Making Climate Policy Work

by Danny Cullenward, David G. Victor

Overview

For decades, the world’s governments have struggled to move from talk to action on climate. Many now hope that growing public concern will lead to greater policy ambition, but the most widely promoted strategy to address the climate crisis – the use of market-based programs – hasn’t been working and isn’t ready to scale.

Danny Cullenward and David Victor show how the politics of creating and maintaining market-based policies render them ineffective nearly everywhere they have been applied. Reforms can help around the margins, but markets’ problems are structural and won’t disappear with increasing demand for climate solutions. Facing that reality requires relying more heavily on smart regulation and industrial policy – government-led strategies – to catalyze the transformation that markets promise, but rarely deliver.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509541812
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	823 KB

About the Author

Danny Cullenward is Policy Director at CarbonPlan and a lecturer at Stanford Law School.
David G. Victor is Professor of International Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. He co-heads the initiative on energy and climate at the Brookings Institution.

Table of Contents

Figures and tables vi

Preface viii

1 A turn toward markets? 1

2 Ambition 31

3 Coverage and allocation 52

4 Revenue and spending 70

5 Offsets 87

6 Market links 103

7 Getting the most out of markets 119

8 Rightsizing markets and industrial policy 148

9 Conclusion 174

Notes 185

Index 232

Editorial Reviews

Cullenward and Victor provide a refreshingly honest and pragmatic perspective on this complex field. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in climate policy and carbon pricing.”
David Wright, University of Calgary

“This is a must-read for policymakers, especially the climate intelligentsia who believe that market-based policies are a panacea for the existential threat of climate change. Cullenward and Victor shatter that myth and chart a better course based on proven models that achieve tangible results.”
Kevin de León, California Senate President Emeritus

“I have spent my career trying to answer the question posed by Cullenward and Victor – how to make climate policy work. This book provides a compelling answer: the deep decarbonization the world needs will only be achieved when governments commit to a vision of transformation that all actors can work towards.”
Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, Founder of IDDRI

From the Publisher