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Country Positions Historical Information

This content was cut and past here. It's mostly out of date and POV laden with weasle words etc. However, there might be something valuable we can harvest and reincorporate into the article.

English Speaking Countries In most English-speaking countries, support for action to mitigate global warming, such as ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol is strong on the political left.

However, the first politician to put global warming on the political agenda was Richard Nixon 1969. Nixon wanted environmental topics (as acid rain and greenhouse effect) to be treated by a third and civil pillar of NATO. The reaction of the NATO allies was lukewarm but the initiative gained impact in the civil field.

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in increasing the United Kingdom's electricity generation from North Sea gas and reducing generation from coal.

In Germany Angela Merkel, then secretary of the environment during the conservative Helmut Kohl government, lead the German Kyoto Delegation and had a substantial role in making the Kyoto agreement possible.

In December 2007, Kevin Rudd's first act as prime minister of Australia was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in time for the Kyoto Protocol talks in Bali.

In Canada, the Liberal Party government ratified Kyoto.

In New Zealand, the Labour government of Helen Clark ratified Kyoto.

In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party ratified Kyoto

In the United States, Bill Clinton's Administration signed Kyoto and Democrats have proposed and supported a number of bills to mitigate emissions. Although Kyoto is signed, subsequent sessions of Congress failed to ratify the treaty and thus the United States is not bound to it. US diplomats have conceded the treaty will never be ratified. "We are not going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. That is out," said US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing at the 2009 Bangkok Climate Change Talks. Barack Obama supported passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to establish a United States Carbon Cap and Trade Program; while the bill was approved in the House of Representatives, it was not taken up in the Senate.

In some countries the political right are fighting on a platform of taking tough action against global warming, while in others the political right either dispute the scientific consensus on global warming or oppose action to mitigate global warming, instead favoring adaption. All European countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and all have supported strong reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

In the United States, a February 2007 survey found that 95% of the 41 Congressional Democrats surveyed agreed "it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems" while only 13% of the 31 Republicans surveyed agreed.

Global warming skepticism has been promoted by newspapers associated with the right such as The Australian, the Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom and the National Post in Canada.

Asia Australia officially ratified the Kyoto Protocol, after the new Labor government came into power on December 3, 2007. The previous Coalition government had long objected to ratifying the treaty, arguing it would unduly impact on Australian jobs, especially when countries such as China, India and the U.S. were not party to it.

Japan is preparing to force industry to make big cuts in greenhouse gases, taking the lead in a country struggling to meet its Kyoto Protocol obligations.

Canada Canada's Liberal Government during the 1990s had agreed to Kyoto but oversaw the increase of greenhouse gas emissions during their terms in office and did little to meet Kyoto's targets. Canada's current Conservative Government has claimed that, due to increased emissions since 1990, it is realistically impossible to meet their Kyoto targets and attempting to do so would be disastrous for the Canadian economy. Current Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for being adamant in leaving Kyoto and working on a different climate plan. Consequently, this issue has become something of an Achilles' heel for the Government in recent months. The current Liberal Party has been quick in their condemnation of the Government but has also been accused of using Global Warming for political purposes as seen in the naming of leader Stéphane Dion's dog 'Kyoto'.

Europe

Russia signed the Kyoto Protocol in November 2004, after a deal with the European Union over WTO membership. Russia's ratification completed the requirements of the treaty to come into force, based on nations totaling 55% of world greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK government-commissioned Stern Review into the economic effects of climate change was published in October 2006. Tony Blair's assessment was that it showed that scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous". He added, "We can't wait the five years it took to negotiate Kyoto — we simply don't have the time. We accept we have to go further ." The UK government launched an official calculator in the week of June 18, 2007 that enables every person in the country to work out how much carbon dioxide they produce and how to cut it. Tory group sets out plans for Green Revolution. In the UK campaign group Camp for Climate Action aims to keep climate change on the political agenda, using direct action against major carbon emitters.

United States

The politics of global warming is played out at a state and federal level in the United States. Attempts to draw up climate change policy are being made at a state level to a greater extent than at a federal level.

Vatican Pope Benedict XVI told up to half a million people, over a hillside near the Adriatic city of Loreto on the day Catholic Church marks its annual Save Creation Day, that world leaders must make courageous decisions to save the planet "before it is too late".

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hüne was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. Murray, Iain (2003-09-17). "Fixing the Game:Kyoto rules". National Review Online. Retrieved 2010-01-20.
3. Purvis, Andrew (2007-10-17). "Angela Merkel — Heroes of the Environment". Time Magazine. Retrieved 2010-01-30.
4. ^ AAP (2007-12-03). "Rudd ratifies Kyoto The Age". The Age Company Limited. Retrieved 2010-06-07. Australia's official declaration today that we will become a member of the Kyoto Protocol is a significant step forward in our country's efforts to fight climate change domestically and with the international community
5. Hood, Marlowe (2009-10-08). "Climate: What's to become of the Kyoto Protocol?". AFP. Retrieved 2009-10-10. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
6. Climate change concerns championed by Cameron's Conservatives
7. "Base page" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-08-29.
8. "Climate change: The Deniers". www.canada.com. CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc. 2007-06-20. Retrieved 2010-01-25.
9. WBCSD. "World Business Council for Sustainable Development". WBCSD. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
10. "Climate change fight 'can't wait'". BBC News. 2006-10-31. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
11. Juliette Jowit, environment editor (2007-06-18). "calculator to help save the planet". London: Observer.guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-08-29. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
12. "Tory Group Sets Out Plans for Green Revolution". Planet Ark. 2007-09-14. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
13. "Save The Planet Before It's Too Late, Pope Urges". Planet Ark. 2007-09-03. Retrieved 2010-08-29.

April 2021 re-write

Hello y'all. I thought it might be nice to rewrite the article to address the tags and bring it up to date, making use of various books on the Politics of Climate Change published since 2020. Most especially I leant on Dessler's Cambridge University Press book The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change (2020). Peter Kareiva, director of Institute of the Environment and Sustainability over at UCLA said no other book "comes even close" to this one. IMO, the Cambridge source is almost indispensable for those seeking a comprehensive overview of global Climate Change politics as no other recent source covers all aspects of the topic in such an easy to understand and well structured way.

That said, my rewrite is likely very far from perfect, and of course other editors are welcome to revert in whole or in part if they don't consider it an improvement. Assuming y'all have no major objections, I'll likely be adding a good few additional citations over the next few weeks. The vast majority of the ~4000 new words I added are supported by the various 2020/21 books now cited in the article, but I plan to add various web sources to make it easier for the reader to find more info on particular points.

Some of the pre-existing content has been moved to a new article: Timeline of international climate politics. If there's no objection, then in the next week or two I might restore the Political economy of climate change. IMO it was a good decision to move that here – but now the article has been updated, the PE content doesn't fit in so well, so for now I deleted it. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:46, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Hey did a first read and some adding of the collective political action and some other content -- you missed climate finance, litigation and maladaptation from the earlier article. However, overall I feel like this is in a much better direction -- its actually a manageable article to read.

I also think its really important to build out different stakeholders -- especially via Climate Justice and the youth movement -- the politics is a very different becauese of their particpation.

I am not convinced that the new political economy article would have a public (who searches for political economy as a separate concept?) What would be in that article that we can't cover here? Sadads (talk) 12:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the excellent additions.

In theory, everything in the PE article could be included here, but it's less central than most of the other content, so I think it's better moved backed out, or deleted, as otherwise the article will be a little bloated. Especially as there will likely be many future additions. IMO, unmerging is better than plain deletion as that preserves the other editors work.

The PE approach to Climate Politics goes a level deeper than many regular treatments. It tries to examine the motivations of the players involved , often from a mix of perspectives that such as Liberal, Realist and often various heterodox schools such as Marxism. At it's best it has considerable predictive power. So the answer to who searches for political economy as a separate concept? includes various civil servants & agency staff prepping for Glasgow, other relevant policy making, think tank, advisory & activist folk, interested regular folk who majored or minored in GPE (which mostly covers the wider economy not climate, but with the same under the hood approach to causality), workers in the Re-insurance industry, etc. etc.

While closely linked, climate Justice & the youth movement are two different things. While criticised by some, every recent top tier source Ive read is +ve about the youth movement, with several saying the kids are opening up whole new possibilities for climate politics.

Climate justice means many things depending on context. There is no justice in this world. For international politics, top tier sources are near unanimous in saying too much focus on Justice has been a major blockage to progress, one of the chief reasons why Copenhagen failed. As Dessler , Figueres & others point out, Paris owed much of its success to Justice concerns taking a back seat. The resurgence of Justice since then contributed to the relative failure of later events like Madrid. This is not to say Climate Justice is always bad. Maybe the recent trend for litigation in going to have net +ve effects on mitigation action within national jurisdictions, which collectively is what really counts. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:43, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Mann

Also, I have some concern about leaning too much on the Mann book -- I am reading it right now -- and he has a "hit list" of people and actors that he is trying to target throughout the book that don't agree with his own politics. Its very clear that political science is not his area of expertise, and in the process he marginalizes both diverse peoples and diverse political positions that don't conform to his green growth/capitalist framework for policy making. Sadads (talk) 12:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

For example the "lack of compromise" section should be written more in the style/language of "Scientist and commentator Micheal Mann believes..." Sadads (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Similar "lack of compromise points" are also made in the Dessler , Figueres & von Lieven books. My prefered approach would be to rewrite it slightly so it represents the combined view.

What you say about Mann is a reasonable take, but it's only part of the story. The FT seemed to rate his work head and shoulders above other recent climate change politics books. (They don't mention Dessler, which may be a little too academic for them)

With that said, if you or other editors want to remove some of the Mann based content no strong objection from me. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:43, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't think we need to remove Mann (he is really popular in the United States political left, and clearly is a valid opinion maker in the space) but his opinions need to be really clearly attributed as opinions (per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV) not the conclusions of an expert observer whose evaluations are conclusive. Sadads (talk) 23:25, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. When I saw it as clearly Mann's opinion rather than relaying facts he'd presented in his book, I already attributed, as I did with his view on runaway warming & solar engineering. I might increase attribution as I continue to review my previous big edit. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:40, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Outdated & US centric addition to the Challenges section

I don't normally like to revert sizeable additions, but this doesn't seem WP:Due weight. It would have been different while the Donald was in power, but his hetrodox views on climate are now hopefuly of mostly historical interest only. Having read 5 complete 2020/21 books on climate politics & lots of papers, no recent top tier RSs are assigning so much blame to the US - in fact several (e.g. Mann 2021) blame a certain other goverment much more. It was to a large extent the US that put climate change onto the global political adgenda in the first place. So unless other editors think the new addtion should stay, then in the next few weeks I'll be substantially trimming back the new US blaming subsections. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)\

FeydHuxtable Since the US is the world's second largest greenhouse gas emitter, and since it is the world's sole superpower with a major diplomatic and cultural leadership role in the world, steps to address climate in the US, and efforts to undermine it, play a huge role in the climate crisis, larger by far than those in most other countries. But I've heeded your concern by adding information and footnotes regarding lobbying in the EU and the UK, and regarding the targeting of activists in Brazil, Colombia and the Philippines. You are welcome to add additional material on other countries and regions. WP is supposed to be a team sport.NYCJosh (talk) 23:46, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking on board my concerns. Your newer edits complicate things - not perfect, but still very good edits. Many would consider what you added about the fossil fuel lobby as due weight, and most of it can be supported by top tier sources , e.g. Mann (2021) or Dryzak (2011). Here's the thing though - when dealing with a huge topic like this, about which many million words have been written - most of the editorial decisions are about what not to include. So it doens't necessarily help that you welcome me adding info about non US governments to balance things out. Take your addition about climate activists being killed or imprisoned by various government agents (still happening even under the Biden administration). I've not seen a single top tier Climate politics source talk about those. But emotionally I very much agree with including it. I don't want to be that guy who argues against someone like yourself from a centrist/mainstream perspective, so instead I might just leave you to this article. I would ask that you consider removing your 'Government suppression of climate science' sub section. That's just not relevant anymore, and arguably wasn't relevant even in 2019 - in that year various right wing outlets closed their climate shops as they saw trying to supress climate change science as fighting a war they'd already lost, despite the support from the Donald. The climate wars are fought on different dimensions now.

Lastly, WP isn't actually meant to be a team sport - editors who treat it that way can be problematic. Its meant to be a collaborative exercise; a big difference. That said, while I'm not expecting to be teaming up with you here, perhaps one day we will on some other article, where there's POV from pro corporate shills in need of balancing. FeydHuxtable (talk) 04:38, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

I want to +1 placing less emphasis on supression of science by governments: that could probably be rolled up into something more general that also looks at how the fossil fuel industry suppressed science, Sadads (talk) 12:03, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

FeydHuxtable 1. First, I agree that we have to be judicious on what to include and what NOT to include. I kept my contributions really focused on important developments, in this case, key "challenges," and succinct in how I phrased them. I also focused on developments in the heavyweight emitter, the US, not on marginal players, and I correctly got called out on it.

2. What do you mean by "top tier climate politics source?" My contribution has several unimpeachable, top tier sources, including Time Magazine, the ACLU and the Guardian, that describe targeting of activists.

3. Government suppression of climate science--It is relevant? It was done in a big way for at least 12 years by the Trump and "W" Bush administrations, which is quite relevant to how we, as a country and planet, got to this point, and Trump seems to be getting ready to run again in a couple years. Columbia University's Sabin Center has a "Silencing Science Tracker" which continues to document this. (Maybe we should add a link to Sabin?)

4. You removed, instead of improved, the section on US opposition. You don't think opposition by the US, the world's second largest greenhouse emitter, to Kyoto, and withdrawal by the US from Paris, is worth discussing as a challenge in an article about the politics of climate change? These seem pretty essential.

1 Other than the original 5 Sept edit, I agree your contributions here have been excellent, and have all the qualities you say.

2 Let's forget about the targeting activist thing – now that's sunk in a bit more, I think that's a great addition, thanks for adding it. By top tier sources, I mean something like a book fully dedicated to Climate Politics from one of the top University Presses, like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or MIT. E.g. Dessler (2020) which I used extensively for the rewrite of this article I did a few months back. I might have agreed ACLU was a top tier source if we were back in the days of Ira Glasser . But the young SJWs running it now are in several respects his complete opposite. As for the Guardian, some of their journalists are admittedly very good. Others don't even make 40k, are fully of strong opinions, and haven't learnt even 1% of what a Dessler knows.

A Dressler or similar source of that quality cant really be compared to a Guardian article in the context of a global scope topic as complex as climate politics. One can be relied on to at least have a good go at putting things in proper context and avoiding gross overgeneralisations. The other cannot.

3 Not sure it was that bad under W, and while much government science was indeed suppressed under the Donald, it didn't have much impact on the wider picture. Theres thousands of sources out there about 2018 or 2019 being “the year the world woke up to climate change” in part due to the wider acceptance of the science and the corresponding waning of climate scepticism. I already cited several good sources for that here. I'll concede said “awakening” had a lot to do with activists like Greta, XR and the fact regular folk were increasingly having first hand experience of the effects of warming. But it's also down in part to the science – even the Donald wasn't able to suppress even 0.5% of the work folk were doing during his term. His efforts just weren't that relevant in the wider scheme of things.

4 No I dont think the US withdrawal from Paris is worth discussing as a challenge. Its more a historical event than a current hurdle. Its not totally irrelevant of course, but considering our articles should aim to keep under 10k words max, its best left out. It would take too many words to put it in proper context. Theres all sorts of more impactful events we're missing out.

I hope this is of some use. As indicated before, Im now going to take this article off my watch list. Please don't ping me back. And please dont take any signs of grumpiness personally, this topic has started to annoy me for reasons that are nothing to do with your good self. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:44, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Sadads --Good idea, I would like to see sources for such non-govt suppression. What are you thinking?NYCJosh (talk) 12:54, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Minimally there is the whole history of Exxon supressing their own science https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/, and then there are a number of cases where the oil industry has tried to prevent or silence publication: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-fossil-fuel-industry-harassed-climate-scientist-michael-mann . There are also fears baked into the IPCC process that the science is going to get diluted by lobbies, for example -- hence why the scientists are leaking recommendations ahead of time. Sadads (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

These look intriguing. I plan to work on these sections over the weekend. Additional sources regarding these issues from you or anyone else are welcome.NYCJosh (talk) 16:42, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Could someone add more about politics of carbon pricing and removal of fossil fuel subsidies?

Not sure I have time to do anything on this very important article myself but glad to see others updating it. There isn't much yet on how some countries have successfully implemented carbon pricing and reduced fossil fuel subsidies and others not - for example gilet jeune, iran etc. Could someone add some analysis of the politics of why some have been able to do it and others not - e.g. common factors? Chidgk1 (talk) 09:07, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

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