The Failures of American and European Climate Policy: International Norms, Domestic Politics, and Unachievable Commitments (review)

Climate change has been one of the most contentious issues in the transatlantic relationship. The persistent divide escalated when President Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol in early 2001. Since then, the EU has emerged as the most fervent leader of this UN-sponsored treaty while the United States has remained the only major developed country, aside from Australia, to oppose it. Why is that? In light of their many similarities, the sources of the rift between Americans and Europeans are puzzling.

With The Failures of American and European Climate Policy, Loren Cass provides the most extensive and well-researched comparative study of United States and European Union atmospheric protection to date. In addition to the EU itself, he focuses on Germany and the United Kingdom, its two most-outspoken members on this issue. The book is precisely and eloquently written. It is a valuable contribution to existing literature on the domestic adoption (or rejection) of international norms. Above all, the book is destined to become essential reading for students of these four political actors, all of which will remain crucial for confronting this century's most pressing global challenge.

The main part of the book is subdivided into five chronologically ordered chapters that document two decades of climate change regime-building, from the issue's rise to the forefront of the environmental agenda in 1985 to the entry-into-force of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005. Each of the chapters analyzes the country-specific relationships between climate policy and energy, transportation, taxation, and foreign policies. The introductory and concluding chapters outline and appraise, respectively, the theoretical framework with which Cass attempts to address the questions at hand: to what extent did the debates over emerging international norms—here defined as collective expectations about proper behavior—influence state interests and behavior? Can this discrepancy in "norm salience" explain the variance of national political outcomes?

To resolve these puzzles, Cass concentrates on two normative debates crucial in both the international and national realms: first, who should take primary responsibility for global greenhouse gas emissions; and second, which principles should guide the reduction in these emissions? In his elaboration, Cass is aware of the difference between sheer rhetoric and real action. Accordingly, he includes both criteria in his design of a salience scale to measure the affirmation of a norm over time. Its eight development stages describe a continuum from "irrelevance" to "taken for granted."

The empirical investigation of the four actors reveals few surprises for experts in the field, but will be highly informative for anyone newly interested in the chronicles of climate negotiations. It shows the US administration's continuous struggle with climate change norms while these increasingly win acceptance internationally. From the early beginnings of the climate debates, the United States repudiated national responsibility for emissions and argued instead that reductions should be achieved wherever and by whatever means they were most cost-effective. Supported by the developing countries and environmental NGOs, however, most European states endorsed the norms that developed countries were obliged to a) take the lead in reductions, and b) achieve these reductions mainly at home. The flexibility mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol (emissions trading, joint implementation, and clean development mechanism) were long seen with great suspicion by the EU and it "took a revolutionary change such as the American repudiation of Kyoto to permit the EU to alter its position" (p. 227).

While Germany established itself as an early leader in international climate policy, the United Kingdom initially paid tribute to its special relationship to the United States and tried to serve as a bridge between both entities. Faced with the opposition of powerful organized interests, however, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany all encountered great difficulty in achieving rigorous domestic reform of their emission-intense economic sectors, despite studies on both sides of the Atlantic showing that deep cuts were possible at limited or...