Cool Heads in a Warming World: How Trade Policy Can Help Fight Climate Change

Edited by Daniel C. Esty and Susan Biniaz

 

World leaders came together in 2015 to reinvigorate the global commitment to advance sustainability in general and to address the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in particular. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change calls on all nations to limit average global temperature increases, improve resilience to climate change impacts, and deliver financial flows in support of a decarbonized future. The Paris Agreement cannot, however, succeed without the help of other parts of the global governance regime, including most notably the organizations that manage international trade and economic interdependence. 

Cool Heads in a Warming World: How Trade Policy Can Help Fight Climate Change explores the many ways in which the international trading system intersects with the Paris Agreement—and how it might be engaged to help advance a low-carbon global economy. With insights applicable to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as trade law and policy more generally, Cool Heads features fresh perspectives and cutting-edge analysis from leading scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from around the world.

To read essays written by experts for this project, click the links on the right.

Project White Papers

Project Homepage

Introduction
Daniel C. Esty and Sue Biniaz

Trade, Sustainable Development and Climate Change: A Proposal for Positive Convergence
James Cameron, Max Mendez-Parra, and Leah Worrall

A Call for a WTO Climate Waiver
James Bacchus

Trade in a World Where Goods Carry Carbon Passports
Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz

Border Carbon Adjustments in a Post-Paris World: Same Old, Same Old, but Different
Harro van Asselt and Michael Mehling

Trade and Carbon Standards: Why Greater Regulatory Cooperation is Needed
Kateryna Holzer and Aik Hoe Lim

Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform: A View from the Trenches
Tim Groser

Can Preferential Trade Agreements Address Climate Change?
Jean-Frédéric Morin and Sikina Jinnah

EU Trade and Climate Policy: Pursuing a “Cooperative Approach” to Promoting Implementation of the Paris Agreement
Jacob Werksman and Ilaria Buri

Unsticking the Environmental Goods Agreement: Why It Matters, Why It Is Stalled, and How to Move Forward
Jaime de Melo and Jean-Marc Solleder

Power to the People: From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Approaches
Rafael Leal-Arcas

Some for All? Carbon Clubs in the Context of the Paris Agreement and the WTO
Annie Petsonk and Nathaniel Keohane (with Alex Hanafi)

Options for Reducing International Maritime Shipping Emissions: Opportunities and Constraints in an Era of Transformative Technologies
Thomas L. Brewer

East Asian Approaches to Climate Change and Economic Integration
Simon Tay

Integrating Non-Economic Concerns in International Economic Organizations: Learning from the International Financial Institutions’ Approach to Sustainable Development
Johanna Aleria Pedro Lorenzo

How the Topsy-Turvy Trade World Affects Climate Change Cooperation
Steve Charnovitz