ABSTRACT
The IPCC Working Group III report (IPCC 1996, hereafter "the report") is a remarkable piece of work. It is little short of amazing that such a large group of authors and reviewers, operating under such stringent procedural and substantive constraints, could produce such a high-quality document. A policymaker seeking guidance on the most useful things to do over the next few years could learn much from this report about the economic dimensions of climate change and about the design of efficient environmental policies in general. In aggregate, the report does a very good job of providing a comprehensible overview of a wide expanse of relevant intellectual territory, some of it no doubt politically treacherous. The exposition is usually clear and sometimes even elegant, and, while the report is not fully internally consistent, the level of consistency attained is remarkable in light of the production process involved.
