Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:36:27.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The influence of lobbying on climate policies; or, why the world might fail13

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

John C. V. Pezzey
John C. V. Pezzey*
Affiliation:
Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. Tel: +61 2 6125 4143. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

How can the malign and growing influence of lobbying on global climate policies be checked? In this short piece I link some wide-ranging suggestions for academic research by environment and development economists that is needed to further this aim, with the key idea in Acemoglu and Robinson's (2012) Why Nations Fail. Their book argues strongly that sustained, very long-term economic growth through national industrial revolutions requires ‘inclusive institutions’ that distribute political power broadly over a nation's economic, class and geographical sectors. This is because long-term growth needs technical innovations, which cause creative destruction (structural adjustment) of existing technologies, which in turn harms the interests of existing elites. If elites are too powerful, they will block new technologies, so as to keep their powers to extract rents from the rest of society, and the nation will then fail (to grow sustainably).

Type
Forum
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 3: Special Issue of Environment and Development Economics: Looking Back and Moving Forward , June 2014 , pp. 329 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

13

The author thanks Paul Burke, Richard Damania, Tristan Edis, Clive Hamilton, Dieter Helm, Axel Michaelowa, Deborah Peterson, Mike Raupach, Will Steffen and Gert Svendsen for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

References

Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crown Business.Google Scholar
Barrett, S. (2009), ‘The coming global climate-technology revolution’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 23(2): 53–75.Google Scholar
Bohringer, C., Hoffmann, T., and Manrique-de-Lara-Penate, C. (2006), ‘The efficiency costs of separating carbon markets under the EU emissions trading scheme: a quantitative assessment for Germany’, Energy Economics 28: 44–61.Google Scholar
Bovenberg, A.L. and Goulder, L.H. (2001), ‘Neutralizing the adverse industry impacts of CO2 abatement policies: what does it cost?’, in Carraro, C. and Metcalf, G. (eds), Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policies, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hasen, R.L. (2011), ‘Citizens United and the illusion of coherence’, Michigan Law Review 109: 581–623.Google Scholar
Helm, D. (2010), ‘Government failure, rent-seeking and capture: the design of climate change policy’, Oxford Review of Environmental Policy 26: 182–196.Google Scholar
Jacques, P.J., Dunlap, R.E., and Freeman, M. (2008), ‘The organisation of denial: conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism’, Environmental Politics 17: 349–385.Google Scholar
Markussen, P. and Svendsen, G.T. (2005), ‘Industry lobbying and the political economy of GHG trade in the European Union’, Energy Policy 33: 245–255.Google Scholar
McKnight, D. and Hobbs, M. (2013), ‘Public contest through the popular media: the mining industry's advertising war against the Australian Labor Government’, Australian Journal of Political Science 48: 307–319.Google Scholar
Mendelsohn, R., Dinar, A., and Williams, L. (2006), ‘The distributional impact of climate change on rich and poor countries’, Environment and Development Economics 11: 159–178.Google Scholar
Michaelowa, A. (2013), ‘The politics of climate change in Germany: ambition versus lobby power’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews – Climate Change 4: 315–320.Google Scholar
Olson, M. (1971), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pezzey, J.C.V. and Jotzo, F. (2012), ‘Tax-versus-trading and efficient revenue recycling as issues for greenhouse gas abatement’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 64: 230–236.Google Scholar
Pezzey, J.C.V. and Jotzo, F. (2013), ‘Carbon tax needs thresholds to reach its full potential’, Nature Climate Change 3: 1008–1011.Google Scholar
Pezzey, J.C.V., Mazouz, S., and Jotzo, F. (2010), ‘The logic of collective action and Australia's climate policy’, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 54: 185–202.Google Scholar
Sijm, J., Neuhoff, K., and Chen, Y. (2006), ‘CO2 cost pass-through and windfall profits in the power sector’, Climate Policy 6: 49–72.Google Scholar
Svendsen, G.T. (2011), ‘Evaluating and regulating the impacts of lobbying in the EU? The case study of green industries’, Environmental Policy and Governance 21: 131–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tietenberg, T.H. (2013), ‘Reflections – carbon pricing in practice’, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 7: 313–329.Google Scholar
Winters, J.A. and Page, B.I. (2009), ‘Oligarchy in the United States?’, Perspectives on Politics 7: 731–751.Google Scholar