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This book attempts a systematic comparison of Japanese and British climate policy and politics. Focusing on institutional contrasts between Japan and Britain in terms of corporatist or pluralist characteristics of government-industry relations and decision-making and implementation styles, it examines how and to what extent institutions explain climate policy in the two countries. In doing this, the book explores how climate policy is shaped by the interplay of nationally specific institutional factors and universal constraints on actors, which emanate from characteristics of the global warming problem itself. It also considers how corporatist institutional characteristics may make a difference in attaining sustainable development. Overall, the book provides a set of comparisons of climate policy and new frameworks of analysis, which could be built on in future research on cross-national climate policy analysis.
Multinational corporations are not merely the problem in environmental concerns, but could also be part of the solution. The oil industry and climate change provide the clearest example of how the two are linked; what is less well known is how the industry is responding to these concerns. This book presents a detailed study of the climate strategies of ExxonMobil, Shell and Statoil. Using an analytical approach, the chapters explain variations at three decision-making levels: within the companies themselves, in the national home-bases of the companies and at an international level. The analysis generates policy-relevant knowledge about whether and how corporate resistance to a viable climate policy can be overcome. The analytical approach developed by this book is also applicable to other areas of environmental degradation where multinational corporations play a central role.
Nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. Despite countless pledges and summits, we remain on course for a catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius of warming. In a world of immense wealth, billions still live below the poverty line and on the frontlines of environmental breakdown. Increasingly, the world is waking up to this reality, but are the ‘solutions’ being proposed really solutions? In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the escalating plunder of the natural world under financial capitalism, and exposes the fatal biases that have shaped climate and environmental policymaking. Tracing the intricate connections between financial power, vested interests and environmental governance, she exposes the myopic economism and market-centric thinking presently undermining a future where all life can flourish. The book explains what is wrong with carbon pricing, off-setting and asset management’s recent interest in all things environmental. Both honest and optimistic, The value of a whale asks us – in the face of crisis – what we really value.
corporate climate strategy. As shown in chapter 2, there is reason to believe that the relationship between the companies’ home-base countries and corporate strategies is important. This link will be analysed in a comparative perspective with the guidance of the Domestic Politics (DP) model. The DP model highlights the extent of social demand for environmental quality, the type of climate policy supplied by the government, and the way in which political institutions link supply and demand, that is, the relationship between state and industry. The basic assumption is that
free access to environmentally 122 Environmental politics in the European Union relevant information, and the establishment of a system for emissions trading in the context of climate policy. Most of this chapter will be devoted to the description and analysis of the three individual cases. The final section will compare them and present some general conclusions. The introduction of cars with catalytic converters: the European Parliament demonstrates its power The introduction of cars with catalytic converters and the adoption of the so-called Small Cars Directive
Policy Programme) and the Law Concerning the Promotion of Measures to Cope with Global Warming (henceforth Global Warming Law), both of which were adopted in 1998. The Climate Policy Programme was decided by the Global Warming Prevention Headquarters in June 1998 as the strategy to achieve a 6 per cent reduction in GHG emissions by 2008–12, as required by the Kyoto Protocol. It was based on the report made by the Joint Meeting of Councils in November 1997 (Joint Meeting of Councils Relating to Domestic Measures to Arrest Global Warming, 1997), and this report was in
measures. The picture that emerges from the present detailed examination of climate policy in Japan and Britain is a mixture of policy similarities and differences. This chapter will bring the findings from the previous chapters together to compare, contrast and analyse Japanese and British global warming policy using the frameworks set out in Chapter 3. The analysis focuses on: the speed of policy change; policy contents, including instruments employed; the degree of policy integration; and policy stringency. The analysis will, then, enable us to go back to, and discuss
sub-region or country, results are limited and contrast with the large number of declarations and action plans. Retaking the first hypothesis of an oversized political dialogue compared to real interdependences (migration, trade, investment, societal exchange), the EU and LAC should reduce political co-operation to those issues that are of real mutual interest and inter-regional convergence like drugs or climate policies. At a country-by-country level (hybrid inter-regionalism) the EU and its partners should select strategic topics that reflect the key topics in
his helpers, supporters and acolytes. Gore makes clear his frustration with inaction on climate policy from the US Congress and the then Bush administration, using this as the basis for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to spreading his message ‘city by city, street by street, house by house’. Gore explains that he has been ‘trying to tell this story for a long time’ and that he is focused 1 Gore’s presentation was developed using Keynote (Reynolds, 2007). An Inconvenient Truth 219 on ‘getting people to understand’ climate change. Clearly, this is not public education as
climatechange regulation. In the early 1990s, the oil industry was united in its opposition to binding climate targets. A precondition for a viable climate regime is thus a change in the strategies of large multinational oil companies. Governments depend on the active or reluctant cooperation of this industry for mitigating climate change. The identification of conditions that determine how the climate strategies of major oil companies are formed may thus provide us with knowledge about the extent to which and how corporate support for a viable climate policy can be