Titans of the Climate: Explaining Policy Process in the United States and China (American and Comparative Environmental Policy) - Hardcover

Gallagher, Kelly Sims; Xuan, Xiaowei

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262038757 ISBN 13: 9780262038751

Publisher: Mit Pr, 2018

Synopsis

How the planet's two largest greenhouse gas emitters navigate climate policy.

The United States and China together account for a disproportionate 45 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. In 2014, then-President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced complementary efforts to limit emissions, paving the way for the Paris Agreement. And yet, with President Trump's planned withdrawal from the Paris accords and Xi's consolidation of power—as well as mutual mistrust fueled by misunderstanding—the climate future is uncertain. In Titans of the Climate, Kelly Sims Gallagher and Xiaowei Xuan examine how the planet's two largest greenhouse gas emitters develop and implement climate policy. Through dispassionate analysis, the authors aim to help readers understand the challenges, constraints, and opportunities in each country.

Gallagher—a former U.S. climate policymaker—and Xuan—a member of a Chinese policy think tank—describe the specific drivers—political, economic, and social—of climate policies in both countries and map the differences between policy outcomes. They characterize the U.S. approach as “deliberative incrementalism”; the Chinese, meanwhile, engage in “strategic pragmatism.” Comparing the policy processes of the two countries, Gallagher and Xuan make the case that if each country understands more about the other's goals and constraints, climate policy cooperation is more likely to succeed.

About this title

About the Author

Kelly Sims Gallagher is Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at Tufts University's Fletcher School. From 2014 to 2015 she served as Senior Policy Adviser in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and in the U.S. State Department's Senior Envoy for Climate Change Office. She is the author of China Shifts Gears and The Globalization of Clean Energy Technology, both published by the MIT Press.

Review

This timely book illuminates the stakes of America and China's climate policies: the superpower polluters must find a way to live together to avoid dying together.

―Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School; former Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

An insightful analysis of climate change efforts in the United States and China: domestically determined, internationally collaborative, globally decisive.

―Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

This book could not have come out at a better time! By providing a penetrating and balanced analysis of the climate policy processes in the United States and China, it not only tells the story of the specific drivers and processes on climate policy, but also presents realistic pictures of the two countries' policymaking systems and policy dynamics―a critically important corrective to mutual misunderstanding and mistrust if we are to avoid grave consequences.

―Lan Xue, Professor and Dean, School of Public Policy and Management, and Dean, Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University

Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262038757
• ISBN 13: 9780262038751
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Kraft Michael E.