Australia's Climate Change Regime (An Alternative Approach to Climate Change).

Australia's Climate Change Regime (An Alternative Approach to Climate Change). PDF Author: Wendy Ann Howe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Australia, the climate change debate emerged in the late 1980's as a response to rising global awareness of the issue, and right from the start the disparity between what is right for the environment and what is right for the economy began to dictate government policy directions. As early as 1990, the Federal government, when speaking about climate change, made it very clear that it would not proceed with measures which have net adverse economic impacts nationally or on Australia's trade competitiveness. This article examines Australia's climate change policies and describes how the current Federal government has been pursuing an alternative approach to climate change policy through its focus on five key international directions. This alternative approach to climate change policies sets no targets, timeframes or benchmarks for emissions reductions. Rather the Australian government argues that emissions reductions can be achieved through voluntary actions and economic incentives for promoting technological innovation. This article assesses this approach to climate change policies and asks how effective this alternative approach is. A quantitative assessment of the Australian government's approach is presented by looking at the national emissions data, and then a qualitative analysis of the intertwining policy directions is explored. This analysis reveals that the political and economic aspirations of the current Australian government have clearly directed climate change policy developments.

Australia's Climate Change Regime (An Alternative Approach to Climate Change).

Australia's Climate Change Regime (An Alternative Approach to Climate Change). PDF Author: Wendy Ann Howe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Australia, the climate change debate emerged in the late 1980's as a response to rising global awareness of the issue, and right from the start the disparity between what is right for the environment and what is right for the economy began to dictate government policy directions. As early as 1990, the Federal government, when speaking about climate change, made it very clear that it would not proceed with measures which have net adverse economic impacts nationally or on Australia's trade competitiveness. This article examines Australia's climate change policies and describes how the current Federal government has been pursuing an alternative approach to climate change policy through its focus on five key international directions. This alternative approach to climate change policies sets no targets, timeframes or benchmarks for emissions reductions. Rather the Australian government argues that emissions reductions can be achieved through voluntary actions and economic incentives for promoting technological innovation. This article assesses this approach to climate change policies and asks how effective this alternative approach is. A quantitative assessment of the Australian government's approach is presented by looking at the national emissions data, and then a qualitative analysis of the intertwining policy directions is explored. This analysis reveals that the political and economic aspirations of the current Australian government have clearly directed climate change policy developments.

Climate Change, Forests and Federalism

Climate Change, Forests and Federalism PDF Author: Evgeny Guglyuvatyy
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811907420
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Get Book Here

Book Description
Climate change is one of the most serious global challenges facing humankind. Climate change has enormous environmental and economic implications, and finding a solution is a daunting task. The purpose of this book is to look at the global problem of climate change through the prism of an individual country's attempt to tackle this problem. This book begins with a discussion of the origins of climate change and the evolution of the international response to climate change. Key climate change mitigation actions and policies are considered to provide the necessary framework for analysing Australia's approach to climate change. Australia's climate change policy development is considered from a historical perspective. The book traces the evolution of the response to climate change, focusing on Australia as one of the Federal countries unable to adequately reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to the systematic failure of the Australian government to develop a common and effective approach to the problem of climate change. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of environmental law and the contemporary International and Australian climate change law.

Climate Change

Climate Change PDF Author:
Publisher: CSIRO
ISBN: 0643103260
Category : Carbon dioxide mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This publication provides the latest scientific knowledge on a series of climate change topics relevant to Australia and the world. It draws on peer-reviewed literature contributed to by thousands of researchers ... Climate change is the greatest ecological, economic, and social challenge of our time. Climate change research over many years shows links between human activities and warming of the atmosphere and oceans. This warming has caused changes to the climate system, such as changes in rain and wind patterns, and reductions in Arctic sea ice. Climate change adaptation involves taking action to adapt to climate change and to plan and prepare for the risk of future change. Climate change mitigation refers to actions that aim to limit greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, either by reducing emissions or by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide stored in natural sinks."--Publisher description.

Climate Change in the South Pacific: Impacts and Responses in Australia, New Zealand, and Small Island States

Climate Change in the South Pacific: Impacts and Responses in Australia, New Zealand, and Small Island States PDF Author: Alexander Gillespie
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 079236077X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Get Book Here

Book Description
ALEXANDER GILLESPIE & WILLIAM C.G. BURNS The idea for this book grew out of the Ecopolitics conference in Canberra, Australia in 1996. The conference captured the ferment of the climate change debate in the South Pacific, as well as some its potential implications for the region’s inhabitants and e- systems. At that conference, one of the editors (Gillespie) delivered a paper on climate change issues in the region, as did Ros Taplin and Mark Diesendorf, who are also c- tributors to this volume. This book focuses on climate change issues in Australia, New Zealand, and the small island nations in the Pacific as the world struggles to cope with possible the impacts of environmental change and to formulate effective responses. While Australia and New Zealand’s per capita emissions of greenhouse gases are among the highest in the world, their aggregate contributions are small. However, both nations may exert a disprop- tionate influence in the global greenhouse debate because their obstinate positions at recent conferences of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on C- mate Change (FCCC) may provide justification for other developed nations, as well as developing countries, to refuse to make meaningful reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.

Running from the Storm

Running from the Storm PDF Author: Clive Hamilton
Publisher: UNSW Press
ISBN: 9780868406121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
This text provides an account of the key issues that affect climate change policy in Australia, detailing the policy failures, the murky politics, the corruption of the policy process, the influence of the fossil-fuel industries on policy makers, and the ethical issues that underpin the debate.

Strengthening Science-policy-practice Interfaces for Climate Change Policy Reforms and Transitions in Australia

Strengthening Science-policy-practice Interfaces for Climate Change Policy Reforms and Transitions in Australia PDF Author: Josephine Claire Mummery
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
With changing climates across Australia causing damaging impacts to societies, environments and industries, there is growing urgency for evidence-based policy reforms and transitions that can enable climate change adaptation and de-carbonisation. Despite this urgency and the availability of an accessible body of science on climate change, many policies and practices in Australia, including in vulnerable sectors, fail to robustly consider or integrate knowledge of future climates. The overall aim of this thesis is to better understand how to rectify this deficiency through critical examination of the interfaces between scientific knowledge and decision-making systems. This thesis addresses the overall research question, How can science-policy-practice interfaces (SPPIs) facilitate climate change policy reforms and transitions in Australia? In addressing this question, the research utilises in-depth case studies to explore the operation and effectiveness of SPPIs for climate change adaptation and mitigation in predominantly national policy regimes. The cases span national housing regulation, environment protection legislation, forest sinks policy, urban climate transitions, and the management of ozone depleting substances and synthetic greenhouse gases (ODS and SGG).Some 56 experts and leaders from science, policy and practice organisations contributed to the research through interviews and helped reveal the multi-institutional complexity and divergent orientations of SPPIs within policy regimes. An important finding and contribution of this research is a new definition and conceptualisation of climate change-relevant SPPIs that recognise the purposeful nature of climate change science, that multiple interlinkages need to be considered to understand operation, and that exogenously produced climate change science can clash with the experience-based knowledge that drives much decision-making. This contrasts with a common framing of science-policy interfaces as a single institution with a predominant purpose of knowledge provision suited to end-user needs. Of concern, the research found significant weaknesses and deficiencies in the SPPIs for the national policy regimes regarding housing regulation, forest sinks, and environment protection, with divergent causes. Highly prescriptive regulatory regimes, such as for housing and forest sinks, constrained consideration of climate change science, but also motivated niche industry leaders to innovate, trial, and adopt climate-smart practice. The political nature of decisions on environmental approvals, however, despite strong science advice, results in environmental outcomes being fragmented and subordinated to development interests, which was particularly evident in the period of this research where a very conservative national government was in power. Effective SPPIs in contrast, identified in the niche industry leaders noted, in the urban governance transition of the Australian Capital Territory and in Australia's approach to managing ODS and SGG, were found in this research to be supported by strong two-way interactions across all key institutions, and a valuing and recognition of climate change science. In addition, and importantly, all effective cases involve interfaces that supported experimentation, and allowed for flexibility in problem-solving. Insights from both weak and robust SPPIs underpinned the formulation in this thesis of characteristics of effective SPPIs for climate change outcomes, suitable for evaluative purposes, as well as tailored recommendations for reforms to facilitate climate change outcomes. More broadly, the research explains how SPPIs can improve the reform capacities of policies and support progress of transitions, including through their capacities to reveal the detailed nature of barriers to knowledge uptake, and to help shift the policy debate and support innovation through attention to the spaces between climate change goals and current policy and practice. These insights also have relevance for theories and/or practices of change governance, public policy and climate change adaptation, particularly regarding approaches to close the policy implementation gap. This thesis includes a series of articles which collectively illustrate the operation of SPPIs for climate change adaptation and mitigation within key policy regimes designed to deliver to objectives such as safety, ecologically sustainable development, or minimum cost emissions reductions. Embedded predominantly in the practices of national policy implementation, this thesis generates new insights on the strengths and weaknesses of current SPPIs, and provides feasible recommendations on the reforms needed for improved practice that will facilitate a more resilient, climate-adapted and low-carbon future.

Climate Change

Climate Change PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780643103276
Category : Climate change mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This publication provides the latest scientific knowledge on a series of climate change topics relevant to Australia and the world. It draws on peer-reviewed literature contributed to by thousands of researchers ... Climate change is the greatest ecological, economic, and social challenge of our time. Climate change research over many years shows links between human activities and warming of the atmosphere and oceans. This warming has caused changes to the climate system, such as changes in rain and wind patterns, and reductions in Arctic sea ice. Climate change adaptation involves taking action to adapt to climate change and to plan and prepare for the risk of future change. Climate change mitigation refers to actions that aim to limit greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, either by reducing emissions or by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide stored in natural sinks."--Publisher description.

Australian Climate Change Policy

Australian Climate Change Policy PDF Author: William Daniel Noye Wells
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Recently published research suggesting that the irreversible tipping points of 'dangerous climate change' are much closer than previously thought, when combined with projections of rapid global economic growth, adds new urgency to the task of mitigation. Compelled by a welfare-economic calculation of the superior cost-benefit of mitigation, the job of altering emissions-intensive activity is, in neoclassical economic fashion, given to the market. But establishing and supporting a 'carbon price' is, by itself, an inadequate policy response. It fails to engage with the non-instrumental values of the Australian public -the non-economic levers of behavioural change -and is symptomatic of an unreflective, monolithic approach to public policy that refuses to acknowledge the normative assumptions from which it operates. For a truly sustainable national carriage through the climate change crisis to occur and in order to demonstrate to the wider world what is accomplishable, the Australian Government must, as a matter of expediency, begin to publicly explicate these assumptions, and to invite -through debate and consultation -the inclusion of alternative values and ideas. Climate change must be 'reframed' beyond economics to engage, however clumsily, with the wider norms and visions of the Australian people." -- From abstract.

Climate Phoenix

Climate Phoenix PDF Author: Tony Wood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781925015850
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Australian Paradox

The Australian Paradox PDF Author: Lindsay Hannah Bushing
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 1973 oil shock was the first energy crisis modern industrialized economies experienced. The disruption exposed the limitations of energy systems that rely on fossil fuels, creating a demand for experimentation of energy alternatives. In their book, Renewables: The Politics of a Global Energy Transition, Michaël Aklin, and Johannes Urpelainen provide a framework to analyze this transitionary period for selected countries, as well as the events that provoke the need for change in the form of the 1970s external shocks in oil prices. In this paper, for the first time, Aklin & Urpelainen’s framework will be applied to Australia to help explain the “Australian Paradox.” The Australian Paradox refers to the misalignment of Australia’s climate change policy and exposure to climate change disruption. Though Australia is particularly vulnerable to climate change in several ways, the country is noted among rich industrialized nations for having done very little to promote alternative energies and reduce its carbon footprint. While the oil crises of the 1970s have catalyzed a search for alternative energy sources in some countries, it created a business opportunity for Australia in the form of expanding coal and gas exports, thereby further committing the country to carbon-cased energies. I conclude by reflecting on whether other forms of energy shocks could lead Australia into taking a more aggressive approach to climate change in the near future.