Nick Kristof gave Economic Gangsters a thumbs up on his blog today, calling it “smart and eminently readable”. In earlier New York Times columns, Nick had already written about the link between extreme weather and violence in Africa. In his post he supports the Rapid Conflict Prevention Support (RCPS) idea that Ray and Ted advocate in Economic Gangsters to try to stop armed conflicts before they start :

“The book also promotes the idea of automatic aid flows to vulnerable countries affected by climate shocks, such as drought. The idea is that otherwise, these countries risk being torn apart by conflict, even civil war — and that is far more costly to the global community than modest amounts of aid to cushion the shock. Since the average civil war in Africa imposes costs to itself and its neighbors of $100 billion, that sounds like a good idea.”

We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves.

- Ray and Ted