Abstract
Fast Forward argues that the accelerating pace of anthropogenic climate change requires a swift political response. Its subtitle, however, is somewhat misleading. Ethics does serve a role in Antholis and Talbott's argument, mostly to help establish climate change as an existential threat and to define our duties towards future generations to reduce emissions rapidly; and the authors do also provide a historical survey of relevant political initiatives. However, this monograph is principally a policy prescription addressed to the US context and often, very particularly, to President Obama.
Given the unwieldiness of negotiating international binding agreements and the difficulties of securing a US Senate supermajority to ratify treaties, Antholis and Talbott suggest an approach based on politically binding commitments. Their admittedly pragmatic approach seeks to gain consensus through shared agreement among a core of nations, which would then grow as more nation states came on board. The authors uphold the success of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which responded to a similar anthropogenic existential threat, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as models of how such agreements can grow from a core group of nation states to become very effective on the global scale. Here we come to the authors’ definitive policy prescription presented in the monograph: their advocacy of the need for a General Agreement to Reduce Emissions (GARE) based on the principle ‘legislate locally, coordinate globally’ (p. 93). Aristotle's distinction between logos, ethos and pathos helps to frame Antholis and Talbott's method for the implementation of the GARE. According to their analysis, the form of persuasion that this distinction represents, appealing to facts, personal integrity and feelings, dovetails well with Obama's style of politics on both the domestic and international stage.
Because Fast Forward presents specific recommendations and was first sent to the publisher in April 2010, it is already showing its age in some respects. For instance, even in this rather lightly revised edition (June 2011), Antholis and Talbott place a good deal of emphasis on the now defunct Kerry-Liebermann initiative for a US climate bill as creating momentum for a robust agreement at the Cancun climate change summit, which also failed to materialise. Additionally, they bizarrely continue to express support for ‘nuclear renaissance’ in power generation, without addressing its problematic nature in light of the Fukushima radiation leaks. Nonetheless, Fast Forward remains an extremely accessible and well-crafted monograph which can serve to stimulate conversation on one of the definitive issues of our times.