Introduction: political strategies for climate policy

This volume is based on the premise that the principal obstacles to stronger action on climate change are political in nature. The science of climate change is well-established (IPCC 2007a) and there are well-known policy instruments that could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions without prohibitive economic costs (Stern 2007), yet governments and other political authorities are reluctant to take decisive action even though most appear to be convinced that strong measures are needed. At present the main political strategy seems to be the implementation of measures that target a broad range of emissions sources while not antagonising business groups or electorates. Typical policies include setting emissions targets, encouraging promising technologies, using market mechanisms such as taxes and emissions trading to spur innovation, and urging greater international cooperation on climate policy. So far, however, such measures have failed to reverse the steady rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (IPCC 2007b, p. 4, Tans 2009). Clearly more needs to be done. But how can governments move beyond existing policies without risking serious political damage? The aim of this volume is to contribute to answering this question by analysing the nature of climate politics from a number of different theoretical angles in order to improve our understanding of which political strategies would be likely to help national governments to make deep cuts in GHG emissions while avoiding significant political damage. The rationale for this multi-theoretical approach is that different conceptual and logical schemas (theories) highlight different features of situations. Thus, describing the politics of climate policy in terms of different theories results in different conceptual and logical pictures of this phenomenon. This means that at least to some extent the inferences drawn from these pictures about the nature of the political obstacles to more vigorous action on