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What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It, by Paid G Harris Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2CU3 296pp., £r5.99 (paperback).
Paul Harris is a well-known academic in the field global environmental governance, having written or edited a number of books, including on United States engagement with international environmental politics,' United States foreign policy on climate change2, justice of climate change policy^ and Chinese climate change policy.4 His work provides an interdisciplinary lens on the institutions and rules of global climate governance. Harris' earlier work has argued for a greater focus upon 'cosmopolitanism' in global climate governance, that is, a greater focus on the position of the individual citizen (rather than states and supranational institutions). His latest book, What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It, provides a re-articulation and extension of the benefits of a cosmopolitan approach to global climate governance.
The book is very clearly written and structured, and is accessible to both experts and non-experts. The book opens with an introduction to the problem of climate change explained through the well-known metaphor of the 'tragedy of the commons'.5 Harris identifies the international system of states as key to the problem of climate change, in that each country has an incentive to free ride in using the global atmosphere as a waste sink for greenhouse gases, to the detriment of collective global restraint required to prevent dangerous climate change. Harris provocatively describes the role of states in this tragedy as 'the cancer of Westphalia'. That is, the rules of international law concerning territorial sovereignty and independence of states provide the background conditions that allow overuse of global atmospheric commons. This strident critique of the fundamental unit of the international system (ie, the state) sets up the later move in the book in favour of cosmopolitanism.
Chapter 2 provides an accessible overview of the course of international climate negotiations over the last 25 years, including a summary of the major outcomes from the United Nations climate negotiations, including the annual Conference of the Parties meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Harris critiques this process as one in which states have largely privileged their own short-term material interests by resisting deep emission reductions, rather than seriously...