Talk:Politics of climate change

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 It's mostly out of date and POV laden with weasle words etc.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 [than Kyoto]." 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

Main article: Climate change policy of the 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".

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Proposal to merge "Political economy of climate change" into this article again

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

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@Ottawajin, Cstetson, Arcahaeoindris, Sadads, FeydHuxtable, RCraig09, Bogazicili, and Efbrazil:

I propose to merge Political economy of climate change into this article because as far as I can understand that article is much more about politics than economics. Having 2 articles about the politics is confusing.

We already have Economic analysis of climate change and Economics of climate change mitigation so any small bits about economics can be put in one of those - we don't need another article with the economics otherwise it will be even harder for readers to find what they need.

This is much the same reasoning as I used the first time I merged it when nobody objected, and if I understand right FeydHuxtable's reason for splitting it again in 2021 was "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.". Not sure why I did not object to a split at the time or ask for clarification as I don't quite understand the split reasoning - perhaps I did not have the article on my watchlist or perhaps I missed the sentence suggesting a split amongst all the other talk in Talk:Politics_of_climate_change/Archive_2#April_2021_re-write.

Anyway I think both politics and economics have changed a bit since 2021 (mainly due to the bad actions of Vladimir Vladimirovich) so it would be good to briefly review whether we now want 1 article or 2. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Support merge as you describe it, thanks for taking this on! Efbrazil (talk) 17:08, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Support merge. I'm not sure I understand the history here, but the two subjects seem integrally related, even if as set and subset. (As a general principle, I favor fewer articles.) —RCraig09 (talk) 19:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Daask (talk) 14:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Weak oppose merge. In my view it's unhelpfully reductive to break down 'Political economy' into politics and economics. PE & sub variants like IPE take quite different perspectives to those found in either regular political science or economics. Hence why PE & regular political science are often separate degree courses. Finding a workable solution to the lack of global cooperation on climate mitigation is a quite important issue, so I don't see why we should jam different treatments together in the same article. Rather, its seems better to follow the example of WP:RS which has separate books for 'climate change and political economy'

Another reason for opposing merge is the gulf in quality between the two articles. The PE & CC article isnt bad, but it's largely based on sources between 10-40 years old. Whereas this article, at least when it was rewritten back in 2021, was based largely on the best available recent sources, including for example Dessler (2020) from Cambridge University Press. Merging here would also bloat this article unless much text is deleted. So keeping it separate dodges the need to delete another editors hard work, as well as best serving our readers. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Support merge What's political economy even? Bogazicili (talk) 11:40, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Is there a Wikignome who enjoys fixing refs?

There are Harv errors which already existed before the above merge Chidgk1 (talk) 15:18, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Is this sentence in the lead correct?

It says

"Yet local reductions in GHG emission that such policies achieve will not slow global warming unless the overall volume of GHG emission declines across the planet."

But if x gigatonnes are emitted this year and the global emissions next year would have been x +1 gigatonnes and my country cuts 1 gigatonne so that only x gigatonnes are emitted next year in total has my country not slowed global warming?

I understand that my country would not have reduced the global temperature compared to this year but that is not what the sentence is saying. Am I misunderstanding something or does the sentence need changing? Chidgk1 (talk) 16:22, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Historically at least, a significant portion of local GHG emissions was achieved by offshoring heavy industry and that doesn't reduce global GHG at all, it can actually make it worse. That said, this was a good shout, I'll tweak the line in the lede to make it more accurate. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:28, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Should carbon price be moved to "Regional, National and sub national" section?

Presumably there will never be an international agreement as it would be politically impossible for the USA to agree. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Merge History of climate change policy and politics to here

I suggest that History of climate change policy and politics should be merged to here. Otherwise I fear that a duplicate structure article will be established which overlaps too much with other articles. E.g. people started a section on climate change adaptation in that history article even though this should be rather in climate change adaptation. Similarly with a history of climate activism which should rather be at climate movement. See also my concerns on the talk page of History of climate change policy and politics. EMsmile (talk) 23:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Oppose because this subject is so vitally important that it deserves to be a decent length in itself on current politics without history being continually added to it (as the first to comment I am open to later commenters trying to convince me otherwise). Chidgk1 (talk) 06:03, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose It's fine to have some overlap with other articles - it can be helpful to readers to have coverage of the same topics in different contexts. Granted, allowing sensible overlap means we need a bit more vigilance for WP:POVforks - but that's less demanding than the massive editorial effort needed to write helpful content if we tried to cram too many related topics into one article. Readers tend to prefer relatively short digestible articles. Trying to cover too much in one article makes it harder to achieve clarity and avoid overly broad generalisatons. As has been stated, CC politics and it's sub topics are of vital importance (Unless one of the 200+ initiatives to discover viable nuclear fusion succeed, or we get very lucky with AI augmented geoengineering.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:46, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: OK, I will withdraw my proposal then. But I think we can agree that the article History of climate change policy and politics needs further work to reach its full potential. EMsmile (talk) 16:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

New source

https://www.economist.com/international/2023/10/11/the-global-backlash-against-climate-policies-has-begun

Has various political points not just the big economic problem of high interest rates at the end Chidgk1 (talk) 06:07, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

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— Assignment last updated by 111ivyfsds (talk) 18:15, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for choosing this very important subject. If you need help please ask - for example at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change Chidgk1 (talk) 19:56, 1 April 2024 (UTC)