Nicholas Stern, a British economist and academic who is most known for the Stern Review, said during a public lecture in Manchester that climate change is the greatest market failure that the world has seen.

The problem of climate change involves a fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay.

Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen. The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction or delayed action is now overwhelming. We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century. The problem is global and the response must be a collaboration on a global scale.

Via the Guardian