This book represents a unique effort by contributors from 29 countries under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to pull together all that is now known about the likely social and economic impact of climate change over the next century or so. It offers a summary of extensive (if still inconclusive and controversial) research on the social impact as well as the costs of steps to mitigate global climate change by reductions of carbon dioxide -- for example, through reforestation.
It also offers a primer on policy analysis, showing how to approach intellectually a topic as complex and far-reaching as climate change and its impact on human settlement over a long period of time with much critical information still unknown or only imperfectly known. It stands as a relatively compact statement on the current state of policy analysis, and how to apply it in this particular area of public decision-making.