Introduction

Abstract

The research for and writing of this book coincided with two important events in Australian climate-change policy. The book’s final sections were written in mid-2014, as the Liberal National Coalition completed its repeal of a carbon-pricing package that had been years in the making. The centrepiece of this package, passed in 2012 by the Australian Labor Party minority government with the Greens, had been the introduction of a greenhouse-gas emissions trading scheme. The passage of this legislation was important because it was the first time Australia had a coordinated set of national regulations designed to restrain greenhouse-gas emissions, culminating two decades of debate about such economic and environmental measures (Wilkenfeld, 2007).