Climate Clever: How Governments Can Tackle Climate Change (and Still Win Elections)

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This book is designed to provide a clear, interesting, easy to read and persuasive account of the political strategies available to national governments that wish to take more effective action against climate change without incurring serious political damage. It is aimed at everyone who wants to understand how governments can do more, including academics and students environmental activists, policymakers.The starting point is that climate change is an established fact and that consequently there is a real risk of serious damage to society and nature and, ultimately, the possibility of catastrophe if the rise in greenhouse gas emissions continues unchecked (IPCC 2010). At the same time we know that there are practical and affordable changes we can make that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to bring climate change under control if we act soon enough (Stern 2007). Some of the necessary changes can and will be made by individuals, firms and other organisations acting on their own initiative, but many require government action if they are to take place. Most countries accept this and have implemented a range of policies designed to encourage or mandate the necessary actions. The problem is that the underlying trend in greenhouse gas emissions is still up even though the global economic downturn has temporarily reduced economic activity and therefore emissions. What this indicates is that the policies currently in place are not sufficiently rigorous. Most governments are convinced that action is vital but the policies they have put in place so far are simply not up to the job. It seems clear that the principal reason for this is the existence of political obstacles. There is the lingering influence of climate sceptics. Governments worry that stringent climate policies will lead companies to redirect investment elsewhere. There is the perception that measures that impose costs on voters will elicit retaliation at the ballot box. And there is the fact that the actions of individual countries, China and the United States apart, can make little difference to overall global emissions anyway. If emissions are to be brought under control, therefore, we need to find ways to overcome or circumvent these and other political obstacles. Politicians and officials have so far failed to do this. They need help. More specifically, they need better political strategies and this book aims to provide them.