ABSTRACT
Climate change is widely recognized as the defining challenge of our era, both for individual states and for their capacity to cooperate. Without unprecedented levels of cooperation and coordination there is little chance that effective action to combat global warming will be taken in the very limited time available. This chapter maps some of the key obstacles to effective global cooperation in this issue area and argues that the prospects are rather bleak, not least because of the continuing primacy given to national interests. The only hope, I suggest, is that there is sufficient popular pressure to compel policymakers around the world to act. There are signs that pressure ‘from below’ is actually growing, but it is far from clear that this will prove to be decisive.
