Climate Policy Networks in Australia: Dynamics of Failure and Possibility

Abstract

Many high‐income countries are committed to effective climate policy, yet remain heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction. The contradiction between an intensifying climate crisis and continued policy failure generates new political alignments, constituencies, and agendas. A dialectical process of socio‐ecological change opens‐up, where the climate is “socialised” and society is “climatised”. Australia is a high‐income, high‐emitting fossil fuel “superpower” with a thirty‐year stretch of failing climate policy, and offers an exceptionally vivid illustration of this dynamic. The paper explores these themes through the rhetoric of participants in Australian climate policy networks. It is based on sustained involvement the field and a series of in‐depth interviews with organisations that seek to influence Australian climate policy, across business associations, trade unions, environmental non‐governmental organisations, government agencies, and think tanks. It finds extensive strategic reflection across these organisations, with moves to more collaboration and alliance‐building to isolate the fossil fuel lobby, and efforts at creating new constituencies to advance decarbonisation “on the ground”.