Hailed in the Foreign Service Journal as “a landmark book that should command the attention of every serious student of American diplomacy, international environmental issues, or the art of negotiation,” and cited in Nature for its “worthwhile insights on the harnessing of science and diplomacy,” the first edition of Ozone Diplomacy offered an insider’s view of the politics, economics, science, and diplomacy involved in creating the precedent-setting treaty to protect the Earth: the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.
The first edition ended with a discussion of the revisions to the protocol in 1990 and offered lessons for global diplomacy regarding the then just-maturing climate change issue. Now Richard Benedick—a principal architect and the chief U.S. negotiator of the historic treaty—expands the ozone story, bringing us to the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Montreal Protocol. He describes subsequent negotiations to deal with unexpected major scientific discoveries and important amendments adding new chemicals and accelerating the phaseout schedules. Implementing the revised treaty has forced the protocol’s signatories to confront complex economic and political problems, including North–South financial and technology transfer issues, black markets for banned CFCs, revisionism, and industry’s willingness and ability to develop new technologies and innovative substitutes. In his final chapter Benedick offers a new analysis applying the lessons of the ozone experience to ongoing climate change negotiations.
Ozone Diplomacy has frequently been cited as the definitive book on the most successful environment treaty, and is essential reading for those concerned about the future of our planet.
Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu, scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now frighteningly real possibilities. How can we steer a path between willful inaction and reckless overreaction?
Cass Sunstein explores these and other worst-case scenarios and how we might best prevent them in this vivid, illuminating, and highly original analysis. Singling out the problems of terrorism and climate change, Sunstein explores our susceptibility to two opposite and unhelpful reactions: panic and utter neglect. He shows how private individuals and public officials might best respond to low-probability risks of disaster—emphasizing the need to know what we will lose from precautions as well as from inaction. Finally, he offers an understanding of the uses and limits of cost–benefit analysis, especially when current generations are imposing risks on future generations.
Throughout, Sunstein uses climate change as a defining case, because it dramatically illustrates the underlying principles. But he also discusses terrorism, depletion of the ozone layer, genetic modification of food, hurricanes, and worst-case scenarios faced in our ordinary lives. Sunstein concludes that if we can avoid the twin dangers of overreaction and apathy, we will be able to ameliorate if not avoid future catastrophes, retaining our sanity as well as scarce resources that can be devoted to more constructive ends.
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