2646 Book Reviews

The surprise in these numbers is that the federal governmentacknowledges that little is known about most of the health andecological risks that may be associated with the tens of thousandsof industrial chemicals in wide use today. Very few of them havebeen thoroughly tested for toxicity despite the potential for harmand the federal government continues to assume they are safe touse despite lack of supporting data. Surprisingly, the risk of toxicand hazardous chemicals gets relatively little attention in themedia compared to many other contemporary environmentalthreats, such as climate change and loss of biodiversity.

At the international level, a number of interrelated chemicalmanagement regimes have been established since the 1980s thatalso seek to limit the production, use, and disposal of suchchemicals. Among the most notable of these are the BaselConvention directed at the shipment and disposal of hazardouswastes across international boundaries (adopted in 1989), theRotterdam Convention regulating international trade in pesticidesand industrial chemicals (1998), and the Stockholm Convention onPersistent Organic Pollutants or POPs (2001) that regulates theproduction, use, trade, and disposal of POP pesticides andindustrial chemicals. Much like the domestic policies in the UnitedStates, critics question whether these international treaties havebeen effective and suggest various ways in which they might beimproved.

Henrik Selin"s book offers a detailed and yet succinct historyand assessment of each of the international chemical managementregimes established by these and other acts, with particularattention given to the origins of the treaties, their implementation,and their impacts. At heart the book is about what form of globalchemical management is needed, with special reference to thechallenges of multilevel governance, that is, the overlapping andpotentially conflicting actions of government institutions at multi-ple levels – global, national, regional, and local – as well as ofprivate sector and nongovernmental institutions such as scientificbodies and environmental organizations. Selin focuses on severalkey questions, including how such management regimes areformed, how the various policy actors within them interact withone another, how the components of the policies are diffusedacross different venues, and how institutional structures affect thesuccess of governance. In effect, he is asking what works and whatdoes not work in multilevel governance of this kind, and whatneeds to be done to improve performance.

Among the intriguing issues that Selin examines are therelationships between science and policy when scientific knowl-edge about chemical risk is so limited and uncertain, the virtues ofrelying on the precautionary principle (which is by no meansuniversally endorsed), how the various stakeholders in chemicalmanagement policy interact, and the prospects for multilevelgovernance despite its complexity and obvious limitations foreffective and timely decision making. Selin quite rightly notes thatfor all the talk about pursuing sustainable development, improve-ment of the existing chemical regimes has not been a topic of highvisibility or importance. With increasing globalization of theeconomy and rapid development and industrialization in manynations around the world (which translates into increased use ofchemicals and increased production of chemical wastes), improv-ing public policy in this area clearly merits more attention than ithas received.

The existing governance structure suffers from many of the illsthat afflict most major global environmental agreements. Thepolitical will to act is often weak and institutions lack sufficientcapacity (e.g., legal authority and financial resources) to achieve

Transportation in a Climate Constrained World, Andreas Schäfer,Jonh B. Heywood, Henry D. Jackson, Ian A. Waitz (Eds.), The MITPress, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-262-51234-3

The authors describe this book as “the first attempt to system-atically integrate the various factors affecting GHG emissions for allmajor modes of transport on a U.S. and Global Scale.” For reasonsdiscussed below it falls considerably short of this ambitious objective.But under a more modest scope as a review of how passenger vehicletechnologies and alternative fuels can bring about GHG reductions itmakes a valuable contribution.

Early on the authors invoke Zahavi's proposition that people at alllevels of income and economic development share a constant traveltime budget of about 1.2 hours per day. As incomes increase, they shiftto more rapid forms of transportation (for example, from buses tocars) and travel longer distances. If this is the case, the authorsconclude, policies aimed at travel behaviour will have little impact— a

policy goals. Thus implementation can be slow and ineffective, andcompliance with treaty provisions may be weak, even withsubstantial commitments by many of the policy actors (govern-ments, businesses, and NGOs) involved. Selin is right to focus onhow institutional capacities might be strengthened, and how theinteraction of different levels of government and the variousstakeholders might be improved.

There is a strong and growing literature on these subjects inthe field of international environmental policy, and this bookmakes a significant contribution to that body of work. Someinternational treaties, such as the Montreal Protocol on ozonedepleting chemicals, are widely considered to be models ofsuccess. The challenge for chemical management, and for climatechange and other global threats, is to figure out what character-istics contribute to the success of treaties like this and how todesign and implement others so that they might be equallyeffective over time. In the last chapter, Selin offers a number ofsensible recommendations for improving the management ofhazardous chemicals, from reducing their generation in the firstplace to raising public awareness, making better use of riskassessment, and strengthening management capacity.

In sum, the book offers a timely, readable, and valuable historyand analysis of global chemical management regimes that bringtogether a vast quantity of pertinent information on the subject. Itappropriately emphasizes how to design and implement suchinternational environmental policies in a way that promisesgreater effectiveness and impact for the future. Thus it should beof great interest to scholars, students, policy analysts, and policymakers with an interest in this sadly neglected area of globalenvironmental policy.

Michael E. KraftUniversity of Wisconsin-Green Bay, 2420 Nicolet Dr., MAC B310

Green Bay, WI 54311, USAE-mail address: kraftm@uwgb.edu.

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.07.016

2647Book Reviews

useful conclusion as it allows them to narrow their focus to vehicle andfuel technologies.

They may be right, but they expend very little effort inmaking their case. They direct the reader to 1981 source for adiscussion of controversies over Zahavi's proposition. They makereference in passing to a more recent study (Mokhtarian andChen, 2004) that in fact does not support the existence ofconstant travel time budgets. Even if the proposition were true, itdoes not necessarily imply a broad shift to faster modes. Ifinfrastructure for those modes (highways and airports) were notprovided, people would have to fill out their budgets bytravelling on slower modes. So there is still some room forpolicy. Furthermore, they extend the time budget notion toencompass air travel, even though most discussions about timebudgets focus on daily travel. The result is projection of a veryhigh share of the air mode in total person kilometres travelled by2050.

It is a source of irritation to social scientists when naturalscientists and engineers seem to throw rigour to the wind whenaddressing social phenomena. By relying on an empirical rule ofthumb, the authors are able to largely bypass the extensiveliterature on travel behaviour and urban transportation policy. Itis worth noting that their casual acceptance of the Zahaviproposition stands in sharp contrast to their rigorous critique ofthe “peak oil” argument. But it would be a shame to discardTransportation in a Climate Constrained World on that basis.Most would agree that vehicle technologies and alternative fuelswill play critical roles (and I would concur, the most criticalroles) in GHG emissions from passenger transportation over thenext few decades. On these topics, this book provides acomprehensive and clearly presented review based on extensiveresearch.

A challenge in writing a book like this is finding a happymedium between a style intended for a science and engineeringaudience and an “accessible” treatment that cannot explainunderlying mechanisms. The authors have been quite successfulin this regard. Chapters on automotive and aircraft technologybegin with technological fundamentals presented in a way thatcan be understood by readers with some basic mathematics andperhaps a little physics. Building on those fundamentals thestrengths and weaknesses of various technologies are clearlydeveloped. The analysis addresses not only emission reductionsbut also cost. For example, they argue that it is possible to reducethe emissions of cars and light trucks by 50% without degradingservice characteristics, but the first 25% will come much cheaperthan the second. The chapter on aircraft goes beyond vehicletechnology to consider institutional arrangements, arguing forexample that point-to-point service makes it easier to make use ofefficient, smaller aircraft.

The chapter on alternative fuels is especially useful because ittakes a life-cycle approach and deals with a number of factors thatretard the potential of otherwise attractive fuels. These includeleakage in gaseous fuels, land use for biofuels, energy losses in fuelcells and a number of others. The picture that emerges is of no magicbullet when it comes to fuels. The authors are particularly pessimisticabout hydrogen fuels because widespread adoption would require amassive delivery infrastructure and expansion of electricity genera-tion capacity. Hybrid plug in electrics based on advanced batteriesand cellulosic ethanol are suggested as a practical alternative.

Two final chapters address policy options and future pro-spects. While the authors have a clear preference for market-based policy over command and control regulation, the pre-

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.07.017

Laurie Mazur (Ed.), A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice andThe Environmental Challenge. Island Press, Washington DC(2010),ISBN-13:978-1-59726-661-1, 432pp.

It is a cheering sign when the much-ignored but critical topic ofpopulation begins to be featured in books, and “A Pivotal Moment”should earn itself a place on the shelf of anyone seriously interested inthe topic. It is uneven, as is typical of edited volumes, but it starts witha foreword by Timothy Wirth, one of the very few political leaderswho truly grasps the dimensions of the population problem, and someof the chapters are superb.

John Harte has produced a brief but masterful discussion of theenvironmental non-linearities related to population growth (Ch. 9),a topic too long neglected since the I=PAT equation was firstproposed. Too few people (and especially decision-makers) realizethat the next two billion people added to the planet will haveenormously greater environmental impact than the last two billion.People are smart—they pick the low-hanging fruit first. Now everyadditional individual on average will need to be fed from more

sentation is balanced. There is a useful discussion of theproposition that personal transportation requires special policytreatment because its low elasticities imply that demand isaffected little by carbon pricing. Prospects for the future arefairly pessimistic. While improvements in vehicle and fueltechnologies may reverse the growth of GHG in the developedworld, they will be outstripped by growth in travel demand inthe developing world.

An interesting aspect of this book is that it dismisses anumber of policy options that have been championed as majortools for GHG reduction. It makes a quantitative argument thatbuying up and retiring old cars is a relatively expensive way tomitigate carbon. High-speed rail is downplayed on the basis ofresearch showing that it plays a modest role even in Europe andthe GHG reductions from its increased penetration in NorthAmerica would be small. It argues convincingly that US “energyindependence” is not complementary to the goal of GHGreduction. Road pricing, on the other hand, is dismissed withoutmuch justification.

Despite its flaws, Transportation in a Climate Constrained Worldprovides lots of valuable information and challenges to conventionalwisdom. It is a welcome addition to the still rather thin literature ontransportation and climate change.

Reference

Mokhtarian, Patricia L., Chen, Cynthia, 2004. TTB or not TTB, that is the question: areview and analysis of the empirical literature on travel time (and money) budgets.Transp. Res. A 38, 643–675.

Bill AndersonOntario Research Chair in Cross-Border Transportation Policy,

Professor, Political Science, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue,Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4

E-mail address: bander@uwindsor.ca.

23 June 2010