Economic Choices in a Warming World

by Christian de Perthuis , Translated by Michael Westlake

• ISBN13: 9780521175685
• ISBN10: 0521175682
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Since the publication of the Stern Review, economists have started to ask more normative questions about climate change. Should we act now or tomorrow? What is the best theoretical carbon price to reach long-term abatement targets? How do we discount the long-term costs and benefits of climate change? This provocative book argues that these are the wrong sorts of questions to ask because they don't take into account the policies that have already been implemented. Instead, it urges us to concentrate on existing policies and tools by showing how the development of carbon markets could dramatically reduce world greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, triggering policies to build a new low-carbon energy system while restructuring the way agriculture interacts with forests. This provides an innovative new perspective on how a post-Kyoto international climate regime could emerge from agreements between the main GHG emitters capping their emissions and building an international carbon market.

Author Biography

Christian de Perthuis is a professor of economics at the University Paris-Dauphine, where he is also the Director of the Masters programme Energy, Finance and Carbon, and a member of the Council on Economics and Sustainable Development, a body advising the French Minister for the Environment. His most recent book is Pricing Carbon (Cambridge University Press, 2010), co-edited with A. Denny Ellerman and Frank Convery.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction: Manaus opera house	p. 1
Climate risk	p. 8
Some like it hot: adaptation to climate change	p. 34
Building a low-carbon energy future	p. 57
Pricing carbon: the economics of cap-and-trade	p. 88
Intensifying agriculture to safeguard forests	p. 117
The price of carbon: the economics of projects	p. 146
Macroeconomic impacts: sharing carbon rent	p. 169
International climate negotiations	p. 191
Conclusion: both action and inaction entail risks	p. 217
References	p. 223
Thirty key readings	p. 225
Thirty key sets of figures	p. 231
Greenhouse gas emissions around the world	p. 237
Glossary	p. 243
Index	p. 247
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