The Carbon Connection: Climate Change Solutions for Our Energy, Economic and Geopolitical Challenges

This book offers a unifying theory for connected policy-making, motivating solutions that connect the local and personal with the global and long term challenges of effective, collective global action. In this book, three top energy and climate analysts present a new 'planetary economics' as a way out of the climate change crisis. The oil shock, the credit crunch and the near-collapse of global climate negotiations at Copenhagen demand a radical rethink of current policies. Carbon Connection shows how addressing the climate issue as a security challenge offers solutions that can also enhance energy security and help global financial and political adjustment to the rise of the emerging economies. Bringing together insights from contemporary economic, development, management and behavioural sciences, the book shows that low carbon economies can have a long-run competitive advantage because of their higher efficiency and reduced exposure to oil instability. The key to making this transition this lies in the integrated use of innovation policy, carbon pricing and consumer empowerment. This triad of interlinked solutions can create a tipping point towards energy and climate security. A coalition of countries that spearhead this agenda will benefit most from it. As carbon becomes an increasingly limited and valuable global resource, it can also serve as anchor point for adjusting global financial imbalances. This powerful combination will make it impossible, ultimately, for any country to stand aside from the Carbon Connection.