Carbon Captured by Mildenberger Matto;

Author:Mildenberger, Matto; [Mildenberger, Matto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Climate policy; carbon pricing; carbon polluters; climate politics; comparative environmental politics; US environmental policy; Australia; Norway; Australian environmental policy; Norwegian environmental policy; global warming; emissions trading; carbon tax; carbon taxes; business politics; labor politics; comparative public policy; environmental politics: Paris Agreement; Canada; Germany; Canadian climate policy; German climate policy; BTU; Clean Power Plan; Clean Energy Futures; EPA; environmental protection agency
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

The PMTGET released its report in advance of the Fall 2007 election. Alongside industrial relations, climate change defined that campaign. Both Liberal and Labor pro-climate factions enjoyed increased power. On the Labor side, a desire to defeat Prime Minister Howard united the party around Leader Kevin Rudd even as industrial factions remained skeptical of environmental policymaking.104 Labor believed emissions trading could split the Liberal party by highlighting an unstable cleavage on the Australian right.105 To differentiate the Labor plan, Rudd argued that any policy should start one year earlier, in 2011.

On the Liberal side, Howard’s sudden emissions trading embrace attempted to sidestep the issue.106 During the election, the Liberals promised to establish the “world’s most comprehensive emissions trading scheme” no later than 2012.107 However, this promise created space for such pro-climate voices as Malcolm Turnbull to advocate even more costly policies. These conversations generated serious tensions with National Party members inside the Coalition.108 Turnbull then pressed the Howard Cabinet to reverse course and ratify Kyoto in September 2007.109

However, neither party made emissions reduction target commitments, echoing both the NETT’s and PMTGET’s reluctance to specify policy costs. Despite Labor’s carbon pricing commitments, shadow cabinet divisions made a target agreement too difficult.110 Nor did environmental groups press either party to make reduction commitments, focusing instead on Kyoto ratification.111 Consequently, broad agreement over a policy instrument across the left and right did not resolve the deeper distributive issues implicit in climate policy design.

Labor won the 2007 election, elevating Kevin Rudd to prime minister. Rudd was aligned with the Right faction of the ALP but held unusually weak ties to the party’s labor movement.112 His commitment to climate action appeared sincere. While running for office, he repeatedly described climate change as the “great moral challenge of our generation.”113 Fulfilling a campaign pledge, he ratified Kyoto as a first act in office. Rudd also initiated work on Australian emissions trading development. He tasked Australian economist Ross Garnaut to review the economics of climate change, with the intent of producing an Australia-specific version of the Stern Review. To buy time for resolving target-setting tensions, he also tasked the bureaucracy with undertaking fresh emissions trading consultations.114

To coordinate policy development, Rudd established a new Department of Climate Change and Water, staffed mostly by Department of Environment bureaucrats; yet, the new department’s leadership was largely drawn from Treasury.115 These macroeconomists were seen as having policy control rather than—in the words of a relieved Labor Party insider—“touchy-feely” environmental folk.116 This staffing arrangement underscored the emerging belief that Australian climate reforms were, first and foremost, a class of economic reforms.117

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