Our quality of life is heavily influenced by the quality of our environment. Whether we want to keep the beauty and quality that we have, or we want to change and clean up those areas of our environment that have been compromised, environmental quality is inextricably bound up with our sense of the quality of our lives. Yet, this comes with a cost.

We were relatively successful at tackling many of the environmental problems of the past. But we now face a new set of environmental challenges, and we have neither the financial nor the operational structures to deal with these situations. And so it is imperative that we adopt the most cost-effective solutions to the problems we face now and in the future.

Written for a general audience, Paying for Tomorrow: Maintaining Our Quality of Life explores and explains the various financial strategies that could be used to preserve the quality of our lives. Yes, we have to pay to reduce greenhouse gases, but we also have to pay for climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation. Yes, we have to have safe drinking water plants and wastewater treatment plants, but we also need power to run them. Yes, we want to conserve energy and increase our use of renewables, but we also need to protect jobs. This book is about what we are going to have to pay for in order to maintain our quality of life in the foreseeable future. And it is about the strategies we must employ to make sure that we use the most cost-effective and least expensive strategies to pay for them.