Climate change policy after Kyoto: Blueprint for a realistic approach

摘要

This book outlines a 'hybrid' climate change policy that has been designed to maximise the advantages of taxing and permit systems, and to avoid the pitfalls of the Kyoto Protocol in a future of climate uncertainty. While the authors can hardly be blamed for preceding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Report, the book assumes that the science of climate change is far less certain than it actually is, and even than it was in 2002, when the book was published. Certainly, few climate change scientists would now agree with the authors that 'it is a substantial overstatement of current scientific knowledge to conclude that anthropogenic warming has been detected in historical data' (p. 29). And although the authors begin with the premise that the range of scientific uncertainty is too great to justify immediate action to reduce emissions by draconian measures, by the end they state that 'the longer the world waits for an effective and flexible climate change policy, the worse the climate problem becomes and the more expensive it will be to address it' (p. 107).