Amazon.com description: Product Description: Chichilnisky's first-hand accounts of the rivalries and intrigues that always attend international summiteering are fascinating, as is the rest of the book. - Geographical magazine Publishing in August 2009 in time for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen on 7-18 December 2009, where the future of the Kyoto Protocol will be decided A fantastic reference material for anyone interested in saving the planet as well as students of environmental studies, climate change, politics and international political economics For the first time in recorded history, humans are altering the planet in ways that endanger its basic life-support systems. Human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have changed the Earth's atmosphere, unleashing potentially catastrophic climate changes that threaten the survival of human civilisation. Saving Kyoto focuses on international efforts to confront the crisis and provides a colourful overview of the history of global climate negotiations, explaining why international cooperation between poor and rich nations has become critical. The Kyoto Protocol is a historic agreement, the first of its kind to be based on the creation of a new market - a market based on trade in user rights to the global atmospheric commons. Detailing how the Kyoto Protocol originated, the debates and conflicts leading up to its signing in 1997, the main protagonists behind its creation and the current issues that threaten to undermine it, the book explains the importance of the carbon market - potentially the largest commodity market in the world - from an insider's perspective. After reading this book, readers will understand how the carbon market can help to close the global income divide while resolving the climate crisis. They will understand why we need to save Kyoto