Council on Foreign Relations This book provides a balanced and comprehensive account of the issues involved in climate change and the range of domestic and foreign policy options available to American policymakers.

Global warming is one of today's greatest challenges. The science of climate change leaves no doubt that policies to cut emissions are overdue. Yet, after twenty years of international talks and treaties, the world is now in gridlock about how best to do this. David Victor argues that such gridlock has arisen because international talks have drifted away from the reality of what countries are willing and able to implement at home. Most of the lessons that policy makers have drawn from the history of other international environmental problems won't actually work on the problem of global warming. Victor argues that a radical rethinking of global warming policy is required and shows how to make international law on global warming more effective. This book provides a roadmap to a lower carbon future based on encouraging bottom-up initiatives at national, regional and global levels, leveraging national self-interest rather than wishful thinking.

Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other key nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative. Global warming continues to dominate environmental news as legislatures worldwide grapple with the process of ratification of the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the November 2000 conference at the Hague showed clearly how difficult it will be to bring the Kyoto treaty into force. Yet most politicians, policymakers, and analysts hailed it as a vital first step in slowing greenhouse warming. David Victor was not among them. Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if emissions trading works. The Protocol requires industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to specific targets. Crucially, the Protocol also provides for so-called "emissions trading," whereby nations could offset the need for rapid cuts in their own emissions by buying emissions credits from other countries. But starting this trading system would require creating emission permits worth two trillion dollars--the largest single invention of assets by voluntary international treaty in world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would be essential if the system were expanded to include developing countries. The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol--which Victor views as inevitable--will provide the political space to rethink strategy. Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions, such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the debilitating drawbacks of each. Individuals at all levels of environmental science, economics, public policy, and politics-from students to professionals--and anyone else hoping to participate in the debate over how to slow global warming will want to read this book.

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.

"Can the world stop climate change? The prognosis is bleak. Most efforts to tackle the problem have focused on treaties that require virtually global consensus, yet meaningful consensus has been elusive because deep cuts in emissions are expensive and antagonize well-organized interests. Predictably, diplomacy has swung between gridlock and superficial agreements with little impact. After three decades of sustained negotiations on global warming, emissions have risen by one third. Stopping climate warming requires that they be cut essentially to zero. Sabel and Victor look to offer a case for optimism by proposing a different strategy: to recast climate change as a problem best addressed piecemeal. Rather than seeking a grand, global bargain, they argue that the problem should be broken down into local challenges. They call this concept "experimentalist governance"-massive simultaneous searches for local solutions that are scalable to the global level, with a focus not on marginal incentives for success but on penalties for repeated, egregious failure. The authors show, through a series of cases, how regulators, firms, farms and NGOs, faced with penalty defaults, are learning to solve some of the knottiest environmental problems; they then propose central mechanisms that could help monitor and review progress, establishing which experiments are working and establish new frontiers for experimentation. While the threat of impending catastrophe has understandably made debate about climate policy increasingly shrill and polarized, Sabel and Victor offer here a guide to institutional design that could finally lead to the politically and economically self-sustaining reductions in emissions that thirty years of global diplomacy has not delivered"--

“Chi Chu’s Little Turtles” is a story of a cute Sea Turtle name Chi Chu who really loves little turtles. Leaving her cozy life in the surf behind, she stays in the sand and helps all the little turtles make it safely to the sea. This is a book about a Mother's Love, the needs and fears of children, and the resulting adventure of the two put together in real life challenges.

The man, the myth, the scoundrel. A far-future space opera from #1 Bestselling author James David Victor Eliard Martin is the wayward son of House Martin. When an illegal deathrace ends in tragedy, he is blamed and sent to the prestigious military academy, Trevalyn, to learn responsibility and to integrate with the ruling class elite. Instead, he is faced with animosity, corruption, and conspiracies beyond anything he previously knew. Will Eliard stand up and fight for galactic freedom or decide that true freedom must be seized one ship at a time? Trevalyn Academy is a standalone story in the Mercury Blade Space Opera series. If you like fast paced space adventure, Captain Eliard Martin is the kind of rogue that will keep you entertained for hours. Download Trevalyn Academy and get started on your next space adventure today!

On the run with a stolen alien artifact that could ultimately destroy humanity. Chased by the most powerful military force in the galaxy and the most notorious criminal overlord in the sector. No problem for the fastest ship in the known universe. A far-future space opera series from #1 Bestselling author James David Victor. Eliard Martin is captain of the Mercury Blade, the fastest ship in the galaxy. With his small crew, he travels the stars looking for adventure and profit. When he tries to pull one over on a dangerous criminal overlord, he soon finds himself on a mission that will lead to more danger than he has ever faced before. With the help of a mysterious stranger, who is clearly more than she appears, they will fight to stay one step ahead of the most powerful forces in the galaxy. Can the crew of the Mercury Blade fly their way to freedom or will they be crushed by the opposing forces seeking their demise? Mercury Blade is the first book in the exciting Valyien Far Future Space Opera series. If you like fast paced space adventure, the rogue crew of the Mercury Blade will keep you entertained for hours. Download Mercury Blade and get started on your next space adventure today!