IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/een/ccepwp/0810.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Party Divides: Expertise in and Attitude towards Climate Change among Australian Members of Parliament

Author

Listed:
  • Anita Talberg

    (Parliamentary Library, Parliament of Australia, Canberra, Australia)

  • Stephen Howes

    (Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)

Abstract

This study investigates Australian federal politicians' expertise in and attitudes towards climate change. Telephone interviews were conducted with a sample of 26 Members of Parliament (MPs). Results of the survey, undertaken in late 2009, suggest that climate change expertise is low to moderate among MPs, and that there is no correlation between expertise in and concern about climate change. The survey reveals important differences in attitudes to climate change by party. About 40 per cent of Coalition (Liberal and National) MPs are climate change 'deniers', but no Labor Party (ALP) MPs are. ALP MPs rate climate change as the most important (with water management) out of four long-term challenges, but Coalition MPs rate it as the least important (after not only water, but also aging and defence). All ALP MPs think climate change demands urgent action, and that Australia should play a leadership role globally, but only about one-fifth of Coalition MPs does. Even those Coalition MPs who are climate change 'believers' tend to give lower importance to climate change than ALP MPs.

Suggested Citation

  • Anita Talberg & Stephen Howes, 2010. "Party Divides: Expertise in and Attitude towards Climate Change among Australian Members of Parliament," CCEP Working Papers 0810, Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:een:ccepwp:0810
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ccep.anu.edu.au/data/2010/pdf/wpaper/CCEP-8-10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sudhakara Reddy, B. & Assenza, Gaudenz B., 2009. "The great climate debate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2997-3008, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qin Fei & Rajah Rasiah & Leow Jia Shen, 2014. "The Clean Energy-Growth Nexus with CO2 Emissions and Technological Innovation in Norway and New Zealand," Energy & Environment, , vol. 25(8), pages 1323-1344, December.
    2. Shiyi Chen & Wolfgang Härdle, 2014. "Dynamic activity analysis model-based win-win development forecasting under environment regulations in China," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 29(6), pages 1543-1570, December.
    3. Chen, Shiyi, 2013. "What is the potential impact of a taxation system reform on carbon abatement and industrial growth in China?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 369-386.
    4. Apergis, Nicholas & Payne, James E. & Menyah, Kojo & Wolde-Rufael, Yemane, 2010. "On the causal dynamics between emissions, nuclear energy, renewable energy, and economic growth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2255-2260, September.
    5. Menyah, Kojo & Wolde-Rufael, Yemane, 2010. "CO2 emissions, nuclear energy, renewable energy and economic growth in the US," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 2911-2915, June.
    6. Ben Jebli, Mehdi & Ben Youssef, Slim, 2013. "Economic growth, combustible renewables and waste consumption and emissions in North Africa," MPRA Paper 47765, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Sahbi Farhani, 2015. "Renewable energy consumption, economic growth and CO2 emissions: Evidence from selected MENA countries," Working Papers 2015-612, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    8. Gideon Kwaku Minua Ampofo & Jinhua Cheng & Edwin Twum Ayimadu & Daniel Akwasi Asante, 2021. "Investigating the Asymmetric Effect of Economic Growth on Environmental Quality in the Next 11 Countries," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-29, January.
    9. George Halkos & Argyro Zisiadou, 2023. "Energy Crisis Risk Mitigation through Nuclear Power and RES as Alternative Solutions towards Self-Sufficiency," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-29, January.
    10. Yu, Yu & Wang, Derek D. & Li, Shanling & Shi, Qinfen, 2016. "Assessment of U.S. firm-level climate change performance and strategy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 432-443.
    11. Chen, Shiyi & Härdle, Wolfgang Karl, 2012. "Dynamic activity analysis model based win-win development forecasting under the environmental regulation in China," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2012-002, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    12. Kusiyah Kusiyah & Mansoor Mushtaq & Shabbir Ahmed & Ansar Abbas & Mochammad Fahlevi, 2024. "Impact of Urbanization on Environmental Eminence: Moderating Role of Renewable Energy," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 14(2), pages 244-257, March.
    13. Rahman, Mohammad Mafizur & Vu, Xuan-Binh, 2020. "The nexus between renewable energy, economic growth, trade, urbanisation and environmental quality: A comparative study for Australia and Canada," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 617-627.
    14. Chen, Yang & Shao, Shuai & Fan, Meiting & Tian, Zhihua & Yang, Lili, 2022. "One man's loss is another's gain: Does clean energy development reduce CO2 emissions in China? Evidence based on the spatial Durbin model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    15. van Ruijven, Bas J. & Weitzel, Matthias & den Elzen, Michel G.J. & Hof, Andries F. & van Vuuren, Detlef P. & Peterson, Sonja & Narita, Daiju, 2012. "Emission allowances and mitigation costs of China and India resulting from different effort-sharing approaches," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 116-134.
    16. Howes, Stephen & Talberg, Anita, 2010. "Party divides: expertise in and attitude towards climate change among Australian Members of Parliament," Working Papers 249385, Australian National University, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy.
    17. Farhani, Sahbi & Shahbaz, Muhammad, 2014. "What role of renewable and non-renewable electricity consumption and output is needed to initially mitigate CO2 emissions in MENA region?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 80-90.
    18. Rongrong Li & Min Su, 2017. "The Role of Natural Gas and Renewable Energy in Curbing Carbon Emission: Case Study of the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-18, April.
    19. Kennedy, Matthew & Basu, Biswajit, 2014. "An analysis of the climate change architecture," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 185-193.
    20. Inglesi-Lotz, Roula & Dogan, Eyup, 2018. "The role of renewable versus non-renewable energy to the level of CO2 emissions a panel analysis of sub- Saharan Africa’s Βig 10 electricity generators," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 36-43.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:een:ccepwp:0810. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: CCEP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/asanuau.html .

    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.