Kyoto2 - the Book

Available now!

Kyoto2 was released by Zed Books on July 2008 at £10.99 (Hardback: £39.99). It is co-published in the USA by Palgrave at $19.95 ($72.00 hardback).

Buy now! - (currrently discounted to £8.24) from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA).

Promo copies are available from the publishers for review, etc. If you are a journalist, writer or book reviewer and you would like a review copy please contact Zed's Marketing & Publicity team directly.

For copyright reasons only short parts of the book can be published on this website. The Kyoto2 Summary in its definitive published form is available now.

See Zed's information on Kyoto2.

Commendations

"The most intelligent treatment of the politics and economics of climate change I have ever read. Brilliant, clear and unanswerable."
George Monbiot.

"Elegantly simple and eminently workable, this is a proposal that could change the world. Kyoto2 should be read by anyone with an interest in climate change policy."
Mark Lynas.

"A fresh, accessible, cogent and bold case for a radical departure from most established thinking. Very seldom is an argument made with such gusto, sharpness and wisdom. Whether you agree with Oliver Tickell or not, your understanding of and thinking about this vital global challenge will be greatly enhanced by reading this book."
Caspar Henderson.

"Kyoto2 is bang on the nail. Exactly the kind of fresh, radical thinking that is now so urgently required."
Jonathon Porritt.

"Kyoto2 hits the nail on the head: we need to crank down the global supply of fossil fuels. This is much simpler and more effective than trying to cap emissions, an almost hopeless task. Climate change is a global problem that must be treated globally. Kyoto2 shows how this can be done."
Peter Barnes, writer and social entrepreneur.

"Informative and illuminating, this is a radical assessment of where we're going on climate change (ever-further down the destructive slope) and where we could be headed with prompt and vigorous action (into a far healthier and still sustainable future)."
Norman Myers, Professor and Visiting Fellow at Green College, Oxford University, and at the Said Business School.

"This is a fantastic book - timely, important, and far-reaching, a key reference for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of dangerous climate change and current efforts to reduce it. Critical in tone and thought, Kyoto2 sharply examines one of the most urgent issues of our time."
William F. Laurance, Senior Scientist, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama; and former president, Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.

"Analytical and prophetic, Kyoto2 proposes a green economics of climate change that could just save our planet."
Miriam Kennet, Director, Green Economics Institute.

"This is the book we need, and not a moment too soon. It takes seriously the latest science, and sets out to achieve what is necessary, not what's easy."
Bill McKibben, environmentalist, writer and founder of 350.org.

Reviews

"Unless China and India can be induced to take a lower carbon path than the west, there is absolutely no hope for us ... Were the leaders of either country seeking a guide to determining a negotiating position in Copenhagen, they could do no better than Oliver Tickell's just-published book Kyoto2 (Zed Books), which provides a big-picture approach to the prevention of climatic catastrophe.

In essence, Tickell provides a blueprint for a global climate treaty. He documents the failings of the Kyoto protocol, then goes on to summarise the latest climate science, including the work of Hansen and his colleagues. The replacement to the Kyoto protocol, Tickell writes, must work effectively to achieve a level of atmospheric CO2 below 350ppm. At the heart of the proposal is a global trade in carbon with a series of reducing caps sufficiently rigorous to bring about such an outcome.

One of Tickell's most telling criticisms of Kyoto is its neglect of tropical forests as a means of sequestering carbon. The destruction of rainforests causes around 18% of the carbon going into the atmosphere annually, yet only a single project concerning tropical forests has been approved under Kyoto's clean development mechanisms. These allow for polluters to gain credits by investing in a variety of ways that reduce greenhouse gases. Dyson's analysis of the Keeling curve demonstrates just how powerful forests can be as sequesterers of carbon. It's widely acknowledged that Kyoto's successor must develop mechanisms that encourage the protection and regrowing of tropical forests.

Tickell's discussion of market mechanisms is densely technical, yet much of it reads as common sense. His emphasis on the urgent need for government regulation is also cogent and refreshing, for he recognises that carbon trading is necessary, but not sufficient to solve the problem. He calls clearly for governments to regulate so as to increase efficiency of energy use, to protect forests and to mandate approaches such as clean coal technologies, as well as discussing the need to limit population. Reading Kyoto2 gives one hope that there is a way forward. But will such recommendations ever be agreed to, and can they be carried out in time?"

Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, concluding "Words of warming" in The Guardian, Saturday 9 August 2008.

"In Kyoto2, Oliver Tickell makes a radical suggestion: that instead of trying to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, we should instead go "upstream" and regulate the production of carbon-based fossil fuels. Think of a garden sprinkler: if you want to stop the lawn getting wet, you don't try to catch each drop as it falls - you turn off the tap."
Mark Lynas, writing in a sidebar to "Words of warming" in The Guardian, Saturday 9 August 2008.

"In Kyoto2: How to Manage the Global Greenhouse (Zed Books) Oliver Tickell presents a global programme for cutting greenhouse gas emissions that is both radical and realistic."
George Monbiot, writing in a sidebar to "Words of warming" in The Guardian, Saturday 9 August 2008.

Contents

• Introduction
• Kyoto2 summary
• 1. What's the problem?
• 2. The policy response
• 3. The atmospheric commons
• 4. Applying market economics
• 5. Non-market solutions
• 6. Allocating resources
• 7. The Great Dying
• 8. Questions and answers