Scaling the policy response to climate change

This article assesses the advantages and disadvantages of fighting climate change through local, bottom-up strategies as well as global, top-down approaches. After noting that each scale of action—the local and the global—has distinct costs and benefits, the article explores the importance of scale in three case studies (the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, and efforts at adaptation/mitigation). It concludes that local thinking must be coupled with global and national scales of action in order to achieve the levels of carbon dioxide reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate impacts.