Global efforts to address climate change started in a relatively straightforward manner, using a legally binding framework agreement. Today, however, the climate regime is a web of overlapping agreements, voluntary initiatives, and nonstate actions. The growth of activities and turbulent history of the climate regime make it a challenge to communicate the subject clearly and respect the context in which events occurred.
William Sweet takes up these challenges. Using his training as a journalist, he shapes an accessible, analytical history of climate diplomacy. The book achieves accessibility without glossing over important issues that can be difficult to explain. Sweet includes both mitigation and adaptation issues, and explains flexibility mechanisms such as markets and the interconnected issues of land use, land-use change, and forestry, in a way that upper-year undergraduates, other journalists, and readers interested in global governance more generally would appreciate.
The book’s strength is its wide-angle view of climate...