"Foreword" [2018] ELECD 639; in Hymel, Mona; Kreiser, Larry; Milne, E. Janet; Ashiabor, Hope (eds), "Innovation Addressing Climate Change Challenges" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) xii

Book Title: Innovation Addressing Climate Change Challenges

Editor(s): Hymel, Mona; Kreiser, Larry; Milne, E. Janet; Ashiabor, Hope

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788973359

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 3

Extract:

Foreword A small handful of simple words might describe market-based instruments that address climate change policy: important, accelerating, interdisciplinary, and potential. Taken together, these words underscore the need to continue to study how market-based instruments do and can shape behavior in the face of climate change. Important. While regulations play a strong role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the consequences of climate change, market-based instruments can send price signals that penetrate the complex networks of daily decision making, influencing behavior. Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems can harness the marketplace to achieve results. The unique characteristics of market-based instruments make them worthy of study and action. Accelerating. Interest in using market-based instruments to address climate change has intensified rapidly in recent years. An electronic search of scholarly articles and books offers a rough proxy for the escalating trajectory of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade regimes in literature.1 Works published in 1990 that mentioned `carbon tax' numbered just over 100, rising to almost 800 published in 2000, then to over 4,500 published in 2017. Sources referring to `cap-and-trade' rose from five published in 1990, to almost 200 published in 2000 and over 3,000 in 2017. On the heels of the growth in these terms, `carbon pricing' came to serve as the conceptual umbrella for both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes that cover greenhouse gas emissions. The number of works that mentioned carbon pricing in ...