US and Australian shelves are suddenly straining under the weight of planned climate change policies. In the space of a few days, American Democrats appear to have put climate and energy legislation on hold in favour of a Senate bill on immigration and Rudd’s government down under has unequivocally placed its proposed cap and trade [...]
Entries from April 2010
April 25, 2010
Beck to the future
A few days ago Duncan Green from Oxfam posted a thoughtful review of a thoughtful book – Why We Disagree About Climate Change published last year by Mike Hulme, a climate modeller from the University of East Anglia. At the core of the book is the idea that climate change will bring about a transformation [...]
April 15, 2010
Conservative thinking on climate
We’ve mentioned before the polling the Institute for Public Policy Research did last year with Brand Democracy, testing out different ways of framing climate policies in 157 marginal constituencies across Britain. Over 3,000 people on YouGov’s panel were surveyed on-line, and the data then weighted by social, demographic and voting patterns. The fieldwork was carried out in September ahead of the [...]
April 10, 2010
India and Climate Negotiations
India has often been seen as an awkward customer in international processes. While this is indubitably true in the climate negotiations, it is not merely because of negotiating style. Rather, it is down to India’s complex national interests, which are no less pressing and from a political perspective arguably more knife-edge critical than those faced [...]
April 9, 2010
BASIC Indian Considerations
India and China are so often mentioned in the same breath, especially in climate change negotiations. Prior to Copenhagen, they joined up with Brazil and South Africa to form the BASIC grouping. But many in Delhi are asking a two-pronged question about BASIC; ‘does it serve India’s interests’ and ‘for how long’? In some respects [...]
April 6, 2010
Indian Political Climate
Political Climate is off to India for a few days to participate in an event looking at linkages between technology, economic opportunities and finance. It’s being organised by TERI which partners with ippr in the Global Climate Network of think tanks. Our crude understanding of Indian climate politics is that its government, elected last year [...]