Political divisions over climate change and environmental issues in Australia

Abstract

Willingness to pay to address environmental problems is influenced by partisanship in Australia. Ceteris paribus, the support base of environmental concerns is generally much stronger among Labor and Green supporters, postmaterialists, those who engage in eastern spiritual practices and professionals. Women are more likely than men to favour environmental protection over economic growth, to pay extra tax to protect the environment and to believe global warming will pose a serious threat during their lifetime. Support for renewable energy is stronger among younger Australians, suggesting demand may increase with generational replacement. Political leaders influence public concerns over global warming and other environmental issues across the partisan divide, yet while political elites remain divided over the implications of climatic change, the shift in public opinion and behaviour necessary to avert such problems is unlikely to occur.

Keywords:

• Green
• environmental movement
• political leaders
• climate change
• global warming

Notes

 1. The White Paper specified a minimum commitment to reduce carbon emissions to 5% below 2000 emission levels by 2020 (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme 2008).

 2. Labor does not control the Senate and did not receive the support of the Green and independent senators who hold the balance of power.

 3. Deposed coalition leader Turnbull (2010) claimed in response to Abbott's climate change scheme: ‘It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for.’

 4. The 12–14 February (2010) Newspoll had the coalition on 40% and Labor on 39% of primary votes, although technically these estimates are indistinguishable due to the sampling error of ±3% points. On two party preferred estimates, the coalition still lagged 47–53, because Greens preferences favour Labor.

 5. Value orientations were measured in the 2007 AuSSA using the following question: ‘People sometimes talk about what the aims of this country should be for the next ten years. Listed below are some of the goals which different people would give top priority. Please indicate which one of these you consider the most important? And which would be the next most important? A. Maintain order in the nation; B. Give people more say in important government decisions; C. Protect freedom of speech; D. Maintain a high rate of economic growth.' Those who chose options A and D were deemed ‘materialists’ and options B and C as ‘postmaterialists’. All other combinations were classified as ‘mixed’. A scale was constructed for regression analyses scored 1 = materialists; 2 = mixed; 3 = postmaterialists.

 6. Controlling for age and sex, no significant interactions between education and party identification were found at the 95% level in these Australian data for either the global warming variable or Kyoto variable analysed in Tables 4 and 5.

 7. An additive scale (0–6) combines the correct answers to six quiz questions on knowledge of political facts and process included in the 2007 AES.

 8. The ‘spiritual’ measure was constructed from the following category: ‘How often do you personally do the following … Engage in Eastern spiritualities (e.g. Buddhism or yoga)?’ Response categories: at least once a week; at least once a month; several times a year; at least once a year; never. Those engaged were coded 1 and ‘never’ coded 0.

 9. ‘Based on what you know, do you think Australia should or should not participate in the Kyoto agreement to reduce global warming?’ (responses coded: 1 = should participate; 0 = should not participate, with ‘depends’ category omitted).

10. ‘Do you think that global warming will pose a serious threat to your way of life in your lifetime?’ (responses coded: yes, will pose a threat = 1; no, will not pose a threat = 0, with ‘depends’ category omitted).

11. These questions were ‘In general, do you feel that people in government are too often interested in looking after themselves or do you feel that they can be trusted to do the right thing nearly all of the time?’ (usually + sometimes look after themselves = 1; usually + sometimes do the right thing = 0). ‘Now thinking about the performance of the government in Canberra in general, how good or bad a job do you think the government in Canberra has done over the past three years?’ (avery good + a good job = 1; a very bad + a bad job = 0).

12. When added to the models in Table 6, knowledge effects are negative and statistically significant at the 95% level among coalition supporters and positive but non-significant for Labor on both the global warming and Kyoto dependent variables.

13. The leadership scales are derived from the following questions: ‘using a scale from 0 to 10, please show how much you like or dislike the party leaders. Again, if you don’t know much about them, you should give them a rating of 5’ (bold emphasis in original wording).

14. Estimates for Green partisans are based on small sub-samples and potentially unreliable, but are presented for illustrative purposes.

15. McAllister's (2008) ANU Poll conducted in October 2008 also found that 73% of Australians saw the drought as a ‘very serious’ issue, compared to 69% for the degradation of lakes and 56% for global warming.