Reconstructing Climate Policy: Beyond Kyoto By Richard B. Stewart and Jonathan B. Wiener 193 pp., Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 2003. This review was published in Regulation magazine (Cato Institute). MasterResource revisits Mr. Singer’s book review and asks: how does it read today?
What is it about academic economists that makes them salivate like Pavlovian dogs whenever they hear the magic words “market solution”? Sure, market-based solutions are always more efficient and less liable to be politically influenced than those based on command-and-control. But before we apply solutions, should we not first ask if there is a problem that needs to be solved?
And so it is with this book. The authors confidently assert the existence of a future climate problem more or less on faith, but they also see many difficulties with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that is supposed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.…