Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto

Climate change poses a multidimensional international challenge, one that eludes straightforward solutions. In Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, some of the best-known and respected authorities in climate policy — including members of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — provide a comprehensive agenda for global collective action. Representing both industrialized and developing nations, the contributors present a thought-provoking examination of the economic, social and political context of climate policy within their countries.There is a growing international consensus that the earth's climate is being changed by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Evidence presented by the IPCC and others points to the potential for increasingly dangerous weather, new disease outbreaks, regional water shortages, the loss of habitat and species and other disturbing developments that could have profound social and economic impacts around the globe. Opinion on what should be done to address climate change, however, remains sharply divided within and among countries.Tension remains between wealthy nations and developing countries regarding the roles and responsibilities of each. Not only are governments and societies wrestling with the complications involved in the provision of a global public good, but they are also dealing with unprecedented uncertainties about the costs and benefits of solutions with a long term course of delivery. These economics lie at the crux of this issue today, as they have since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997. Though monumental in its efforts, the Kyoto Protocol has left much to be negotiated and achieved, with the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide — the United States — rejecting it. With Kyoto's emissions targets set to expire in 2012, the authors of this volume call for a multilateral approach that goes beyond the mitigation – focused Kyoto policies, balancing them with strategies for adaptation. Informed, insightful, and evenhanded, this book gives a new impetus to the increasingly important global climate policy debate.