Climate Change: Books

This book explores the dramatic amplification of global warming underway in cities and the range of actions that can be taken to slow the pace of warming. A core thesis of the book is that the principal strategy advocated by the global science community to mitigate climate change, the reduction of greenhouse gases, will not prove sufficient to measurably slow the rapid pace of warming in cities. The primary driver of warming in cities is not the global greenhouse effect but the loss of trees and other vegetative cover to development and the emission of waste heat from industries, vehicles, and buildings. These rising levels of heat constitute the single greatest climate-related threat to human health in cities, accounting for more deaths per year than all other forms of extreme weather combined, and are contributing to loss of life and unprecedented infrastructure disruptions in the present time period, not decades in the future.

Climate Change, Public Health, and the Law provides the first comprehensive explication of the dynamic interactions between climate change, public health law, and environmental law, both in the United States and internationally. Responding to climate change and achieving public health protections each require the coordination of the decisions and behavior of large numbers of people. However, they also involve interventions that risk compromising individual rights. The challenges involved in coordinating large-scale responses to public health threats and protecting against the invasion of rights, makes the law indispensable to both of these agendas. Written for the benefit of public health and environmental law professionals and policymakers in the United States and in the international public health sector, this volume focuses on the legal components of pursuing public health goals in the midst of a changing climate. It will help facilitate efforts to develop, improve, and carry out policy responses at the international, federal, state, and local levels.

Climate Change and the Law explores the rich diversity of international, regional, national, sub-national and transnational legal responses to climate change. Is climate law emerging as a new legal discipline? If so, what shared objectives and concepts define it? How does climate law relate to other areas of law? Such questions lie at the heart of this new book, whose thirty chapters cover doctrinal questions as well as a range of thematic and regional case studies. As Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), states in her preface, these chapters collectively provide a “review of the emergence of a new discipline, its core principles and legal techniques, and its relationship and potential interaction with other disciplines.”

This forward-looking book examines the scope and options for the United Nations Security Council to respond to climate insecurity. A cross-disciplinary team of experts addresses the range of political and legal considerations involved, including, the scope for adapting existing Council tools to address the challenge of climate change, the legality and legitimacy of doing so, the attitude of the P5 and EU, and Council action to date. Specific tools considered include establishing an international court or tribunal, targeted sanctions, peace missions, and 'legislation.' The starting assumption is that, given the futures projected by climate scientists and the responsibility of the Council for international peace and security, the Council will almost inevitably take its place as a key player in climate governance. Contributors therefore focus on the question of just how the Council will be able to most constructively contribute to effective climate governance and how it can begin to prepare for such a role.

The Climate Change Deskbook is a comprehensive guide and reference to the law of climate change. The first section of the Deskbook is an in-depth analysis of the laws, regulations, and policies that shape our increasingly carbon-constrained world. Readers benefit from the perspective of attorneys with collectively well over one hundred years of experience practicing in environmental law to understand how the fast-moving pieces of the climate change puzzle fit together. The second section of the Deskbook provides those reference materials that you need at your fingertips to help answer your climate questions.

This timely and incisive book combines an introduction to the core legal and policy issues presented by climate change with a deeper analysis of decisions that will define the path forward. Offering a guide to key terms, concepts, and legal principles in the field, this book will help readers develop a sophisticated perspective on issues central to climate change law and policy.

First volume in the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law, this title has over 50 entries by experts around the world discussing various aspects of climate change law.

Discusses the core issues of climate change including climate science and economics, the international regime, the price of carbon, energy regulation, U.S. climate regulation, federalism and climate change, impacts and adaptation, and geoengineering.

Climate Change Litigation investigates and discusses the respective issues arising in the current discourse on climate protection from different legal perspectives (including International law, European law and national public and civil law). In particular, it addresses the issue of "climate protection by courts". It gives an overview about important jurisdictions in the field of climate change litigation, including inter alia the US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Brazil and Germany. The ever greater, more wide-spread, and more violent effects of climate change in recent history have brought forth an unprecedented rise in societal discourse in the field of climate change. Naturally, this discourse is portrayed with its concomitant effects in court: The lawsuits initiated by human rights organisations against large corporations (e.g. against the energy giant RWE before German courts) and states (e.g. against the Netherlands) have attracted significant media attention especially. As a result, climate change litigation is in the course of establishing itself into an independent branch of environmental law and international law which is most likely to be one of the major legal markets of the future. Building upon this, Climate Change Litigation aims to pave the way for research in the field of climate change litigation, which up to this point has surprisingly remained untrodden ground in Germany or Europe. Published as a handbook, this text provides answers and ideas both to scholars and practitioners in this legal field. Furthermore, it is guaranteed to provide an overview of the latest news in cases and progress in the field of climate change litigation. -- Provided by publisher.

From a writer and climate-change expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than thirty years, a brilliant big-picture reckoning with the reasons for our shocking failure thus far to rein in climate change. Linden focuses on the malign power of key business interests, arguing that those same interests could flip this story very quickly-- if a looming economic catastrophe doesn't happen first. Starting with the 1980's, Linden tells the story decade by decade utilizing four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag farther still; and finally, what Linden argues is the most important clock, business and finance-- the monied climate-change deniers have been devilishly effective at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. Fire and Flood represents Linden's definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have so confused the public's mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff's edge is now within view. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why, and how.-- Adapted from book jacket.

In introducing cities as transnational lawmakers, Jolene Lin provides an exciting new perspective on climate change law and policy, offering novel insights about the reconfiguration of the state and the nature of international lawmaking as the involvement of cities in TCCG blurs the public/private divide and the traditional strictures of "domestic" versus "international.

This volume, the second in a series of three, examines the institutional architecture underpinning the global climate integrity system. This system comprises an inter-related set of institutions, governance arrangements, regulations, norms and practices that aim to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Arguing that governance is a neutral term to describe the structures and processes that coordinate climate action, the book presents a continuum of governance values from 'thick' to 'thin' to determine the regime's legitimacy and integrity. The collection contains four parts with part one exploring the links between governance and integrity, part two containing chapters which evaluate climate governance arrangements, part three exploring avenues for improving climate governance and part four reflecting on the road to the UNFCCC's Paris Agreement. The book provides new insights into understanding how systemic institutional and governance failures have occurred, how they could occur again in the same or different form and how these failures impact on the integrity of the UNFCCC. This work extends contemporary governance scholarship to explore the extent to which selected institutional case studies, thematic areas and policy approaches contribute to the overall integrity of the regime.

How do we begin to handle the greatest crisis affecting humanity today? Climate change is already causing droughts, flooding, and famine that are forcing people to leave their livelihoods and communities. In the years to come, millions will find their local areas uninhabitable, as mass displacement of people reaches disastrous levels. Handling Climate Displacement explains how climate change has become recognized as a human rights concern, and how human rights are key to managing the crisis. Local authorities and populations increasingly call for guidance in the absence of an internationally recognized framework. Drafted in 2013 by a committee of experts and practitioners, Hassine uses the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States to offer concrete solutions to the impending emergency. Enriched by the author's experience working with the victims of climate displacement, this book offers an effective framework to deal with the challenges presented by mass displacement while protecting human rights.-- Provided by publisher

The book discusses the coalitions, actors and potential role of the judiciary, as well as human rights issues in addressing the climate change problem. It argues for a methodical solution through global law and constitutionalism, which could provide the quantum jump needed in addressing the problem of climate governance. This fascinating and accessible account will be a key resource for policymakers and NGOs, and also for researchers and graduate students in climate policy, geopolitics, climate change, environmental policy and law, and international relations.

Provides a comprehensive overview of international climate change law including information on the UN climate regime and beyond, Kyoto Protocol, and Paris Agreement.

his is the first book on state compliance that treats the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, and their subordinate institutions as case studies in new international trends regarding state compliance.Drawing on a wide range of sources, from UNFCCC decisions to national-court judgments, this book clarifies the multiple layers of state compliance within the evolving international and transnational climate change regime. It provides a conceptual framework and mode of evaluation of the regulatory elements that have evolved to date. It comments on the current fragmentation (under the Bali Roadmap process) and possible future unification of accountability and enforcement elements (under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action).The book makes a unique contribution to the question of compliance of states with obligations flowing from the international climate change regime. It argues that the monitoring, reporting, and verification of state emissions is the foundation upon which the international climate change regime is built. Finally it looks to the future of state compliance under the "next-generation" global climate change treaty to take effect as of 2020.This original synthesis in state compliance, a fundamental area of climate change regulation, is aimed at researchers and postgraduate students in environmental law, international law, international relations and environmental management.

An international group of eminent authors put forward proposals for solving legal challenges in International Law, European Law and domestic law. Important themes including national climate protection law regulations (e.g. in the U.S.A., the EU, China and South Africa), regulations on International Fisheries, Mariculture and Environmental Protection, Regional Fisheries Management Organisations, Overfishing and Ocean Governance are addressed. This volume is of particular relevance for academic and practicing lawyers with an interest in the recent legal discussions on climate change law and Environmental Law of the Sea.

The Principles were drafted by a group of legal experts seeking to fill the gap in understanding states' legal responsibility to reduce GHG emissions. The Principles identify states' reduction obligations and articulate a series of related obligations aimed at prevention. This book is an extensive commentary that further explains the Principles and their legal underpinning. The members of the expert group are: Antonio Benjamin, Michael Gerrard, Toon Huydecoper, Michael Kirby, M.C. Mehta, Thomas Pogge, Qin Tianbao, Dinah Shelton, James Silk, Jessica Simor, Jaap Spier (rapporteur), Elisabeth Steiner, and Philip Sutherland.

Provides an overview of aspects of international climate change law.

This topical Research Handbook examines the legal intersections of climate change, oceans and coasts across multiple scales and sectors, covering different geographies and regions. With expert contributions from Europe, Australasia, the Pacific, North America and Asia, it includes insightful chapters on issues ranging across the impacts of climate change on marine and coastal environments.

This Research Handbook provides readers with that integrated foundation, investigating topics in international law as well as domestic programs from countries around the world. Because climate disasters affect both government and non-government actors, the Research Handbook covers issues of both public and private law. We know from the scientific literature and recent experience that the laws addressing natural disasters are insufficient to confront disasters amplified by climate change. The Research Handbook acknowledges that the majority of disasters are susceptible in some way to changes in the earth's climate and explores the barriers to, and opportunities for, finding legal solutions to the risks posed by such disasters. It shows that climate change must be considered in order to fully understand disaster risk and the respective legal and policy responses.

The Handbook contains contributions from more than 50 internationally leading scholars and explores the latest trends and theoretical developments of the climate governance scholarship.

Examines the various actions taken towards climate action throughout the globe as well as what has and continues to motivate such responses to the issue.

"In this thought-provoking title, environmental science author and professor Frank Spellman, PhD, gives a clear-eyed and concise overview of climate change--explaining what is really happening, why it is happening, and what we should do about it"-- Provided by publisher.

In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today. Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action.