Climate-change Policy

The threat posed by climate change has not yet been matched by international agreements and economic policies that can deliver sharp reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Although the Kyoto Protocol has now been ratified by Russia and hence come into legal effect, the USA, China, and India are all outside its emissions caps. Few European countries are on course to meet their own national targets, and even if fully implemented, it is widely acknowledged that the Kyoto Protocol would make little difference to the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. In consequence, there is a search for a post-Kyoto framework, new institutions, and new economic policies to spread the costs and meet them in an economically efficient way. This volume provides an accessible overview of the economics of climate change, the policy options, and the scope for making significant carbon reductions. Contributors to this volume - Dieter Helm, University of Oxford Alistair Ulph, University of Southampton David Pearce, University College London Robert Mendelsohn, Yale University Richard Tol, Hamburg University Tom Tietenberg, Colby College, Maine Stephen Sorrell, University of Sussex Jos Sijm, Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands Ian Parry, Resources for the Future, Washington D.C. Michael Grubb, University of Cambridge Stephen DeCanio, University of California, Santa Barbra Christoph Bohringer, Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim David Victor, Stanford University Scott Barrett, Johns Hopkins University Cameron Hepburn, University of Oxford Richard Mash, University of Oxford Philippe Sands, SOAS, University of London Chris Hope, University of Cambridge