Climate Change Discourses in the UK General Election in 2015

2016 ◽  
Vol 04 (01) ◽  
pp. 1650002
Author(s):  
Sidan WANG

There is a wide range of researches on climate change policy and politics at the European and global level. However, the existing studies ignore the importance of understanding climate change discourses and politics in the UK particularly during the General Election. The General Election in 2015 will influence the post-2015 climate change politics and policy in the UK. Further, the UK’s potential withdrawal from the EU poses a threat to the existing arrangement of climate change politics. This paper argues how different climate change discourses among main political parties influence climate policy options in the UK.

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Omer Ugur ◽  
Kadir Caner Dogan ◽  
Metin Aksoy

The European Union has grown up in terms of influence and size in international politics. The size of its economy and the ever-increasing membership, have seen its ambitions grow meaning that the EU now has an international presence it did not have at its formation. It is easy to say that with the EU being an ambitious actor in international politics, the rise into prominence of climate change naturally came in handy for the EU as it provided an opportunity for the EU to assert itself and prove both its capacity and presence. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the withdrawal of the USA from the obligations of the Kyoto came as a blessing in disguise for the Union as it seized the moment to assert itself. Thus, in trying to understand what role the EU has or is playing in international climate change politics, there is need to assess its leadership claims and what it has done to prove these claims. To get there, the paper will navigate through a part of the discipline of International Relations (IR) to understand how it provides for a basis to explain or understand the EU’s limitations and strengths on actorness.


Subject China's climate change policy. Significance The Trump administration’s planned withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the UK government’s preoccupation with Brexit have allowed China to present itself as a global leader on climate change. Ahead of the COP26 summit in the United Kingdom next November, countries and negotiating blocs such as the EU will focus on China as a major emitter that needs to increase its pledges to avoid a business-as-usual trajectory. Impacts Germany, holding the EU presidency for July-December 2020, will be key to new China-EU diplomatic arrangements on climate change. An EU-China summit in Leipzig during the German presidency will put climate change high on the agenda. At COP26, the United Kingdom is likely to emphasise finance, nature-based solutions, adaptation and resilience, and the Green economy. The UK government may also emphasise long-term ‘net zero’ commitments, as it has made to 2050. Inadequate national targets and slow progress in UN talks will fuel grassroots activism and calls for radical approaches.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Anil Patel ◽  
Olivia June Bloodworth ◽  
Vishal Ashok Kumar Unnadkat ◽  
Seetal Assi ◽  
Ashni Asit Badiani

With the UK leaving the EU in 2020, its policies to combat climate change currently remain undecided. One policy discussed in this report is a carbon tax. This report finds that implementation of a carbon tax will require a favourable political climate, public attention and an appropriate cost, with a starting price of £40 per tonne of CO2 emitted, gradually rising to £100-125/tCO2 (1). Also, to be politically acceptable, there must also be ‘revenue recycling’, with some of the proceeds of the carbon tax being redirected to public services (2,3).


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Jordan ◽  
Harro van Asselt ◽  
Frans Berkhout ◽  
Dave Huitema ◽  
Tim Rayner

The European Union (EU) has sought to lead the world in the adoption of ambitious climate change mitigation targets and policies. In an attempt to characterize and broadly explain the resulting pattern of EU climate governance, scholars have employed the term “multi-level reinforcement.” This term does help to account for the paradoxical situation whereby the EU seeks to lead by example but is itself a relatively leaderless system of governance. Drawing on a much fuller empirical account of the evolution of EU climate governance, this article finds that the term captures some but not all aspects of the EU's approach. It identifies four other paradoxical features of the EU's approach and assesses the extent to which they exhibit “multi-level reinforcement.” It concludes by looking forward and examining the extent to which all five features are expected to enable and/or constrain the EU's ability to maintain a leading position in climate governance.


Author(s):  
Ann Phoenix ◽  
Uma Vennam ◽  
Catherine Walker ◽  
Janet Boddy

This chapter talks about how children are often responsibilised in environmental policy and media discourses in both India and the UK. Abstract evocations of future generations materialise in many areas of climate change policy, based on the ethical argument that, as those imagined to outlive current generations of adults, children have the most to gain from activities and policies seeking to sustain the environments of which they are a part. Yet the centring of children in discourses of climate change impact and response is not without practical and ethical problems. Positioning children as ‘undercover agents of change’ for the environmental movement is as much an abrogation of responsibility for what are essentially the damaging environmental practices of adults, as is offshoring environmental responsibility to the next generation of stewards of the earth.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Skovgaard

In the course of the last four years, finance ministries have increasingly become involved in the international climate change negotiations. Their involvement has to a large degree been an outcome of the framing of climate change as a market failure. This framing calls for an active climate change policy and is at odds with the framing of climate change policy that was previously predominant in finance ministries: that it constitutes expenditure to be avoided. The persistence of both framings has led to clashes within and between finance ministries with respect to climate change. The article calls for further research focusing on the role of the two frames and of finance ministries as actors in climate change politics.


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