IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/glenvp/v13y2013i2p89-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Government, Anti-Reflexivity, and the Construction of Public Ignorance about Climate Change: Australia and Canada Compared

Author

Listed:
  • Nathan Young

    (Nathan Young is associate professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa.)

  • Aline Coutinho

    (Aline Coutinho is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa.)

Abstract

This article compares the political strategies used by conservative governments in Australia (John Howard) and Canada (Stephen Harper) to manage public impressions of climate change and climate change policy. These cases are significant in part because both governments acted against the weight of domestic public opinion. While many studies of political resistance to climate change mitigation focus on the role of denial, skepticism, and counter-claims, our comparison finds a significant role for what we call “affirmation techniques,” namely the rhetorical acceptance of the consensus position on climate change followed by concerted attempts to control precisely what acceptance means. We draw on recent theoretical work on anti-reflexivity and the sociology of ignorance to explain the political effectiveness of these strategies. © 2013 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Nathan Young & Aline Coutinho, 2013. "Government, Anti-Reflexivity, and the Construction of Public Ignorance about Climate Change: Australia and Canada Compared," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 13(2), pages 89-108, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:13:y:2013:i:2:p:89-108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/GLEP_a_00168
    File Function: link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Derek D. & Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki, 2018. "Climate change mitigation targets set by global firms: Overview and implications for renewable energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 386-398.
    2. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Mo, Fei & Wang, Derek D., 2022. "Sustainable development of countries all over the world and the impact of renewable energy," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 320-331.
    3. Mark Purdon, 2015. "Advancing Comparative Climate Change Politics: Theory and Method," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 1-26, August.
    4. Ranjini Murali & Aishwarya Kuwar & Harini Nagendra, 2021. "Who’s responsible for climate change? Untangling threads of media discussions in India, Nigeria, Australia, and the USA," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-20, February.
    5. Llewelyn Hughes & David M. Konisky & Sandra Potter, 2020. "Extreme weather and climate opinion: evidence from Australia," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 723-743, November.
    6. Hess, David J. & Renner, Madison, 2019. "Conservative political parties and energy transitions in Europe: Opposition to climate mitigation policies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 419-428.
    7. Apergis, Nicholas & Pinar, Mehmet, 2021. "The role of party polarization in renewable energy consumption: Fresh evidence across the EU countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    climate change; Australia; Canada;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:13:y:2013:i:2:p:89-108. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.