Weathervane online
The second issue of Weathervane was published in August 1997. Features in this issue include:
- “Optimizing the Climate Policy Portfolio: What Options Should Be Included?,” by Michael Toman, Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future. As governments respond to the risks of global warming, Toman lays out five key principles for negotiators to keep in as they consider targets and timetables for future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
- “The History of Climate Change as a Political Issue,” by J W Anderson, journalist-in-residence at Resources for the Future. He traces the political hot-button origins of climate change back to the International Geophysical Year 1957-58 when scientists showed for the first time that CO2 levels in the atmosphere were rising steadily. Anderson further tracks through the 1970s and 1980s to the present day to detail the key events and meetings that have explored the implications of global warming.
- “Targets and Timetables: How to Get Out the Carbon,” by Raymond Kopp, Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future. In the second of a three-part series on energy data, Kopp explains one set of targets and timetables that has received considerable attention. That is, a policy that would bind industrialized nations to stabilize their within-country emissions of greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide, to the level of their own country’s 1990 emissions by the year 2010. He discusses what such a policy would mean for United States CO2 emissions and energy consumption, and looks at what the United States would have to do to abide by such an agreement.
- The Clinton Administration’s “Draft IAT Report.” Weathervane provides: the complete text of the Clinton Administration’s draft analysis of the economic effects of possible climate change policies; the critical comments of eleven economists chosen by the Administration to review the analysis; and, testimony on the economics of climate change policy by Council of Economics Advisers Chairman, Janet Yellen, before the United States House of Representatives.
- “The Benefits of Climate Change? China’s take on Global Warming,” by Zhou Xin, a reporter for The Beijing Review. Xin outlines the opinions of many leading Chinese scientists and scholars that run counter to prevailing public opinion — that a warming climate can actually bring benefits to China and many developing countries.
Weathervane can be found on the Internet at: http://www.weathervane.rff.org/.