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After nearly a decade of policy inaction by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Coalition governments, the election of Anthony Albanese's Labor government has ushered in expectations of a sea-change in Australian climate policy, one that might allow the country to finally emerge as a global leader on the issue. Yet while years of inaction have left some relatively easy victories for the new government to rack up, the change of leadership and rhetoric obscures some key continuities in the Albanese government's approach that need to be foregrounded and critiqued by domestic and international audiences alike. In this brief commentary, we consider what the new Labor government might mean for Australian climate action over the coming years. We focus, in particular, on the role that fossil fuel exports will continue to play in overwhelming any emissions cuts achieved domestically, and underscore the need for a much broader and more ambitious national climate strategy designed to wean the country off its reliance on coal and gas revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being the most tangibly impacted by the first-order effects of a warming climate, much of Australia's agricultural regions have remained relatively conservative in their views on climate change and the need for adaptation. This paper aims to understand how the experience of an extreme climate event like the 2017–2020 drought might shift opinions and values on these issues within agricultural communities. Through in-depth interviews with 20 graziers across Northwest NSW during the worst days of the drought, we found that various psychological lock-ins, historical memories of resilience, and local cultural values appeared to be undermining the perception of their vulnerability, while enhancing perceptions of their ability to endure. Such discursive constructions appear to explain why a jarring climatic event like the 2017–2020 drought was failing to produce a noticeable shift in their views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Australia's abundant coal resources' contribution to the escalating climate emergency. Topics discussed including a broad distribution of coal resources across Australia's landmass; effects of lost jobs, declining tax bases, shrinking service provision, and diminishing populations; and strategy for tackling the dual challenges of climate change and looming economic stagnation.

While a large body of scholarship has analysed the nature and dysfunction of Australian climate policy over the past generation, there has been little examination of how the Australian state has reorganised itself institutionally to create and execute climate policy. Filling this gap, I explore the evolution of federal climate institutions since the early 1990s, describing how they have fared in the midst of Australia's highly polarized political debate around climate, as well as how they have facilitated and constrained Canberra's ability to develop effective climate strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the efforts of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada in negotiating carbon pricing. It mentions about the impact of the carbon price on macroeconomics, and the plan of Trudeau which involved providing rebates that would actually improve the economic standing of Canadian households. It also mentions that while Canadians were unlikely to feel any negative effects of the carbon price, they would learn about it from conservative politicians and right-wing media outlets, who indicated early on their intention to take advantage of the public's poor grasp of carbon pricing to undermine the policy and gain electoral advantage.

The article explores the national climate policy of Canada under the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It reviews whether Trudeau's federal strategy to combat climate change would materialize after the government launched the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change involving provincial, territorial and federal governments. The impact of several oil pipeline and liquefied natural gas plant projects on the country's climate policy is discussed, as well as the effect of the limits of federalism on regional and economic interests.

This paper aims to provide an addendum to the rapidly growing concept of a global ‘green energy race’ between major states. It argues that although this framing has been useful in underscoring important dynamics in the process of decarbonisation, its narrow focus on installed capacity obscures a much broader and more complex process at play. In particular, it overlooks the critical role played by states aggressively investing in R&D and export manufacturing in the renewable energy sector. The paper thus supplements the concept of a green ‘energy race’ with that of a green ‘global division of labour’, which sees the process of decarbonisation not exclusively as an effort by individual states to install renewables domestically, but rather as a collective and interdependent process by dozens of states, all striving in different ways to promote capital accumulation on their soil. The paper provides an overview of data covering innovation, manufacturing and deployment in the clean energy sector, and offers a theoretical analysis of the trends observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During its eight years in office, the Obama administration undertook an ambitious effort to transition the US economy towards the use of renewable energy technologies, and promote American leads in the global ‘cleantech’ industry. While many of the strategies selected to achieve these goals rendered positive results, others proved unproductive and/or politically toxic. Approaching the issue from a critical innovation framework (which focuses on the political and economic conditions under which the federal government is best able to promote technological change), this paper argues that the administration ignored some of the key conditions that have historically allowed Washington to succeed in promoting the uptake of new technologies. The paper describes the nature of these mistakes, and suggests an alternative way forward based on historical precedent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors discuss the implications of the Liberal Party majority in 2015 for Canadian climate policy. Topics covered include the failure of previous Canadian governments to address climate, factors that may help Canada develop a system of managing climate policy that is systematic and wide-ranging, and the impact of the petroleum industry on the development of climate policy.

This article aims to explain why market-based climate policies (carbon levies and emissions trading) have had limited success at the national level in "liberal-market economies" like Australia, Canada, and the United States. This situation is paradoxical to the extent that market environmentalism is often thought to be a concept tailored to the political traditions and policy paradigms in these states. I argue this occurs because precisely in such economies, workers have been the least protected from the market and the effects of globalization, leading to a squeeze on incomes and public services, and providing fertile ground for a virulently antitax politics. When coupled with the disproportionately carbon-intensive lifestyles in these states and the strength of fossil fuel interests, it becomes extremely easy and effective for opponents of climate policy to frame carbon prices as an onerous tax on workers and families. The article explores how this strategy has functioned at a discursive level and considers what this situation implies for climate policy advocates in carbon-intensive, neoliberal polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the law Canada's environmental policy of ecological protection which has come under the new Canadian Conservative Party by its victory. Topics discussed include importance of environmental protection for the people of Canada, Harper Government designed environmental policy rejected Kyoto and attacked the Liberal Party's carbon tax and environmental strategy, and proposal of environmental allowance into a single omnibus spending budget implementation bill for jobs and growth in Canada.

Although it is likely that the political–economic coalition required for implementing a federal cap-and-trade programme for GHGs in the US is now sufficiently strong, the structural impediments that have prevented its legislative passage remain impressively durable and can be expected to continue to lay waste to congressional proposals for the foreseeable future. Indeed, given the complex history of environmental policy gridlock in Washington since the early 1980s, any expectations that a cap-and-trade programme could have been realistically achieved through the traditional legislative passage in Congress are fundamentally misplaced. Building on previous research, it is argued that – as with most other forms of environmental policy in the US over the past three decades – a national carbon market is more plausible given alternative policy pathways, which if taken are capable of circumventing the Federal Congress altogether. In particular, the interaction between litigation against the federal government and the ‘rulemaking’ authority possessed by the Executive Branch provides the potential space for the current administration to unilaterally establish a model rule for a national carbon-trading programme. Policy relevance This article aims to contribute to American climate policy debates by re-thinking the policy mechanisms most capable of establishing a national carbon market in the US. By taking into account the array of structural factors that have prevented the legislative passage of such a programme in federal Congress, a range of alternative policy ‘pathways’ is considered that have historically allowed progressive environmental policies to endure in Washington (despite increased Congressional gridlock over the past few decades). Two specific alternative strategies and the relationship between them are assessed: the use of litigation to impose legal obligations on federal agencies to regulate effluents, and the use of executive authority to define the nature and scope of environmental regulation. The administration's current potential to unilaterally develop a model-rule for a cap-and-trade programme under the Clean Air Act is emphasized, and the political implications of such a strategy are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to contribute to comparative capitalisms debates about the nature of the so-called liberal-market economy/coordinated-market economy divide by drawing attention to the extent and nature of the developmental state apparatus being deployed in Washington's efforts to develop markets for novel climate and energy technologies. Against the deluge of literatures in comparative capitalisms debates which suggest that liberal market economies typically breed ‘radical’ innovation cycles based on the relative absence of states, internal corporate hierarchies, and competitive market arrangements, this article uses a regulationist framework to understand how critical tensions and contradictions inherent to liberal market economies serve to engender new forms of direct state intervention, particularly within the innovation process. Building on Block's (2008) concept of a ‘hidden developmental network state’ emerging in Washington beginning in the late 1970s, this article explores the tensions that have led to the use of such developmental policies in the climate and energy realms, and provides a description of how these policies function. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a broad literature that suggests that neoliberalism is the predominant force structuring climate change policy. However, analyses that focus only on the creation of carbon markets as neoliberalism's effect on climate policy are too restricted. Focusing on the United States, as the paradigmatic neoliberal state, it is demonstrated that, because neoliberal states must nevertheless intervene to promote accumulation, and because system-wide regulation of greenhouse gases has been impossible to achieve, the United States has developed a range of alternative means by which to pursue emissions reductions. These means derive from the ‘strategic selectivities’ (or historical path-dependencies) inherent in federal policy development in the United States. The focus is on three ways that this has occurred: the growth of sub-national regulation; the use of executive authority; and in particular the deployment of a dense network of research and development infrastructure through which the development of new energy and environmental technologies is supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Study Objective: To determine the sensitivity and specificity of direct laryngoscopy in the conscious patient as a diagnostic test for difficult direct laryngoscopy in the unconscious patient. Design: Prospective case series. Setting: Various operating rooms in a Canadian tertiary-care hospital. Patients: 81 ASA physical status 1, 2, and 3 subjects undergoing elective surgery. Interventions: A bolus of midazolam was given and a continuous infusion of remifentanil was started and adjusted as needed. Direct laryngoscopy was performed in the conscious subject. No topical anesthesia was applied to the upper airway. Measurements: The modified Cormack-Lehane grade was recorded with each subject conscious and unconscious. Other data collected before the intervention included age, gender, height, weight, body mass index, Mallampati class, thyromental distance, mouth opening, previous history of failed or difficult intubation, history of hypertension or obstructive sleep apnea, and routine use of beta blockers. The time of intravenous placement, total dose and duration of remifentanil infusion, and time of endotracheal tube placement were recorded. The lowest oxygen saturation, lowest and highest systolic blood pressure and heart rate, and presence or absence of gagging, coughing, or chest wall rigidity were also noted. Subjects were also asked to complete a questionnaire in the recovery room regarding recall and the degree of discomfort experienced. Main Results: 43 of 81 subjects were graded 1 or 2a when the laryngoscopy was done in the conscious subject. Six of the 38 subjects who were graded as a difficult laryngoscopy (grade 2b or higher) when they were conscious also remained a difficult laryngoscopy when unconscious and paralyzed. Sensitivity and specificity of direct laryngoscopy in the conscious subject as a diagnostic test for difficult direct laryngoscopy in the unconscious subject were 100% [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.52 to 1] and 57% (95% CI 0.47 to 0.70), respectively. Conclusions: Using remifentanil as the sole analgesic allows evaluation of the larynx with direct laryngoscopy in a conscious patient. A poor Cormack-Lehane grade in a conscious patient may or may not improve with general anesthesia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents an excerpt from a speech delivered by the author at the 1994 International Reading Association convention in Toronto, Ontario. State of anxiety over assumptions about literacy; Increase in number of people buying books and reading them; Fascination with the English language; Recognition of the spread of the English language.

The article examines how states organize themselves internally to address climate change. Topics covered include the definitional categories for climate institutions, the ways that states address three core climate governance challenges, including through coordination, building consensus, and strategy development, and the ways that institutions and national political contexts influence and shape each other.