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Healthcare contributes to environmental harm. Trainee-led Research and Audit in Anaesthesia for Sustainable Healthcare (TRA2SH) is an Australasian network focused on sustainable anaesthesia practice. TRA2SH hypothesised that trainee-led audits alongside education presented on a scheduled national day, called Operation Clean Up, can improve engagement with sustainability initiatives. This paper aims to describe the first two years of Operation Clean Up in terms of goals, achievements and data collected so far. Environmental themes for Operation Clean Up were chosen based on available evidence (life cycle analyses and observational studies). The first Operation Clean Up (OCU 2020) focused on reducing the unnecessary use of single-use disposable absorbent pads (known as 'blueys' in Australia, 'greenies' in New Zealand). OCU 2021 included: refuse desflurane, reduce bluey use, reuse drug trays, and recycle paper and cardboard. TRA2SH provided an information pack to trainees who presented educational material to their department and fed back procurement figures to quantify each item. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse de-identified pooled data submitted to a centralised database. Eight departments submitted data for OCU 2020 and six provided follow-up data. Bluey use was reduced from a median of 37 to 34 blueys per ten surgical encounters. Fifteen departments submitted pre-campaign data for OCU 2021 with follow-up data to be collected during OCU 2022. Baseline data showed a median bluey use of 31 per ten surgical encounters. Volatile-related emissions were calculated; desflurane's proportion was 70% of these emissions yet was 11% of volatile procurement. Two participating departments removed desflurane from their formulary following OCU 2021. Operation Clean Up is a practical model for implementing sustainability initiatives using trainees as eco-leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour migration is considered an important pathway for improving economic development in countries of origin. In recent years, labour migration, through the 'migration as adaptation' discourse, has been further positioned as a response to changing environmental conditions in places of high climate risk, such as the Pacific Islands region. However, limited empirical work examines whether and how labour mobility schemes enhance both development outcomes and climate change adaptation. This paper considers how temporary and circular labour migrants from Solomon Islands, who are participants in Australia's Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP), are investing in their lives, households and villages in their country of origin in ways that contribute to development and climate change adaptation. Based on in-depth qualitative research with twelve Solomon Islander SWP participants working on citrus farms in the Mildura region, Australia, we find that investments (via funding, resources and skills) made by labour migrants contribute to development and in-situ climate change adaptation, enabling aspirations for a resilient futures in their community of origin. However, we argue climate change considerations should be formally integrated and mainstreamed into the SWP to fully enable possibilities for transformative climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of knowledge about the impacts of climate change on tourism destinations and about tourism’s commitment to address these impacts. However, there has been limited research about climate change responses by national or sub-national tourism agencies and the role they play in providing information, incentives and leadership to encourage the uptake of climate change actions by the industry. This paper assesses the climate change responses of nine Australian government tourism agencies. Information on climate change, sustainability and green business practices is drawn from the corporate websites, annual reports, tourism plans, fact sheets, and case studies produced by one national, six state and two territory tourism agencies from 2007 to 2010. The paper focuses on how government tourism agencies are addressing climate change mitigation by promoting carbon reduction initiatives and carbon offsetting schemes. Climate change tourism responses are more developed in Australian states with climate change policies and in destinations vulnerable to the impacts of climate change or dependent on long haul travellers. To date, few government tourism agencies report on their own carbon footprint or mitigation and offset measures. This study highlights a range of mitigation options that will assist government tourism agencies to address climate change impacts through policies, strategic plans and green business advice for tourism operators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia is already experiencing climate change losses and damages. Australian governments and other institutional actors acknowledge vulnerability, yet they centre building resilience to climate change. Resilience is frequently used as a synonym for vulnerability reduction, but important ideological differences exist. Indeed, scholars have suggested that resilience, as a politico-ideological tool of subject formation, can be considered a type of governmentality. While there is much research on the political and ideological dimensions of resilience, there is less focus on illuminating how resilience, as a form of climate governmentality, interacts with vulnerability to climate change. Drawing on a climate ethnography in regional Australia, I ask how do resilience discourses and interventions influence vulnerability to climate change in regional Australia? To answer this question, I explore examples of the historical–structural, intersectional and psychosocial determinants of vulnerability, identify key resilience discourses and interventions and examine how, what I term, climate resilience governmentality is influencing vulnerability to climate change. Unable to identify clear causality, I instead show how resilience governmentality is working to reinforce rather than redress the root causes of vulnerability in regional Australia. I observe that resilience discourses emphasise shared responsibility, but in practice, this translates into a focus on individual capacities. Subjects' psychological dispositions are targeted and neoliberal rationalities are desired outcomes. Climate resilience governmentality is not linked to a withdrawal of the state. Instead, it is a top-down process based on government prioritisation, subject formation strategies and the building of non-governmental institutional landscapes to provide services. I argue that climate resilience governmentality is a form of governmental gaslighting because it denies the lived experiences of precarity, insecurity and structural violence throughout regional Australia. I suggest that significant government investment in regional communities, critical societal reflection and truth-telling are urgently needed to reduce vulnerability in regional Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropocentric climate change presents an existential threat through impacts such as rising sea levels, effects on agricultural crops and extreme weather events. However, governments, businesses and communities struggle to wean off fossil fuel dependency. In this article, we argue that this is due to the grip of fossil fuel hegemony. To explain this grip, we draw on the theoretical perspectives of new materialism to examine how fossil fuels and politics interact in upholding Australia's fossil fuel regime. Our analysis, based on 70 qualitative interviews conducted with politicians and political advisors, fossil fuel executives and experts and environmental activists, shows three processes – establishment, entrenchment and encroachment – through which political-material entanglements lock in a fossil fuel-based future. These processes are both discursive, with politicians and industry downplaying, if not outright denying, the climate emergency and material, with investment in new mines and infrastructure even while the negative ecological impacts of fossil fuel use gather pace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discursive construction of water scarcity and its role in the establishment and ongoing legitimacy of Australia's market environmentalist water reforms. It shows that climate was the dominant explanation for scarcity crises in Australia until the reforms commenced in the early 1990s, when it was overtaken by mismanagement. Since 2007 climate change has become increasingly prominent, particularly as a discourse explaining future water crises. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and analysis of water policy, it shows that the discourse of mismanagement has played a significant role in justifying the ongoing application of neoliberal policy mechanisms in Australia. Unlike in most accounts from other countries, in Australia neoliberalization has been facilitated by a discursive denaturalization of water scarcity. Yet, despite the reformers' success in mobilizing scarcity in support of neoliberal agendas, collectivist goals continue to have traction, which is visible both in the failure of the National Drought Policy just before the reforms commenced, and particularly as climate change has become discursively prominent since 2007. This points to the utility of studying the neoliberalization of nature in Australia, confirms the dependence of market environmentalism on real or discursively constructed resource scarcity, and highlights the malleability and incompleteness of neoliberal natures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the possible changes in the climatic parameters of relevance to atmospheric corrosion that may occur from 2030 to 2070 due to climate change. Both general parameters devised by fully coupled ocean–atmosphere climate models and more regional parameters are defined. The overall process of atmospheric corrosion is broken into its constituent processes which, for an island such as Australia, consist of aerosol generation, aerosol transport, aerosol deposition, pollutant retention on surfaces, wetting of polluted surfaces, and the chemistry of moisture films on surfaces. The possible effects of climate change on each of these processes are analysed and discussed, and initial results indicating that each may be affected by climate change. However, as variation in the constituent processes is heavily dependent on parameters that vary significantly across Australia, and the effect of the variations differs for different processes, it is difficult to make a general prediction of the average impact of climate change on corrosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto protocol was the first step taken by governments towards implementing the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). This seeks to prevent dangerous 'global' warming and its impacts; the assumption being that all or most of this warming is caused by human action and is therefore susceptible to mitigation. Only governments in developed countries have so far committed themselves to emission reduction targets and thus to potentially major interventions in their economies and societies. At Kyoto, in December 1997, developed countries negotiated national commitments. Their net reductions of six greenhouse gases measured from a 1990 baseline, are to be achieved between 2008 and 2012. However, Australia may increase its net greenhouse gas emissions by 8%, while the UK agreed to a cut by 12.5%, considerably above the EU average cut of 8%. Examples of 'common but differentiated' responsibility have major economic implications, especially for trade. The mandatory British reduction target - if the Kyoto Protocol comes into force - is considerably below a promised 20% reduction, a target to which the UK government remains committed. This paper asks why the EU/UK and Australia adopted such different positions. It does so by analysing internal factors and forces that have shaped domestic policies. It is argued that while similar motivations produced different outcomes, the Australian government also received less biased and broader advice from its experts. The Australian case, as well as that of the EU/UK, thus presents a most interesting contrast to Swedish climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite widespread acceptance that their emissions accelerate climate change and its disastrous ecological effects, new fossil fuel extraction projects continue apace, further entrenching fossil fuel dependence, and thereby enacting particular climate futures. In this article, we examine how this is occurring in the case of a proposed onshore shale gas "fracking" industry in the remote Northern Territory of Australia, drawing on policy and legal documents and interviews with an enunciatory community of scientists, lawyers, activists, and policy makers to illustrate what we call "divisible governance." Divisible governance—enacted through technical maneuvers of temporal and jurisdictional risk fragmentation—not only facilitates the piecemeal entrenchment of unsustainable extraction but also sustains ignorance on the part of this enunciatory community and the wider public about the impacts of such extraction and the manner in which it is both facilitated and regulated. Such governance regimes, we suggest, create felicitous conditions for governments to defer, forestall, or eliminate their accountability while regulating their way further and further into catastrophic climate change. Countering divisible governance begins, we suggest, by mapping the connections that it fragments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alison McQueen's study of the historical role of apocalyptic ideas in realist political theory cautiously proposes the 'redirection' of apocalyptic thought as a plausible alternative to its rejection. Apocalyptic redirection, so understood, uses apocalyptic language to describe potential future catastrophes in order to inspire drastic action to prevent them. Although McQueen acknowledges that apocalyptic redirection may have certain risks, she suggests it may be an appropriate response to the crisis of climate change. In this article, I aim to show that this use of the discourse of apocalyptic redirection is ideologically problematic. I argue that it involves conflating the interests of those who are at least moderately materially comfortable with the interests of humanity as a whole. I will also draw on the 2019 'Stop Adani Convoy' in Australia as a case study to show how the ideological character of this discourse renders it ill-suited to generating popular support for action on climate change, and liable to reproduce existing power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is written from the position of eco-socialist scholarship. Given that anthropogenic climate change that is driven by the expropriation of the atmospheric commons constitutes a growing crisis for First Nation peoples around the world, it is imperative that engaged anthropologists, form linkages with anti-systemic movements, including Indigenous and ethnic rights movements, for social justice and environmental sustainability. In the Australian case, this article argues that there is a need to revisit and rejuvenate earlier black-red-green alliances with a push for First Peoples to receive public funds to own and control their own green energy projects, a process which has the potential to contribute to the decolonization of the Australian political economy. In some sectors, these alliances are already occurring with organizations such Original Power and the First Nations Clean Energy Network, as First Nation communities take matters into their own hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article assesses the potential economic effects on the Australian tourism industry from the introduction of a carbon tax introduced July 1, 2012. The tax is projected to lead to changes in key macroeconomic variables, reducing growth in real GDP, real consumption, and employment. Most tourism industries in Australia will experience a small but significant contraction in output relative to projected baseline values over the period to 2020 in line with a reduction in growth for the economy as a whole. A slightly larger reduction in tourism employment, relative to that of other Australian industries, is projected for the period. The largest falls occur in the Accommodation; Air and water transport; and the Cafes, restaurants and food outlets industries. Since direction of impacts on the tourism industry can be expected to be similar for any pricing scheme to reduce carbon emissions, the analysis has implications for tourism policy globally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australian involvement in humanitarian affairs in the South Pacific is indicative of tensions that can arise between 'humanitarianism as diplomacy' and 'humanitarian diplomacy'. Australia aims to play a leading role in relation to the Pacific island countries (PICs), and its humanitarian involvement can assist in that respect. However, despite Australia's attempts to prevent or mitigate climate-related disasters, tensions have arisen because of Australia's cautious climate change policies. The main influences on Australia's involvement in humanitarian affairs in the South Pacific are political and bureaucratic factors within those parts of the Australian government concerned with relations with the PICs, and humanitarian affairs in particular; Australian interactions with the PICs themselves and other relevant international actors also play a role. The 'lessons learnt' from Australia's humanitarian involvement in the South Pacific region focus on organizational effectiveness rather than the tensions between 'humanitarian diplomacy' and 'humanitarianism as diplomacy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto protocol was the first step taken by governments towards implementing the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). This seeks to prevent dangerous 'global' warming and its impacts; the assumption being that all or most of this warming is caused by human action and is therefore susceptible to mitigation. Only governments in developed countries have so far committed themselves to emission reduction targets and thus to potentially major interventions in their economies and societies. At Kyoto, in December 1997, developed countries negotiated national commitments. Their net reductions of six greenhouse gases measured from a 1990 baseline, are to be achieved between 2008 and 2012. However, Australia may increase its net greenhouse gas emissions by 8%, while the UK agreed to a cut by 12.5%, considerably above the EU average cut of 8%. Examples of 'common but differentiated'responsibility have major economic implications, especially for trade. The mandatory British reduction target - if the Kyoto Protocol comes into force - is considerably below a promised 20% reduction, a target to which the UK government remains committed. This paper asks whythe EU/UK and Australia adopted such different positions. It does soby analysing internal factors and forces that have shaped domestic policies. It is argued that while similar motivations produced different outcomes, the Australian government also received less biased and broader advice from its experts. The Australian case, as well as thatof the EU/UK, thus presents a most interesting contrast to Swedish climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene, as a notion and a discursive field, is generating productive academic and broader debate. In this article, I analyse the creation of a crowdfunded climate change institution in Australia – the Climate Council – as an instance of everyday activism in the Anthropocene, and partly a function of the more-than-real. The more-than-real refers to the digital space that bore the Climate Council’s creation, and situates this spontaneous climate change activism. The broader context of this transformation included an abnormally hot spring season, a turn to conservative federal government, and already-active social media spaces. As an exploratory case study that introduces an example of activism steeped in desire, this research situates mainstream climate change activism squarely within the Anthropocene notion, where a large group of disaffected individuals transformed an organisation that they perceived as valuable. This type of climate change activism can be read as a productive possibility of the Anthropocene, and unsettles narratives of inevitable environmental devastation, while simultaneously raising questions of whether the Anthropocene concept can or should include digital spaces. The discourses working in, through and around the Climate Council transformation in the more-than-real are read as a disruption of the Anthropocene that may generate productive possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 Australian federal election campaign has been described as the campaign that “forgot the environment.” We test this claim by comparing the news representation of the environment and environmental movement organizations (EMOs) in Australian federal elections from 1990 to 2013, and consider how coverage of environmental issues and organizations has changed over time. We also analyze the intensity and range of coverage of EMOs and environmental issues during the 2013 election campaign in relation to behind-the-scenes media practices of EMOs, including the circulation of media releases and other campaign material, and levels of activity on social media and organization Web sites. We find that this activity did not translate into high visibility in news media for EMOs. We offer tentative evidence of a link between the dominance of climate change coverage and the poor visibility of EMOs and other environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's views of landscape can have significant impact on their land use choices. This in turn can have climate implications. In the literature, there is significant attention paid to the effect of climate on landscape, but as well, there are more examples than one might expect of the effects of landscape change on climate. I present evidence of this from Western Australia and Africa, and some conjectured negative and positive effects in two locations in South Australia. I argue that the land use change affecting the landscape and thus affecting the climate emanates from one's view of landscape. There are also some personal reflections of perceptions of landscape from someone who started life in a climate and landscape far removed from the South Australian environment within which he has chosen to live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies the drivers of media attention for climate change in three countries: Australia, Germany and India. It calculates the monthly amount of climate change-related coverage in two leading newspapers for each country in relation to all articles published in the respective newspapers over a 15-year time span (1996–2010). Based on an explanatory model derived from agenda setting theory, punctuated equilibrium theory and multiple streams theory, it uses time series regression analysis to assess the influence of weather and climate characteristics as well as various social events and feedbacks on issue attention. The results show that weather and climate characteristics are no important drivers for issue attention in two of the three countries, and that societal activity, particularly international climate summits and the agenda building efforts from international non-governmental organizations, has stronger impacts on issue attention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers the author's insights on climate change science debate in Australian secondary education. He says that there is a problem with general resourcing and teaching in science education, particularly in climate change science. He mentions that one of the most vital parameter for climate science, and studies of the association between atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and global warming is "climate sensitivity."

Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), the research presented here sought to resolve the problematic of whether climate group-initiated legislation could stimulate effective policy action on climate change. In late 2006, Australian public concern about the impacts of climate change and the Federal Government's weak response became more pronounced due to increased media coverage and international developments. Locally based citizens' 'climate groups' began to form, including Climate Action Coogee (CAC) in Sydney. CAC wrote their own Australian Climate Protection Bill after being motivated by the UK's grassroots success in developing and promoting the UK Climate Change Bill. This article documents 10 months of the project, from inception to widespread grassroots endorsement and political awareness of the Bill. The use of PAR processes tested and further developed the theory of double-loop learning and its applicability to such a project. These processes allowed CAC coparticipants to experience a transformation in their agency through developing their personal and collective political power. The project contributed to legislative outcomes on climate change. The findings contribute to academic literature by demonstrating the effectiveness of PAR in guiding social movement campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern about environmental sustainability and climate change has increased dramatically in the past decade and is affecting the way consumers behave. This change has led to a greater focus on green consumerism, and for the tourism industry, a greater interest in green tourists. Although debate about green tourist behaviour exists, it is accepted that some tourists have stronger views than others about environmental issues and are also more active in addressing these concerns with regard to how they live their lives. There is still much to learn about green consumerism and this study aimed to identify and profile green tourists to raise awareness about their attitudes and behaviours and to recognise this market for driving change. A group identified as emerging green tourists was distinguished by their environmental behaviour at home, their information seeking and purchasing intentions. However, there is little clear evidence that these intentions have translated into actual purchases.Tourism and Hospitality Research (2009) 9, 109–119. doi:10.1057/thr.2009.5 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the approach of Australia to international climate change negotiations, particularly on its refusal to approve the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. It is argued that the country's stance is based on its national interest and location within the Asia-Pacific Region. The Asia-Pacific Region is where it is claimed the eurocentric nature of the features of the Kyoto Protocol has obstructed the prospects for a more effective approach. It is asserted that the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 failed to show commitments from developing countries to limit future growth in emissions of greenhouse gases. The country's approach to climate change negotiations focuses on the possibility of carbon leakage to other cheap coal producers in the region.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1988 to provide an authoritative assessment of the state of knowledge of climate change science and impacts and to develop realistic strategies for management of the climate change issue. Following the establishment of a separate United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change and the subsequent signing and entry into force of the Convention, the IPCC reverted to the role of providing policy-neutral but policy-relevant assessments of the contemporary state of knowledge, as contained in the published literature, of the science, impacts and response options for climate change. Australian Government representatives and Australian climate scientists played a major part in the establishment of the IPCC and its operation over the past twenty years including key roles in the preparation of virtually all of its reports. Australia chaired the committee which proposed the structure and membership of the initial IPCC Working Groups, served as Vice-Chair of the Impacts Working Group for the IPCC's First Assessment Report, engaged more national experts in the review of its first assessment of the science of climate change than any other country except the US, has provided almost one hundred Lead Authors and several hundred reviewers for its four major assessments and has served continuously on its coordinating Bureau since its inception. Australian delegations have participated in every formal intergovernmental session of the Panel and its Working Groups and have made a significant contribution to the scientific integrity of the IPCC assessment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how issue framing and nondecision-making shaped Australia's response to global climate change between 1996 and 2007. The complex and multi-dimensional nature of global climate change enabled state and non-state actors to selectively highlight certain aspects of the issue, thereby framing it as a specific problem with corresponding solutions. The case of Australia provides an interesting example of how such conscious framing, together with underlying institutional biases, may suppress important aspects of global climate change and ensure they are kept off the political agenda. This article unravels four narratives that are evident in the former Australian Government's framing of global climate change during this period. The nondecisions which are embedded within these narratives have important normative implications which will be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperatures across nearly all of Australia increased through the 20th century, as did sea surface temperatures in the surrounding oceans. It seems likely that much of the warming is due to increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Rainfall trends have been less spatially consistent than the temperature trends with areas of increase (especially in the northwest) and areas of decrease (especially in the southwest). There is some evidence suggesting that some of the rainfall trends are the result of human influences, but this evidence is less convincing than is the case with the increases in temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]