"Can Do" and "Can't Do" Responses to Climate Change

Claussen, Eileen, ed. 2001. Climate Change: Science, Strategies & Solutions. Leiden: Brill.

Firor, John, and Judith E. Jacobsen. 2002. The Crowded Greenhouse: Population, Climate Change, and Creating a Sustainable World. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kok, Marcel, Walter Vermeulen, André Faaij, and David de Jager, eds. 2002. Global Warming and Social Innovation: The Challenge of a Climate-Neutral Society. London: Earthscan.

Luterbacher, Urs, and Detlef F. Sprinz. 2001. International Relations and Global Climate Change. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Mwandosya, Mark J. 2000. Survival Emissions: A Perspective from the South on Global Climate Change Negotiations. Dar-es-Salaam: Centre for Energy, Environment, Science and Technology.

Victor, David. 2001. The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

A slew of books are now appearing on the market offering positive, "can do" approaches to global climate change, as industrialized states (minus the United States and Australia) come to terms with the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Some books, like the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change's Climate Change: Science, Strategies and Solutions, offer practical, empirical and comparative evidence of innovative projects and leadership at the local and state level in the US, among European countries and Japan, and in corporate circles. Marcel Kok et al.'s visionary volume on developing "climate-neutral" societies (involving The Netherlands in its case study of an 80% reduction in domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 2050) focuses on conceivable transitions that include a series of "trend breaks" in technology, policy instruments, industrial, transport and agricultural practices, residential designs, and societal behavior. In another refreshing departure, John Firor and Judith Jacobson emphasize the social dimensions of climate change in the Crowded Greenhouse. Population growth, one of many drivers of climate change, requires social solutions such as increasing women's empowerment in public and private life, and broadening the population movement beyond the family planning and reproductive health movements in order to raise its chances of success. A crucial can-do strategy discussed in all these books is to make climate solutions more persuasive by choosing options that provide a package of collateral benefits ("co-benefits"). Simultaneous benefits of climate action range from tackling global equity to women's rights, improved air quality, quality of life, lower energy costs, and energy security.

In contrast to this fix it, solution-oriented approach is a pessimistic, "can't do" view. An excellent case in point of such doom and gloom appears in David Victor's reasoning in The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol. Victor points out that a majority of states that have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol (though not yet in force) are not on track in meeting their modest reduction goals of an average of a 5% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by the years 2008-2012. He blames not so much political will as the "fatal flaws" in the architecture of the Kyoto Protocol, including its reliance on specific targets and schedules and the difficulties with setting up an effective international tradable permit system. He recommends that the Kyoto Protocol be reopened for negotiation in order to reform this imperfect agreement. Other barriers that underlie "can't do" approaches have more to do with North-South equity issues, relative gains and free rider problems in international politics, and domestic politics, including the power of special interest groups. Mark Mwandosya's Survival Emissions outlines the views of the Group of 77 plus China on the necessity of the North to act first and that no additional commitments be undertaken by the South at this time. The MIT text on International Relations and Climate Change illustrates how IR theories can help us understand the barriers to solving global commons problems, particularly issues related to competitive advantage, free riding or cheating, and the difficulties of negotiating international agreements.

It is useful to assess the importance of these various barriers and opportunities to responding to climate change...