Description
Book SynopsisExplains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. This book explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative. It proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels.
Trade Review"In [his] timely new book ... [David Victor] argues that ... the real cause of the treaty's collapse is the architecture of a pure 'cap and trade' system, which allows ambitious targets but puts no limits on compliance costs."--Economist "In 1997, 38 relatively rich nations agreed at Kyoto to reduce by 2012 their greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, to below 1990 levels. This short and closely reasoned book argues persuasively that this plan is deeply flawed."--Foreign Affairs "Victor is no Pollyanna. He thinks public awareness of the problem is widespread. The lack of a 'viable architecture' for international cooperation is the main impediment to action."--David Warsh, The Boston Globe "Victor is not the enemy. He bears bad news, but one's reaction to bad news should not be directed against its bearer. Victor's painstaking analysis shows that the signers of the protocol left the really difficult questions to be worked out later, according to an unrealistic timetable. He carefully analyzes the alternative ways these difficult matters could succeed."--John B. Cobb, Christian Century "David Victor 'thinks big' about the architecture of an international regime that would effectively regulate the primary cause of this climate change: emissions of greenhouse gases into the global atmosphere... Victor's analysis makes it clear that in order to design a policy framework that will allow active control of the rate of future climate change, the US will have to engage with the emerging new institutions of global environmental governance."--Mike Hulme,The Times Higher Education Supplement "Victor's analysis is sharp and fresh... He offers a measured analysis of intelligent solutions... At heart, though, he argues that the protocol will fail because of its architecture and its inability to take modern economic truths into account."--Alanna Mitchell, The Globe and Mail "Required reading [for] those interested in international relations and economics."--Choice "This book gives the reader a detailed and complete analysis of why the author anticipated the Kyoto Protocol to fail just as the failure is currently happening... [Victor] succeeds in showing that the global-warming problem touches different disciplines from natural sciences to economy and from national and international legislation to policy and diplomacy."--F. Pauli, Journal of Economics
Table of ContentsPreface vii CHAPTER 1 Crisis and Opportunity 3 CHAPTER 2 Kyoto's Fantasyland: Allocating the Atmosphere 25 CHAPTER 3 Monitoring and Enforcement 55 CHAPTER 4 Rethinking the Architecture 75 CHAPTER 5 After Kyoto: What Next? 109 APPENDIX The Causes and Effects of Global Warming: A Brief Survey of the Science 117 Notes 123 Works Cited 155 Index 173
