The first World Climate Conference, which was sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization in Genève in 1979, triggered an international dialogue on global warming. From the 1997 United Nations-sponsored conference-during which the Kyoto Protocol was signed-through meetings in Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, and most recently Doha (2012) and Warsaw (2013), worldwide attention to the issue of global warming and its impact on the world's economy has rapidly increased in intensity.
The consensus of these debates and discussions, however, is less than clear. Optimistically, many geoscience researchers and members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have supported CO2 emission reduction pledges while maintaining that a 2°C limit in increased temperature by the year 2100 is achievable through international coordination. Other observers postulate that established CO2 reduction commitments such as those agreed to at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference (2009) are insufficient and cannot hold the global warming increase below 2°C. As experts theorize on precisely what impact global warming will have, developing nations have become particularly alarmed. The developed world will use energy to mitigate global warming effects, but developing countries are more exposed by geography and poverty to the most dangerous consequences of a global temperature rise and lack the economic means to adapt. The complex dynamics that result from this confluence of science and geopolitics gives rise to even more complicated issues for economists, financial planners, business leaders, and policy-makers.
The Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming analyzes the economic impact of issues related to and resulting from global warming, specifically the implications of possible preventative measures, various policy changes, and adaptation efforts as well as the different consequences climate change will have on both developing and developed nations. This multi-disciplinary approach, which touches on issues of growth, employment, and development, elucidates for readers state-of-the-art research on the complex and far-reaching problem of global warming.