Carbon Politics and the Failure of the Kyoto Protocol

Carbon Politics and the Failure of the Kyoto Protocol PDF Author: Gerald Kutney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317914651
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Carbon Politics and the Failure of Kyoto charts the framework and political evolution of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and examines the ensuing failure of the international community to adequately address climate change. The focus is not on the science or consequences of climate change but on the political gamesmanship of the major players throughout the UNFCCC negotiation process. More than an updated history of the subject matter, this book provides a detailed study of the carbon targets which became the biggest influencing factor on the reaction of nations to Kyoto’s binding agreements. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the leading nations’ motives, including the US, China and Germany, in entering the negotiations, in particular, their economic interests. Despite the effort to combat climate change in politics that the negotiations represent, the book concludes that an agreement which requires almost 200 very different nations to agree on a single protocol is doomed to failure. The book offers a novel contribution to our understanding of this failure and suggests alternative frameworks and policies to tackle what is arguably the most complex political issue of our time.

Carbon Politics and the Failure of the Kyoto Protocol

Carbon Politics and the Failure of the Kyoto Protocol PDF Author: Gerald Kutney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317914651
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Carbon Politics and the Failure of Kyoto charts the framework and political evolution of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and examines the ensuing failure of the international community to adequately address climate change. The focus is not on the science or consequences of climate change but on the political gamesmanship of the major players throughout the UNFCCC negotiation process. More than an updated history of the subject matter, this book provides a detailed study of the carbon targets which became the biggest influencing factor on the reaction of nations to Kyoto’s binding agreements. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the leading nations’ motives, including the US, China and Germany, in entering the negotiations, in particular, their economic interests. Despite the effort to combat climate change in politics that the negotiations represent, the book concludes that an agreement which requires almost 200 very different nations to agree on a single protocol is doomed to failure. The book offers a novel contribution to our understanding of this failure and suggests alternative frameworks and policies to tackle what is arguably the most complex political issue of our time.

The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming

The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming PDF Author: David G. Victor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824060
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other key nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative. Global warming continues to dominate environmental news as legislatures worldwide grapple with the process of ratification of the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the November 2000 conference at the Hague showed clearly how difficult it will be to bring the Kyoto treaty into force. Yet most politicians, policymakers, and analysts hailed it as a vital first step in slowing greenhouse warming. David Victor was not among them. Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if emissions trading works. The Protocol requires industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to specific targets. Crucially, the Protocol also provides for so-called "emissions trading," whereby nations could offset the need for rapid cuts in their own emissions by buying emissions credits from other countries. But starting this trading system would require creating emission permits worth two trillion dollars--the largest single invention of assets by voluntary international treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would be essential if the system were expanded to include developing countries. The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol--which Victor views as inevitable--will provide the political space to rethink strategy. Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions, such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the debilitating drawbacks of each. Individuals at all levels of environmental science, economics, public policy, and politics-from students to professionals--and anyone else hoping to participate in the debate over how to slow global warming will want to read this book.

The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol PDF Author: Sebastian Oberthür
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662039257
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997 was a major achievement in the endeavour to tackle the problem of global climate change at the dawn of the 21st century. After many years of involvement in the negotiation process, the book's two internationally recognised authors now offer the international community a first hand and inside perspective of the debate on the Kyoto Protocol. The book provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of the history and content of the Protocol itself as well as of the economic, political and legal implications of its implementation. It also presents a perspective for the further development of the climate regime. These important features make this book an indispensable working tool for policy makers, negotiators, academics and all those actively involved and interested in climate change issues in both the developed and developing world.

What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It

What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It PDF Author: Paul G. Harris
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670431
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Governments have failed to stem global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases causing climate change. Indeed, climate-changing pollution is increasing globally, and will do so for decades to come without far more aggressive action. What explains this failure to effectively tackle one of the world's most serious problems? And what can we do about it? To answer these questions, Paul G. Harris looks at climate politics as a doctor might look at a very sick patient. He performs urgent diagnoses and prescribes vital treatments to revive our ailing planet before it's too late. The book begins by diagnosing what’s most wrong with climate politics, including the anachronistic international system, which encourages nations to fight for their narrowly perceived interests and makes major cuts in greenhouse pollution extraordinarily difficult; the deadlock between the United States and China, which together produce over one-third of global greenhouse gas pollution but do little more than demand that the other act first; and affluent lifestyles and overconsumption, which are spreading rapidly from industrialized nations to the developing world. The book then prescribes several "remedies" for the failed politics of climate change, including a new kind of climate diplomacy with people at its center, national policies that put the common but differentiated responsibilities of individuals alongside those of nations, and a campaign for simultaneously enhancing human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. While these treatments are aspirational, they are not intended to be utopian. As Harris shows, they are genuine, workable solutions to what ails the politics of climate change today.

Post-Kyoto Climate Governance

Post-Kyoto Climate Governance PDF Author: Asim Zia
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135078270
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
In the midst of human-induced global climate change, powerful industrialized nations and rapidly industrializing nations are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Even if we arrive at a Hubbert’s peak for oil extraction in the 21st century, the availability of technologically recoverable coal and natural gas will mean that fossil fuels continue to be burned for many years to come, and our civilization will have to deal with the consequences far into the future. Climate change will not discriminate between rich and poor nations, and yet the UN-driven process of negotiating a global climate governance regime has hit serious roadblocks. This book takes a trans-disciplinary perspective to identify the causes of failure in developing an international climate policy regime and lays out a roadmap for developing a post-Kyoto (post-2012) climate governance regime in the light of lessons learned from the Kyoto phase. Three critical policy analytical lenses are used to evaluate the inherent complexity of designing post-Kyoto climate policy: the politics of scale; the politics of ideology; and the politics of knowledge. The politics of scale lens focuses on the theme of temporal and spatial discounting observed in human societies and how it impacts the allocation of environmental commons and natural resources across space and time. The politics of ideology lens focuses on the themes of risk and uncertainty perception in complex, pluralistic human societies. The politics of knowledge lens focuses on the themes of knowledge and power dynamics in terms of governance and policy designs, such as marketization of climate governance observed in the Kyoto institutional regime.

Fools Rule

Fools Rule PDF Author: William Marsden
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307398250
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
From the National Business Book Award-winning author of Stupid to the Last Drop, a captivating polemic on the global failure to deal with climate change. Kyoto, 1997. Montreal, 2005. Copenhagen, 2009. Cancun, 2010. In Fools Rule, Marsden illustrates how inefficient and short-sighted political negotiations have become despite mounting scientific evidence that immediate action is essential to curb the effects of climate change. International climate change summits are now widely monitored events, attended by state leaders and crowded with journalists; yet somehow they have never been less productive. Treaties and action plans are smothered by economic self-interest, diplomatic errors and every nation's hungry scramble for its share of the remaining atmospheric space. Marsden takes us from inside the bungled negotiations at Copenhagen to the melting glaciers and untapped oil reserves of the Arctic; he shows us the paralyzing effect oil and gas companies have on green legal initiatives in the United States, and therefore on any international climate change treaty; and, with wit and penetrating insight, he asks the toughest question--will we be able to change before it's too late?

The Failures of American and European Climate Policy

The Failures of American and European Climate Policy PDF Author: Loren R. Cass
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791468562
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Examines why some nations, but not others, have met their commitments to international climate treaties.

Global Climate Change Policy and Carbon Markets

Global Climate Change Policy and Carbon Markets PDF Author: Richard H. Rosenzweig
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137560517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In this book, Richard Rosenzweig, describes the policies proposed and adopted in the first generation of climate change policy-making including the Kyoto Protocol and the carbon markets and assesses their failure to halt the increases of rising emissions of greenhouse gases. Carefully structured throughout, each chapter demonstrate how the first generation of policies failed because they were top down, overly ambitious and complex. The author uses the lessons drawn from this analysis to recommend more modest, targeted policies, arguing that they will be more successful in fighting climate change in the new era of policy-making. An invaluable reference for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in taking relevant courses in Environmental Policy, Law and Business. This book will also be a useful overview for researchers working in the field as well as those working in government and policy.

The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol PDF Author: Michael Grubb
Publisher: Chatham House (Formerly Riia)
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
A concise and authoritative guide to the evolution, terms and implications of the Kyoto Protocol, this book provides an economic and political account of key policy debates and their outcome. It also explains the meaning of provisions on emissions trading and other flexibility mechanisms, and provides a quantitative analysis using the emissions trading model devised by the RIIA's Energy and Environmental Programme.

Climate Denial in American Politics

Climate Denial in American Politics PDF Author: Gerald Kutney
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003811566
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Climate Denial in American Politics is a detailed examination of the rise within American politics of climate denialism, the counter movement which challenges the accepted science of climate change. Organized around the administrations of American presidents from Roosevelt to Biden, this book provides an unprecedented account of climate denial within both the White House and Congress, and the ‘climate brawls’ that followed. This volume is a rebuke to discredit the climate denier, their propaganda, and their sources. Gerald Kutney examines the evolution of American political thought on climate change and provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the sordid history of the propaganda which has promoted climate denial and corrupted politicians in America. He uses direct quotes from primary sources, such as government records, to show the extreme and pervasive nature of anti-science opinions made by political climate deniers and limit any misinterpretation that might result from paraphrasing. Weaving the account of climate denialism in American politics with anecdotes from Kutney’s own decade-long experience of challenging climate deniers on Twitter using #ClimateBrawl, this book provides a valuable insight into the world of climate obstruction. Climate Denial in American Politics will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental politics and American politics more broadly.