Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-309) and index.

Introduction: confronting climate change -- Climate change governance: institutions, values, and the culture of markets -- Universal norms versus local practice: cross-national comparison of market meaning-making -- Europe and the United States: market coordination through contrasting discourses of security, leadership, and economic opportunity -- Australia and South Korea: technocratic governance at the interface of politics and international aspiration -- Japan and China: cultural norms mediated through crisis and environmental context -- The cultures of markets: interplay between economic and political governance -- The fate of markets: materiality and the construction of values -- Conclusion: the path towards environmental finance and sustainable valuation.

This book explores the establishment of emissions trading as a form of environmental, market-based governance. It conceptualizes markets as institutions, and analyzes them as a system of climate governance. To this end, it argues that international efforts to promulgate markets run up against local cultures of markets that shape economic practices and knowledge to different degrees. The book also examines the material implications of emissions markets on the environment and climatic systems. In sum, the study finds that cultures of markets present a substantial challenge to a universalist prescription for resolving climate change and highlights issues at the interface of political and economic governance in different political economies. This includes issues of citizen, state, and industry participation, and the materiality of economic and financial productivity.

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