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The widely held view is that effective action on climate change requires commitment by national governments to international agreements. Developed nations like Canada and Australia continue to fall short in their commitments to emissions reduction targets established under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Australia refused to ratify its Kyoto commitments until 2008 and Canada withdrew its commitment in 2011. Subnational governments in both countries have been active in developing policy responses to climate change yet remain largely excluded as serious policy partners in national mitigation and adaptation initiatives. This paper utilizes Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework to consider why subnational governments address climate change and the main factors shaping their policy choices. The experiences of the Australian state of Victoria and the Canadian province of Ontario provide examples through which to explore the factors contributing to climate policy opportunities and constraints faced by subnational governments in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation is the most politically palatable avenue for governments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It avoids less palatable alternatives, such as regulating social behaviour. However, technological innovation in advanced, liberal capitalist states such as Australia is the product of the interaction of science possibilities with market demands, and is primarily reliant on the choices of profit-seeking corporations. Therefore, interviews were conducted with key office-holders in Australia's most carbon-intensive industry sectors. The perspectives they offered challenge the conventional wisdom that Australian business desires less government intervention. Instead, corporate representatives expressed a desire for stronger, clearer and more strategic long-term government support. This is because a liberal economic basis for capitalism in Australia means government, more than the market, is central for climate innovation as opposed to normal market innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the concepts of the climate discourse complex, and national climate policy regime, in order to analyse significant patterns in Australian national climate politics over the twenty-five years from 1988 to 2013. Six major discursive fields - scientific, ethical, economic, technological, political/legal, and 'everyday life'- contribute to the ensemble of discourses that constitute a climate discourse complex. The climate discourse complex in turn serves to frame and discipline climate debate and the articulation of a national climate policy regime. The composition of Australia's climate discourse complex has been dominated by the economic discursive field. Debates over 'old' and 'new' economic discourses have been the key drivers of and constraints on the trajectory of Australia's climate policy regime for much of the period under consideration. These debates have diminished and sometimes marginalized the influence of scientific, ethical and other discourses, contributing to Australia's weak mitigation ambition. The paper also suggests that significant changes in Australian climate discourses and Australia's climate discourse complex have largely been initiated by factors external to Australia, with the major shift occurring in the period 2006/2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the problematic aspects of carbon dioxide emissions trading schemes (ETS) in Australia. ETS have become a popular method for governments to use to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power and energy stations. Because ETS was adopted by the Kyoto Protocol as a primary means of combating climate change, the government of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made ETS a policy priority. The author argues that any potential environmental gains made by using ETS are undermined by regulatory loopholes promoted by the energy industry and because ETS does not address the underlying cause of greenhouse gas emissions.

While Australia has signed both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, it has failed to ratify the latter. It is nevertheless committed to meeting its +8% Kyoto target for greenhouse gas emissions, and argues that it is on track to doing so. This paper examines Australia's non-ratification politics and greenhouse policy efforts in an attempt to explain its contrary position of resisting Kyoto, yet embracing and pursuing its emission reduction targets. Australia's behavior as a carbon-intensive nation is highly significant in the global context, and this paper focuses on the domestic factors of interests, ideas and institutions, while also considering international factors in trying to explain Australia's non-ratification of Kyoto and climate change policy development. It finds that while ideas and institutions have been modifying influences in the domestic context, political and economic interests have dominated Australia's greenhouse policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]