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There is common agreement that climate change presents a serious threat to the planet. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to the climate change problem and summarize the main findings of the other chapters of the book. In addition we present 10 consensus principles on climate change policy developed by participants at a conference in honour of Tom Schelling. We argue that there is a need to go beyond many economists' preferred solution of doing no more than pricing pollution appropriately to also include consideration of alternatives such as geo-engineering and R&D subsidies. In addition, there is a growing realization that unless the cost of containing carbon emissions can be reduced substantially through innovation, not much mitigation is likely to occur. Finally, the authors of the Schelling consensus believe that a new approach is needed to climate change negotiations, which focuses on enforceable, realistic targets.

This chapter traces the climate change mitigation policy agendas of New York City, Los Angeles, and Toronto, focusing on the period since 2007, and specifically the tools with which they sought to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The climate change mitigation policy agendas developed by the three cities do reflect their particular context and the process of learning and strategic adjustment over time. Each city has a very unique set of programs and policies in place to target GHG emissions, from energy use benchmarking to installing solar panels to incentivizing alternative modes of transportation. In each case, this mix initially reflected the city's strengths and opportunities. Over time, the cities have expanded and diversified their agendas in response to changing conditions and new information. In some cases, the cities have had to readjust when certain approaches failed or lost political support. In other cases, the cities have sought to take advantage of new opportunities or diversified their agendas in an effort to meet more ambitious goals.

This chapter examines climate change measures in the Northeast North America. It seeks to uncover how regional institutions and policy networks, along with the public, private, and civil society sectors, are taking on significant leadership roles in pioneering climate change policymaking and implementation. The chapter also explains the important aspects of major policy developments and their importance for effective climate change impact reduction. Political action in the northeast shows the appropriateness and technical and economic plausibility of more ambitious efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, which sets significant precedents upon which future North American climate change legislation will be based. The chapter concludes by giving commentaries about the important features of current and future climate change policies in North America.

Climate change is a particularly difficult policy problem, being long term and multifaceted. This chapter explores the proposition that well-crafted laws make it easier to make climate change policy that is coordinated, systematic, durable, and likely to encourage suitable energy innovation. Without dictating content, it identifies five elements for such legislation: greenhouse gas targets that have legal significance; instruments such as carbon budgets that impel early action towards long-term targets; requirements to identify the policies and measures that will reach those targets; requirements for decision makers in different sectors to pursue climate change targets; and rules for the information base. It concludes that laws reflecting these elements can improve the process of climate change policy making.

In the late 1990s, voluntary initiatives and particularly the Voluntary Challenge and Registry Program (VCR), were thought to be preferred instruments for implementing Canada's commitments under the Framework Convention on Climate Change and later under the Kyoto Protocol. However, in January 2005, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported in a headline story on a leaked Government of Canada document entitled ‘Climate Change: Lessons Learned and Future Directions’. The draft document was quoted as stating that the ‘voluntary approach and limited incentives [are] not sufficient to drive substantial change’. Policy-makers would, ‘need more consideration of regulation and taxation to drive behavioural change and technology development and uptake’. This chapter documents and assesses this shift from voluntary to regulatory through a case study of the VCR. It relies on a review the development of Canadian Climate Change policy and on key informants from the energy sector, from government, and from the environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) community.

This chapter investigates the trends in state climate policy formation and implementation in the United States. The policies include the following developments: greenhouse gas mitigation policy measures; the diffusion of particular tools, such as renewable energy mandates; and multistate collaboration, which brings a regional angle to these state efforts in climate change policy. The chapter also explores the alternative methods for state climate policy development, which include direct democracy through ballot propositions and litigation through elected attorneys general. It concludes by comparing the ever-changing U.S. system with other multilevel governance systems such as the Canadian system, along with a discussion of the possible obstacles that may occur from the bottom-up strategy to policy development as the federal government becomes more engaged.

This chapter provides a brief illustration of the political and scientific background of the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32) and other elements of California's climate policy. AB32 emerged due to California's characteristic institutions and polity. Climate policy is likely to influence large parts of California's public policy agenda and these impacts are mostly unavoidable. The chapter also presents how California's climate change policy formed and documents the first measures to be taken. It then concludes by explaining how AB32 came to be passed and also provides closing remarks on the lessons that can be learned from the process of AB32's enactment, and what can be expected from California's climate change policies in the future.

This chapter explains that local initiatives will serve as the prevalent climate change policy instruments in Canada in years to come, and argues that it is easier to start climate change policies on a small scale, as individual stakeholders are less likely to be held accountable at a global level. It states that many local initiatives for climate change policy in Canada are greatly dependent on federal funding. The chapter also finds that the limitation of a radical shift in the policy orientation at the federal level will have short-term adverse impacts for those who wanted serious national Canadian greenhouse gas emission mitigation. However, it notes that some positive changes can occur, including the development of more daring provincial, territorial, and municipal policy initiatives which can aid in shaping a more conducive Canadian climate change policy in the future.

This chapter analyses unresolved issues in World Trade Organization (WTO) law that may arise from the implementation of climate change policies. These include how to deal with environmental subsidies under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement), and the Agreement on Agriculture; whether processing and production methods are relevant to determining the issue of ‘like products’ in GATT Articles I and III, the SCM Agreement, the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (Antidumping Agreement), and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement); the relationship between GATT Article XX, other WTO Agreements, and multilateral environmental agreements; and the interpretation and application of Article 2 of the TBT Agreement.

Australia is often regarded as a place of liveable cities and economic success. With a highly urbanised population distribution, the competitive advantage of cities has been long accentuated by colonial and post-colonial policy settings. However, widening wealth and health gaps combined with high dependency on yesterdays fossil-intensive technologies are making these cities increasingly vulnerable. Popular programs that have encouraged households and businesses to rush for solar power and energy efficiency are being abandoned. Exposed through an overreliance on coal exports and inefficient urban systems, Australian policy settings are falling rapidly behind in sustainability performance, including in responding to climate change. While its competitors gear up for a post-fossil future, public policy is following the line of least resistance and maximizing fossil fuel exploitation rather than reforming the economy. The resulting trajectory of uncertainty has implications for economic, social and environmental sustainability over the coming years.

The chapter incorporates distributions for temperature change and its possible economic impacts derived from studies assembled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and from integrated assessment models (IAMs) into an analysis of climate change policy. It models the relationship between temperature change and the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) using a thin-tailed distribution for temperature change inferred from studies surveyed by the IPCC and a zero discount rate. Most quantitative economic studies of climate change policy utilize a “damage function” that relates temperature change directly to the levels of real GDP and consumption. This approach is reasonably simple in that any projected path for temperature can be directly translated into an equivalent path for consumption. On both theoretical and empirical grounds, the economic impact of warming should be modeled as a relationship between temperature change and the growth rate of GDP as opposed to the level of GDP. This means that warming can have a permanent impact on future GDP and consumption.

This chapter offers a critique of the EU's climate-change policy, focusing on the 2008 package of measures. It first considers the measures taken so far, notably in respect of the Kyoto Protocol, and its production-based measurement of greenhouse gas emissions. It then turns to the 20-20-20 package and its main components: the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the renewables targets, and the energy efficiency measures. It then discusses the alternatives — what the EU has not done, but could have done. The notable components are nuclear, significant carbon capture and storage, and a serious R&D programme, as well as a carbon tax with a carbon import component. The chapter concludes with an overall assessment of the EU's climate change policy.

Attention to climate now dominates much of the global discussion about conservation issues in tropical countries, particularly forests and biodiversity, as well as poverty and development concerns. One of the most prominent options is a policy for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) to tackle land-use generated carbon emissions. But how different will REDD+ be from the numerous forest protection policies that have gone before? Using the case study of Vietnam, this chapter historicizes forest management and the recent development of REDD+, and finds there are major similarities between the ‘new’ climate-inspired policies and previous, usually unsuccessful, approaches. This chapter posits that a major barrier to implementation of REDD+ will be in knowledge production about forest environments and forest peoples, and in overly simplistic ‘checklist’ approaches to safeguards and participation. In these challenges, REDD+ faces many of the same problems as previous policies for tropical forest management.

This chapter discusses institutional interplay and its consequences in light of increased global governance. The role of states on inter-institutional synergy is measured, and institutional interaction management issues are examined. Interplay management as a tool for mitigating conflict between global climate governance regimes is addressed. Institutional complex transitions and their management are examined, along with the role of interplay management in the institutional complex. The driving forces of institutional complexes are explored through investigating the factors accounting for balancing competing concerns and stability and change. The integration of energy, development, and climate change policy concerns with their associated institutional complex is explored.

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a central concept in climate change economics. This chapter explains the SCC and investigates it philosophically. As is widely acknowledged, any SCC calculation requires the analyst to make choices about the infamous topic of discount rates. But to understand the nature and role of discount rates, one must understand how each of these economic concepts—and indeed the SCC concept itself—is yoked to the concept of a value function, whose job is to take ways the world could be across indefinite timespans and to rank them from better to worse. A great deal, therefore, turns on the details of the value function and on just what is meant by “better” and “worse.” This chapter seeks to explicate these and related issues, and then to situate them within the evolving landscape of federal climate policy in the United States.

This chapter argues that ambitious climate action should be central to the “new normal” in Asia and that law has an important role in delivering it. From the perspective of climate change policy and law, the Covid-19 catastrophe offers the slim possibility that the world will “build back better,” restoring societies and economies along climate-friendly lines. This approach—resetting—envisages national stimulus packages and allied actions of central banks and financial regulators which are oriented toward economic growth and net-zero emission pathways in the months and years following Covid-19. The alternative narrative—reversion—identifies a recovery trajectory in which policies that are supportive of carbon-intensive pathways push the Paris Agreement targets further out of reach. Components of such recovery packages include unconditional bailouts for the fossil fuel sector and conventional mobility. The chapter then explores the tension between these two approaches in the immediate response to Covid-19, focussing on the coal sector as an emblematic variable in climate change debates.

Climate change is becoming a momentous threat and challenge, demanding a coordinated and massive response from governments and business. There are currently measures in place in various countries that set a price for carbon emissions following one of two methods: cap and trade or a carbon tax system. But there are numerous difficulties to be confronted when implementing measures for pricing carbon emissions, such as volatile cost of carbon emission permits for cap-and-trade systems and a lack of coordination among countries on carbon tax implementation. To make a real difference in reversing climate change, we need to not only implement measures on pricing carbon emissions but also significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels, which can only be obtained through technological progress and the development of renewable energy. This chapter proposes the creation of a dedicated International Green Fund (IGF) governed by SWFs and other long-term investors, managed by specialists in green infrastructure investments, and assisted by renewable energy scientists and engineers. Involving all the relevant stakeholders, such a fund would not only provide funding for green investments, it would also facilitate global coordination of R&D in renewable energy technologies and provide scientific and technical expertise to governments.

My portions of the book argued that theories of ethics that had been put forward with respect to climate change policy suffered from internal logical problems and would lead us outside of feasible solutions, which inevitably will include enlightened self-interest in pursuit of solving the free-rider problem and achieving true global emissions reductions. Gardiner agrees with me that existing theories fail. Rather than trying to meet the minimal requirements for an ethical theory, he suggests a lower bar for climate ethics, arguing that in principle ethics is relevant even if right now it is not up to the task of providing guidance. It is hard to disagree because it is possible that someone might come up with a sound, feasible theory. But until we see one, we are agreed that existing theories of ethics fail.