As the Kyoto conference of the parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change once again underscored, man-made climate change has become one of the major challenges to our generation and many generations to come. Since scientific evidence on climate change can be seen as increasingly reliable, the focus of our attention has to turn more and more to the question of foreseeable damages and to possibilities to prevent and mitigate climate change. In other words, we need to analyse the economic aspects of man­ marle climate change and the policy options to prevent its most severe impacts. This book reports on the findings of an international workshop on these aspects of global climate change. It was organised by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany on March 6th and 7th 1997. In the light of the ongoing international policy-making process on climate change, we decided to publish the report after the Kyoto conference from December Ist to 10th, 1997, to include the results of the conference, which emphasise the importance of economic aspects and economic policy options when it comes to addressing the problern of man-made climate change. Thus, this book went to press in February 1998 the moment we received the official version of the Kyoto Protocol, which is reproduced in the annex.

Introduction: Economic Aspects of and Policy Options for Climate Protection.- Introduction: Economic Aspects of and Policy Options for Climate Protection.- What Do We Know about Climate Change ?.- The Science and Impacts of Climate Change - Conclusions from the Second IPCC Assessment Report.- Economic Aspects of Climate Change.- Decision-Making Frameworks for Addressing Climate Change.- What is Sustainable Development?.- Linking Weak and Strong Sustainability Indicators: The Case of Global Warming.- Discounting of Long Term Costs: What Would Future Generations Prefer Us to Do?.- Is Adaptation Cheaper than Prevention? The Applicability of Cost-Benefit Analysis to Global Warming.- Some Critical Remarks on Today's Bottom-up Energy Models.- Double Dividend of Climate Protection and the Role of International Policy Coordination in the EU - An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis with the GEM-E3 Model.- Policy Options.- Possible Contributions of Renewable Energies to the Solution of the Global Climate Problem.- What Hope for a Sustainable Energy System?.- Comment on: Potentials of Joint Implementation Measures.- Assessment of Voluntary Agreements in Environmental Policy- A Neoliberal Perspective.- The Political Context for Emissions Trading in the Climate Change Negotiations.- The Kyoto Protocol and the Emergence of "Contraction and Convergence" as a Framework for an International Political Solution to Greenhouse Gas Emissions Abatement.