And in that country coal still accounts for the greater part of the energy mix."
- This book is published in 2024.
- China banned bitcoin mining
- "In September 2019, China accounted for 75% of the world's Bitcoin energy use. By April 2021, that had fallen to 46%." - Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology...
- "The latest data (2021), which covers the four months to the end of August, suggests that most Bitcoin mining (35.4%) is now US based, with Kazakhstan (18.1%) second and Russia (11%) third." Source https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-5...
- However, this statistic might be true if it's China-owned bitcoin mining factories. Source: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/bit...

p231 "And when an increasingly affluent population wants to emulate the lifestyle and diet of its richer counterparts, palm oil is the affordable shortcut. Almost half the world's output is consumed in Asia."
- Asia holds 60% of the world population, so "almost half" actually means they're under consuming relative to the population.. (source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/con...)
- The almost half is unsourced so I don't know what the other continents consume proportionally
- https://ourworldindata.org/palm-oil this chart shows that the biggest importers are China, India, US, Germany, UK, Brazil, France. So shouldn't the focus also be on US, UK, Germany, France consumption?

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Elliott & Thompson for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Environomics" is a refreshing and excellently researched exploration of the demand side (rather than the rather more dominantly written about supply side) side of the world's daily economic transactions. Of all the books I've read on sustainability as of late, "Environomics" truly stands a cut above the rest. It is original and wide-ranging exploring amongst other green energy, corporate greenwashing and geopolitics and is refreshingly pragmatic.

It is one of the rare books that actually takes underlying economics into account when trying to understand why the world isn't magically and autonomously transitioning into a more sustainable one: the more you read, the more you come to understand that we don't just need the supply side of the equation to change, we also need somebody to be prepared to pay for the more expensive alternatives. Or change their communal behaviour.

By focussing on a variety of our daily activities like switching on a light, getting dressed, checking our phones or buying a coffee, the author takes us through the countless implicit approvals we provide to supply side business models which have been constructed to satisfy our daily needs at the lowest possible cost. As a society, we need to understand this mechanism. If we persist in our failure to understand why "those evil corporations" keep on pumping oil or providing single use plastics, I fear all environmental protests will be for nought. Until our planet suffers a huge inevitable environmental aneurism (my words, not those of the author).

I loved it. I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in sustainable economy. It represents an urgently needed complementary story to all the technological advances which are making it technically feasible to enjoy a sustainable society. The latter is just half of the story. Now we need to sort out whether we are either willing to pay for the alternative or we are willing to change our ways.

#Environomics #NetGalley

[Bharath · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good introductory book on the major contributors to global warming. This is not for climate change deniers as it assumes that for a fact.

The book starts with the context around the Paris accord to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degree C, and the recent meet in Abu Dhabi. The balance between ensuring energy certainty, while at the same time limiting the impact of global warming requires a lot of work. While the direction appears right with more consciousness around the topic, pace of change is also critical. Many countries have increased their proportion of clean energy from wind, solar in recent years. The initial investments are still expensive though costs have gone down since a decade back.

There are a number of practices which also add stress - fast fashion for instance exacts a major toll towards greenhouse gas emissions. While cotton uses less carbon footprint than synthetics, it very water intensive, and is depleting the ground water table in countries like India where there are many regions which are water stressed. There are many other areas which need action – addressing dependence of lithium, cobalt & rare earth metal in many areas, curbing waste in the manufacturing, transport, consumer support for conservation & recycling, buying environment friendly products, reducing meat consumption (especially beef), limiting use of plastics & recycling. Plant based food are gaining, but very slowly.

Greenwashing is an issue and it is currently near impossible to verify claims by product manufacturers.

An informative book!

Thanks to Netgalley, Elliott & Thompson and the author for a free electronic review copy.

[AZGD · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was going to give this book a single star due to the fact that there is very little in the way of references, but as this is an ARC provided via NetGalley, I'm giving the author/publisher the benefit of the doubt. Although, given the comment around how this is a very fluid field, not sure it is warranted.

I do think I'm being generous as there is an abundance of weasel words, e.g. the Great Pacific Garbage patch supposedly covers 1.6 sq miles. Why not say estimated at ?

I think the way the book is organized is interesting, as if covering an average Westerner's day and discussing the impact of the various activities.

At the risk of banging on about the sources and references, I really do wish that the book had proper sources as some of the claims seem exaggerated and/or not explained properly.

All in All, it's not a bad book but I did get a bit hanged up on the references towards the end, which probably coloured my view and lessened the enjoyment/learning.

[Molly Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was great and gets you think about impact at all levels - the government level, businesses and importantly the individual level. This book does a great job of bringing out our agency as individuals, to impact problems that often seem so out of reach and catastrophic. It strikes a good balance between optimism and realism, emphasising that in many areas we are going in the right direction, but in most cases far from fast enough.

Some things fascinated me: that changing were your money is invested or stored can have more impact than stopping flying; that plastic can only be recycled 2 or 3 times and that Bitcoin is so un-eco. It has inspired me to make different choices and shifted my beliefs on what makes the most impact and where.

[David Thoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the book does quite well in making itself easy to read and I liked how the author categorised the industries as chapters.

However, I think it does fairly average in expounding on the deeper economics of going “green”. Maybe it’s on me, because I thought it would go deeper into the economics of things rather than having quite a touch and go on the various industries.

All in all, I think it’s a great book if you’d like to know about how going green is impacting different industries at the broad strokes, but don’t expect too much infographics/charts/theories on the economic principles of things.

[Kulvinder McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Put complex topics into a readily readable form.

[Isaac Chia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can't fault the book for being a quick 101, but feels like it could've been 8-10 factsheets with infographics (instead of repetitive prose)

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, publisher and Net Galley.

This is an important book and well worth a read. It’s a non-fiction books that explores the intersection of economics and environment.

This book covers a broad range of interesting subjects such as farming, fishing, phones, travel, shopping, energy. It looks at how economics can drive poor and harmful environmental choices whilst also exploring how many opportunities for green investment there are and how great the economic potential is of going green.

I’d heard a lot of the content covered in this book before from different sources because I have a strong interest in this subject and have read about it extensively and pursued education in this area. I’d say this is a really useful introduction to this subject to get an idea of the different areas covered and I would recommend it.

I would have preferred the book to be referenced. Although I have seen a lot of this information validated in other sources, I feel a bit nervous reading statistics and information presented as factual without referencing. The author did provides a list of sources at the end, but I didn’t see specific referencing in the Net Galley edition that I read.