Poles apart?: The social construction of responsibility for climate change in Australia and Norway

Australian Journal of Politics and History

Volumn 59, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 382-396

  Eckersley, Robyn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84890879860     PISSN: 00049522     EISSN: 14678497     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/ajph.12022     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (Abingdon, 2006), pp.2 and 21.
2. Audie Klotz, "Norms Reconstituting Interests: Global Racial Equality and U.S. Sanctions Against South Africa", International Organization, Vol. 49, 3 (Summer, 1995), pp. 451-478, p.460.
3. The key difference between social roles and social identities is that the latter include qualities that do not necessarily entail the answerability to others that comes with the discharge of socially ascribed roles. This is an important distinction since it explains the misfit between internationally ascribed roles and responsibilities (such as those conferred on developed countries by the international climate regime) and self-ascribed responsibilities and roles derived from national identities.
4. See, for example, Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, An Industry for the Future: Norway's Petroleum Activities, Meld. St. 28 (2010-2011) Report to the Storting (White Paper); and Australian Government, Energy White Paper 2012: Australia's Energy Transformation (Canberra, 2012).
5. IEA, Energy Policies of IEA Countries - Norway 2011 Review (Paris, 2011); Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, "Australia's Coal Industry", available at: .
6. The other members of the Umbrella Group are the US, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
7. Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, Norwegian Climate Policy: Summary in English: Report No. 34 (2006-2007) to the Storting, available at .
8. Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, Norway's Fifth National Communication Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: Status Report as of December 2009, available at .
9. Riksrevisjonen, The Office of the Auditor General's Investigation into Target Achievement in Climate Policy, Document 3:5 (2009-2010), p.7. The exception was the right wing Progress Party.
10. 2, a new climate and energy fund, discouraging car transport and more incentives for public transport, tree planting, a complete phase out of oil-based heating in buildings, a new energy research centre and the construction of at least one full-scale demonstration facility for carbon capture and storage by 2020.
11. Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, An Industry for the Future.
12. Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Fact Sheet: Australia's Emission Reduction Targets, available at: .
13. See also Giorel Curran, "Modernising Climate Policy in Australia: Climate narratives and the undoing of a Prime Minister", Environment and Planning C, Vol. 29, 6 (2011), pp. 1004-17.
14. Australian Government, Energy White Paper 2012.
15. While Norway has further hydro-power capacity, there is strong environmental opposition against further large hydro-schemes, and new gas-fired power plants will only be approved if they include carbon capture and storage (CCS).
16. IEA, Energy Policies of IEA Countries: Norway - 2011 Review, p.9.
17. Eivind Hovden and Gard Lindseth, "Discourses in Norwegian Climate Policy: National Action or Thinking Globally?", Political Studies, Vol. 52, 1 (2004), pp. 63-81;
18. Eivind Hovden and Gard Lindseth, "Norwegian Climate Policy 1989-2002" in William M. Lafferty, Morten Nordskag, and Hilde Aakre, eds, Realizing Rio in Norway: Evaluative Studies of Sustainable Development (Oslo, 2002), p.141.
19. Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, "The Government's environmental policy and the environmental state of the nation", 29 October 1999, available at: .
20. Hovden and Lindset, "Discourses in Norwegian Climate Policy", pp.67-68.
21. Stoltenberg wrestles with these tensions in Kjetil B. Alstadheim, Klima Paradokset [The Climate Paradox]: Jens Stoltenberg om vår tids største utfordring (Oslo, 2010), a book based on a long interview with the journalist Kjetil Alstadheim.
22. Statsministerens Konto, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's New Year's Address, 1 January 2007 .
23. See in particular, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Inaugural Address by the Government to the Storting, 22 March 2000 available at:
24. See also, Hovden and Lindseth, "Discourses in Norwegian Climate Policy", pp.68-70;
25. Hovden and Lindseth, "Norwegian Climate Policy 1989-2002", pp.152-153.
26. An Industry for the Future, p.7
27. The national action discourse does not reject the use of flexibility mechanisms completely - it merely argues that their use must be contained to enable national responsibility to be sufficiently discharged rather than outsourced.
28. Peter Lawler, "The Good State: In Praise of 'Classical' Internationalism", Review of International Studies, Vol. 31 (2005), pp. 435-436.
29. On Norway's benevolent foreign policy, see Øyvind Østerud and Per Selle, "Power and Democracy in Norway: The Transformation of Norwegian Politics", Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 29, 1 (2006), pp. 25-46, at p.26. For a cultural history of the "regime of goodness"
30. see Nina Witoszek, The Origin of the "Regime of Goodness": Remapping the Cultural History of Norway (Oslo, 2011). Witoszek attributes the phrase "regime of goodness" to Terje Tvedt, who formulated it in light of Gro Harlem Brundtland's claim that "It is typically Norwegian to be good" (p. 13).
31. I have borrowed the terms "humanitarian superpower" and "environmental pioneer" from Kristian Stokke, "The Soft Power of a Small State: Discursive Constructions and Institutional Practices of Norway's Peace Engagement", Journal of Power, Conflict and Democracy in South and Southeast Asia, Vol. 2, 1 (2010), pp. 137-173.
32. Østerud and Selle, "Power and Democracy in Norway", p.49.
33. Stokke, "The Soft Power of a Small State", p.145.
34. Anita Talberg and Stephen Howes, "Party divides: expertise in and attitude towards climate change among Australian Members of Parliament", CCEP working paper 8.10, October 2010 (Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University).
35. See, for example, Kevin Rudd, "Climate Change: The Greatest Moral Challenge of our Generation", Youtube video posted by the Australian Labor Party, 6 August 2007
36. Matt McDonald, "The Failed Securitisation of Climate Change in Australia', Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 47, 4 (2012), pp. 579-592.
37. See, for example, Australian Government, The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme: Green Paper, Commonwealth of Australia: Department of Climate Change, July 2008, p.v. The Green Paper accepted that: "It is likely that developed countries will be expected to collectively contribute more than any global average figure to the global emissions reduction effort" (p.7) but also emphasised Australia's special circumstances and high adjustment costs.
38. See in particular "Kevin Rudd Commits to Emissions Trading Regime", Keynote speech on foreign policy to The Global Foundation, in Melbourne, 8 March 2007. Available at: .
39. See also Curran, "Ecological Modernisation and Climate Change in Australia".
40. Tony Abbott, "Doorstop - Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax; New South Wales State Election", 9 March 2011 .
41. Judith Ireland, "Emissions Scheme a Trade in the Invisible: Abbott", Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July 2013.
42. Greg Hunt, "Carrots not Sticks: Rethinking Global Approaches to Climate Change (Lessons from my Mother's Garden)", Speech to the Lowy Institute, Monday 11 July 2011 in Greg Hunt MP, Federal Member for Flinders and Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage, Australia 2030 Speeches, published by Greg Hunt, 184 Salmon Street, Hastings, Victoria, 3915.
43. See Greg Hunt, "Will Gillard Have the Guts to ask Obama the Question?", Australian, 16 November 2011, available at
44. Greg Hunt, "Labor in Denial on Cost of Carbon Tax on Electricity", at ; see also "Gillard must seek Carbon Tax Clarification from Obama", at .
45. Ben Packham and James Massola, "Australia to have Carbon Price from July 1, 2012, Julia Gillard Announces", Australian, 23 January 2012, available at .
46. Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change, "Climate Change: A Critical Juncture", Labor Blog, 12 September 2012, available at ; Prime Minister of Australia, The Hon. Julia Gillard, "Address to the Carbon Expo Australasia 2011, Melbourne", 8 November 2011, available at .
47. See Garnaut Review (pp.xiv-xv, and Chapter 9).
48. nd ed. (Melbourne, 1995), pp.33-5.
49. Gareth Evans, "Enlargers, Straiteners and the Making of Australian Foreign Policy", Twelfth Annual Manning Clark Lecture, Canberra, 3 March 2011 (subsequently published in edited form in Meanjin Quarterly, Vol. 70, 2 (2011), p. 130.
50. Garnaut Review 2008, p.xvii and Chapter 9.
51. The so-called so-called "Australia clause" in the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated by the Howard government, allows changes in emissions from land-clearing to be included in calculation of emissions trajectories, which effectively inflates Australia's 1990 baseline.
52. This initiative set a lower tax of 30 per cent on assessable profits of the non-renewable resources sector (including coal).
53. The Howard government had established a Future Fund in 2006, but the purpose of this fund was to cover the government's accumulated unfunded liability for public service and defence force pensions.
54. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2012: Executive Summary (Paris, 2012).