Of interest to a wide range of scholars and the general public, this book provides a thorough and well-rounded overview of the myriad issues embedded within global climate policy discourse, as well as a discussion of the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change. As the text explains, the third assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated that greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere will continue to rise during the 21st century, causing global temperature increases of between 1.5°C and 5.8°C. The range of uncertainty in these temperature estimates represents the uncertainty of the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing concentrations of GHGs. Despite this, there is wide acceptance amongst scientists, policymakers and the international community at large that anthropogenic emissions of GHGs will lead to significant global warming and a noticeably changed global climate. Moreover, it has been argued that the current apparatus and architecture for dealing with this complex global issue (i.e. the Kyoto Protocol) is inadequate and/or insufficient. Consequently key questions concerning how the international community can learn to manage the complexities involved in the provision of this global public good remain unanswered.

For readers unfamiliar with the complex challenges and problems encountered in understanding climate change and finding appropriate governance systems to tackle it, this book should offer some interesting insights from social, economic and political perspectives. For example, the mitigation of climate change and the need to slow the rate of GHG emissions is one of the challenges discussed in the book. Manifested in this problem are issues surrounding sovereignty and equity, as well as debates over what constitutes dangerous climate change. The fact that the impacts of climate change will not be uniform further compound this problem; the majority of the damage from moderate to severe climate change will fall most heavily on the poorest people in the poorest countries. Ethical considerations are therefore an inherent part of the process of tackling climate change, and we must be mindful not just of the well-being of future generations relative to ours, but as Barrett points out in his chapter, of the well-being of richer and poorer societies both today and in the future. Furthermore, rich industrialized nations have the highest per caput rates of GHG emissions, but with a combined population of over 2.45 billion, the future development of India and China will impact global emissions figures considerably. It is because of these and other asymmetries that the playing field is by no means level and reaching an international agreement on how to tackle climate change will for now, as Zedillo comments, remain a work in progress.

This volume is based on discussions that took place at a conference held at Yale in 2005 to debate global policy after 2012 and, three years on, these contributions retain a significant degree of pertinence. I do however feel that the book would have benefited from a strong concluding chapter with critical discussion of future initiatives. Although Zedillo writes a clear and concise introduction, there is no concluding chapter and therefore no summary of the various suggestions of where the international community should go from here. According to the book cover, Global Warming gives a new impetus to the global climate policy debate. As such, I expected the text to provide more in the way of ideas and suggestions (contentious or otherwise) of how to move forward after Kyoto's emission targets expire in 2012. Perhaps I wanted prescriptive discussions that are not possible, and that would only have in retrospect dated the book? Despite realizing that I might be asking too much, I still feel that the book fell somewhat short of its ambitious claim of providing a new impetus. However, this does not deny the book its merits. Indeed, not only are the contributions varied, but the geographical representation is also diverse, with commentary on climate change policy in the UK, Canada, Russia, India and China which together exemplify some of the tensions between developed economies, economies in transition and developing economies. Moreover, the prestigious list of contributors, including members of the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPCC, adds value and a degree of authority to the overall content of the text.