Examining national strategies for climate change in times of acute financial crisis

Examining national strategies for climate change in times of acute financial crisis A comparative examination of the Australian and Greek cases This paper offers an examination of the Australian and Greek cases in relation to the challenges faced by both in adopting ‘climate change’ related policies. The main reasons for embarking in a comparison of these two different, in numerous fronts, countries are a few, intimately connected to the formulation of climate change related policies, similarities. Among them, we can single out the dependency by both countries on the extraction and burning of lignite to satisfy their electricity generation needs; their position on the ratification of the Kyoto protocol - ranging from the intransigence of the Howard government in refusing to ratify the Kyoto protocol, which was to some extent responsible for his defeat by Rudd’s ALP to the last minute ratification by of the protocol by Greece in 2002, which has only come to add to the long list of failing implementation of EU environmental directives; the high levels of expressed concern about the state of the environment and climate change professed by their publics and last but not least the accusations of betrayals of the national interest, indifference to resultant job losses and increased pressure on household budgets that any attempts to put forward the ecological modernisation measures required, by both labour/socialist parties in government, have been attracting. The current financial crisis end the proposed swift of investment toward a green economy as a way to counteract the crisis is put at the epicentre of the adopted analytical framework and the findings indicate the necessity to vigorously confront the ‘structural impediments’ that impede upon the implementation of effective ‘climate change’ policies.