"The genius of Graciela Chichilnisky is recognized by economists and with this book she has focused that talent to the dire problem facing mankind. To survive we must do more than stave off a further rise of CO₂ in the atmosphere. We need to reverse it if the planet is to be viable. Professor Chichilnisky's achievement along with her co-author Peter Bal is to show us the way to rescue our future."
Professor Edmund Phelps
2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Director, Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University
"In the world of economic theory, Graciela Chichilnisky is an A-list star."
The Washington Post
"The team of Chichilnisky and Bal has exceptional skill in explaining complex topics with great clarity making it easy for non-scientists interested in climate change to read. They address the science of climate change, the complex international negotiations needed to reach a compromise between developing nations and the developed ones, and importantly the urgent need to find a way of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and utilizing and sequestering it in a commercially profitable manner. The last topic has been almost completely ignored by the media."
Theodore Roosevelt IV
Managing Director & Chairman of Barclays Cleantech Initiative
BARCLAYS
The Kyoto Protocol capped the emissions of the main emitters, the industrialized countries, one by one. It also created an innovative financial mechanism, the Carbon Market and its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developing nations to receive carbon credits when they reduce their emissions below their baselines. The carbon market, an economic system that created a price for carbon for the first time, is now used in four continents, is promoted by the World Bank, and is recommended even by leading oil and gas companies. However, one critical problem for the future of the Kyoto Protocol is the continuing impasse between the rich and the poor nations.
Who should reduce emissions — the rich or the poor countries?
Sample Chapter(s)
Introduction: Climate Change and our Future
Relevant Links:
Contents:
- Introduction: Climate Change and our Future
- Global Crisis and the Mandate of COP
- Insuring the Future
- The Kyoto Protocol and its Carbon Market
- The Road to Paris: An Insider's Timeline
- An Uncertain Future
- Implementing the Carbon Market and its CDM
- The Paris Agreement: Failure as an Opportunity
- Avoiding Extinction
- Four Obscure Articles in the Paris Agreement Hold the Key to Resolve Climate Change
- Reversing Climate Change
- The Future Act of 2018: New U.S. Law Provides Unlimited Tax Credits to Remove CO₂ from Air
Readership: A must read for academics and professionals studying, implementing and analyzing global climate change policies; interested advance undergraduates and postgraduates interested in the follow up of the Kyoto Protocol and UNFCCC 1992 founding.
"Avoiding the immense dangers of unmanaged climate change requires holding global temperature increases to the Paris COP21 target of 'well below 2 degrees Centigrade.' Currently, future likely or planned emissions paths fall far short of the reductions necessary to achieve this goal. Strong and urgent reductions of emissions are vital and it is increasingly clear that we will also need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To incentivise efficient and effective action on the scale now necessary, we will need new technology and a strong carbon price to reward reductions and removals. This important book not only makes these arguments clearly and strongly, it also argues that the necessary technologies for removal, including those developed by the authors, are now available."
Nicholas Stern
IG Patel Chair of Economics and Government
Department of Economics, London School of Economics
"The genius of Graciela Chichilnisky is recognized by economists and with this book she has focused that talent to the dire problem facing mankind. To survive we must do more than stave off a further rise of CO₂ in the atmosphere. We need to reverse it if the planet is to be viable. Professor Chichilnisky's achievement along with her co-author Peter Bal is to show us the way to rescue our future."
Professor Edmund Phelps
2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Director, Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University
"The team of Chichilnisky and Bal has exceptional skill in explaining complex topics with great clarity making it easy for non-scientists interested in climate change to read. They address the science of climate change, the complex international negotiations needed to reach a compromise between developing nations and the developed ones, and importantly the urgent need to find a way of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and utilizing and sequestering it in a commercially profitable manner. The last topic has been almost completely ignored by the media."
Theodore Roosevelt IV
Managing Director & Chairman of Barclays Cleantech Initiative
BARCLAYS
"Graciela Chichilnisky's leadership in the global community, in producing policies to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global climate change, has been revolutionary."
Jay Inslee
Former Member of the United States House of Representatives; Governor of Washington
"In the world of economic theory, Graciela Chichilnisky is an A-list star."
The Washington Post
"Graciela Chichilnisky has made important contributions to the economic aspects of climate change, both in analysis and in the formulation of appropriate policies. In particular, she has emphasized the considerations of justice in a manner capable of reasoned analysis."
Kenneth Arrow
Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
"Graciela Chichilnisky is one of the most incisive minds working on the subject of justice among the generations."
Sir Partha Dasgupta
Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at Cambridge University
Graciela Chichilnisky worked extensively on the Kyoto Protocol, creating and designing the carbon market that became international law in 2005. In 2017, she was selected by the Carnegie Foundation for their prestigious Great Immigrant, Great American award showcased in the New York Times, and in 2018 she was awarded the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement featured in the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post calls her an "A-List Star" and Time Magazine calls her a "Hero of the Environment." US Congressman Jay Inslee wrote that her work is "revolutionary for the international community." A world-renowned economist, she is the creator of the formal theory of Sustainable Development and acted as Lead US Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the Nobel Prize in 2007. Her pioneering work uses innovative market mechanisms to create Green Capitalism. Dr Chichilnisky acts as a special adviser to several UN organizations and heads of state.
Dr Chichilnisky is CEO and Co-Founder of Global Thermostat (www.globalthermostat.com), a company that has created a "Carbon Negative Technology"™ that captures CO₂ from air and transforms it into profitable assets, including biofuels, food, beverages, and enhanced oil recovery. Earlier, she founded and led two successful companies: FITEL, a financial telecommunications company that was sold in Japan; and Cross Border Exchange, a global technology communications company sold to J P Morgan.
Additionally, Dr Chichilnisky is a Professor of Economics and Mathematical Statistics and a University Senator at Columbia University, and Director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management (www.columbiariskmanagement.net), where she developed a landmark methodology, with support from the U.S. Air Force, for a new foundation of probability and statistics in an approach to catastrophic risks that allows more realistic treatment of rare but important events. She is the author of 15 books and some 320 scientific articles in preeminent academic journals. Her two most recent books are The Economics of the Global Environment: Catastrophic Risks in Theory and Policy, and Manifolds of Preferences and Equilibrium.
Dr Chichilnisky holds two PhD degrees, in Mathematics and Economics from MIT and UC Berkeley. She is a frequent political and economic commentator on CNN, ABC, BBC TV News, and Bloomberg News, as well as a frequent keynote speaker at leading international conferences and universities. She taught previously at Harvard, Essex and Stanford Universities, appeared in Time Magazine on "Heroes of the Environment," and was elected one of the Ten Most Influential Latinos in the US.
Dr Chichilnisky is currently a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. Fast Company selected her company, Global Thermostat, as a "World's Top Ten Most Innovative Company" in Energy. Dr Chichilnisky was selected as the 2015 "CEO of the Year" by IAIR, a title awarded at the Yale University Club in New York City. In 2019, MIT Technology Review chose the carbon removal technology that she co-authors as "Top Ten Breakthrough Technologies" in the world, an award curated by Bill Gates.
Peter Bal is a businessman and ecological restoration practitioner. Born in the US in 1960 and educated across Europe and Asia, Bal uses his multilingual and creative mind to bridge cultural differences in international transactions. His experience includes selling the Empire State Building, producing alcohol from grapes and restoring a devastated forest in France.
Bal sees CO₂ as an asset to be mined. He is dedicated to natural plant absorption, as well as to industrial solutions for retrieving CO₂ from the atmosphere. He is currently working on a containerised CO₂ absorbing unit with Global Thermostat and setting up ecological research and training centres with John D Liu.
