With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change but policy-makers, scholars, businessmen, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for...

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is a global, multi-disciplinary effort intended to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture for addressing the threat of climate change. It has commissioned leading scholars to examine a uniquely wide range of core issues that must be addressed if the world is to reach an effective agreement on a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. The purpose of the project is not to become an advocate for any single policy but to...