Building on the Kyoto Protocol: Options for Protecting the Climate (review)

"Greenhouse gases" is a term used for gases like carbon dioxide, which are mainly generated as a result of burning fossil fuels like coal, petrol and diesel. While the increasing usage of these fuels helps industrialization much, it also causes a steady increase in levels of carbon rich gases and other pollutants and traps heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists predict that higher levels of greenhouse gases will cause a significant warming of the earth by about one to five degrees Celsius. This could cause potentially tragic changes in the environment like violent storms, expanding deserts and melting ice caps. To be able to avoid those negative changes in the environment, about 180 countries took step and signed the Kyoto Protocol at Kyoto, Japan in December 1997. The protocol commits 38 industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012 to levels that are 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels.

Edited by Baumert, Blanchard, Llosa, and Perkaus "Building on the Kyoto Protocol: Options for Protecting the Climate" with seventeen contributors from nine different countries analyzes political and stimulating spectrum of possibilities for strengthening and shaping an international climate change and climate protection treaties such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The book claims that the debate over global climate change has focused narrowly on the Kyoto Protocol since 1997, and a wide range of options in addition to the Kyoto Protocol needs to be considered to promote long-term climate protection and bridge the growing divide among nations over how to take action. Moreover, since the authors believe that this debate will shift to include new ideas for future commitments to protect the global climate system as the Kyoto Protocol comes to life, they try to explore a set of options for designing an international framework for climate protection "beyond Kyoto Protocol" by paying special attention to achieving international cooperation across the so-called North-South divide. In line with North-South division, each approach examined in this book embraces both industrialized and developing countries, which is an eventual necessity for addressing the problem of climate change.

The aim of conducting this study is clearly expressed; to promote a better understanding of a wide range of future climate protection options and provide building blocks for further consideration of these ideas and other alternatives not yet considered. The authors claim that an improved understanding of future options will lead to more environmentally effective and fair outcomes under the international climate change negotiations. To be able to find the right option and collective and effective long-term solution for climate protection the authors think and analyze broadly, creatively, and critically about different approaches to protecting the global climate system. They believe that wide range of intellectual and creative resources from across the globe to produce and test ideas will help to find right option; Just as shooting more arrows at a target provides a better sense of how to hit the bull's-eye, the more ideas we consider now, the more likely we are to find the right ones. But, several authors express their concerns, the biggest obstacle for finding right option: governments' own interests.They believe that even in trying to address a global problem such as climate change, governments act in their own interest.

It is obvious that none of the approaches can satisfy interests and concerns of all countries due to the fact that countries greatly differ in economic, demographic and other social conditions. Thus, the approaches examined in this book try to satisfy global interest rather than individual interest. It seems that allocation approaches based on a relative responsibility for global warning examined in chapter 7 and per capita principles examined in chapter 8 tend to distribute benefits and burdens in a way that some countries might find unacceptable, at least in the short term due to the differences in national circumstances and interests. The differences in national circumstances...