This volume mirrors the disintegration of climate policy seen at Copenhagen, where negotiators failed to reach a global agreement to modify the Kyoto Protocol; instead, a key rump group agreed to a “pledge and review” system for delivering future domestic policy improvements. The illustrious contributors to Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy provide disparate ideas about international policy architectures (e.g., comprehensive targets and timetables versus sectoral approaches), negotiation, assessment, compliance, technology transfer, economic development, adaptation, deforestation, and more. Since space does not permit adequate evaluation of this vast array of ideas, this review will instead provide a few comments about the editors' principal goals and discuss two of the most novel proposals. Overall, this volume contains a lot of useful insights and perspectives, perhaps too many.
The editors begin by pointing out that the world's nations “confront a tremendous challenge” in designing “scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic” climate policy (p. 1). The proposals in this book, as one would expect given the economics background of the vast majority of its contributors, emphasize economic rationality first and pragmatism second, and generally let scientific soundness—defined as the avoidance of dangerous climate change—go. It is, however, difficult to fault the contributors (an international group that includes some law professors, scientists, etc.) because scientifically sound policy is no longer achievable absent some significant changes in key governments around the world.
As its full title suggests, this book aims to influence policymakers. It contains two summary chapters of about 27 pages each and an appendix that briefly summarizes the results of each underlying research initiative. Such brevity can work both ways: On the one hand, the inclusion of so many ideas on disparate aspects of climate disruption policy will make it hard for busy policymakers to fully grasp them. On the other hand, the book provides a very good way for diverse audiences to quickly become acquainted with many of the principal policy dilemmas and ideas percolating in the field.
Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy builds upon Joseph E. Aldy and Robert N. Stavins's longer edited volume, Architectures for Agreement: Addressing Global Climate Change in the Post-Kyoto World (2007). Architectures for Agreement and some of the contributions to Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy focus on proposals to extend the Kyoto Protocol's targets and timetables, to harmonize domestic policy measures, such as a carbon tax, and to employ bottoms-up policies, perhaps with some coordination but little central control. The Kyoto Protocol contains percentage reduction targets for developing countries. Many had hoped that the Copenhagen meeting would strengthen these targets by making them more stringent and broadly applicable. But, as this book emphasizes, the world cannot easily reconcile the imperative to include developing country commitments, in light of their rapidly rising emissions, with equitable arguments that relatively poor countries should not have to limit their economic development to solve a problem created by rich countries.
One of the book's cleverest proposals involves securing an international agreement to a formula for emission reductions extending to 2100. The formula would embody key ideas about adequate global commitments and equity so that, for example, developing country targets would become more stringent as GDPs rise. This nicely addresses the reality of the dynamics of economic growth; as the book points out, the richest “developing” nations already have greater per capita income than the poorest “developed” countries. The specific proposal put forward here well illustrates the preference for pragmatism and economic rationality over scientific soundness, as it aims to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 500 ppm, a level most scientists regard as very dangerous, but views avoiding costs of more than 5% of GDP as a political imperative that can be translated reliably into future emissions targets. Economists have not done very well at predicting regulatory costs three years out into the future; predicting abatement costs many decades from now, which an analyst must do in order to link a GDP percentage to an emissions reduction target to be attained decades hence, requires a degree of prophecy exceeding human capabilities. Still, this proposal provides an intriguing way around a key roadblock in climate negotiations, if countries will surrender their sovereignty to a formula. And if policymakers wanted to, they could tweak the formula to risk exceeding predicted 5% of GDP costs in future years in exchange for some chance of avoiding dangerous climate disruption.
Judging whether targets and timetables remain a viable option, even with the formula-based approach, proves difficult and divides scholars (see Architectures for Agreement, pp. 57–66). But international environmental law has usually proven ineffective because of the issue-specific framework and protocol approach, under which each new environmental problem requires an agreement upon general principles and the creation of new institutions, followed by the slow evolution of more specific commitments in binding protocols. This contrasts with the World Trade Organization approach, often seen as more effective, whereby a single permanent institution administers an agreement to a set of agreed-upon general principles. The formula-based approach holds the promise of allowing evolution of an agreement without renegotiating every few years.
This mathematical approach from the economist Jeffrey Frankel contrasts with a bottom-up deal-making proposal from the political scientist David Victor. Victor models his proposal after the accession procedure that the WTO uses to admit new countries, which involves tailored deals to reduce trade barriers in exchange for WTO membership. He argues for agreements whereby developed countries would offer substantial strategic assistance in exchange for adoption of major policy reforms in key sectors in developing countries, such as the power sector in China or forestry in Brazil. As the book points out, sectoral proposals require a large number of demanding negotiations. But in the absence of global agreement on targets, proposals like this one merit serious consideration. The sketch in this book does not provide sufficient detail to figure out whether developed countries have enough to offer to heavily influence key domestic policies in developing countries, but Victor's longer chapter in Architectures for Agreement suggests, for example, that China might substitute relatively clean natural gas for coal if an accommodation could be reached with Russia, the key supplier, and that India might use a lot of nuclear energy if the international community relaxed export controls in an appropriate way (see Architectures for Agreement, p. 157).
Most of the contributions are of high quality but offer less originality than the proposals highlighted here. For example, the book, appropriately, includes the usual economists' praise of carbon taxes, in the form of Richard Cooper's proposal for a harmonized carbon tax (pp. 72–74). It is not clear why carbon taxes should be harmonized rather than disparate. The equitable arguments that the book accepts for differentiating responsibilities under national targets would seem to apply equally to a tax proposal. Harmonized taxes avoid competitive disadvantages, but the same could be said of harmonized caps.
Unfortunately, as Richard Schmalansee notes in Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy's epilogue, U.S. action is a prerequisite for forging an effective global agreement. Without that, pieces of this book's policies will come to life in various countries, but no coherent global architecture will emerge.
