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According to environmental interests groups governments should use their climate policy strategically in order to provide for a faster introduction of new, cleaner technologies. Strategic use of climate policy could also induce the development of a successful upstream abatement technology industry like the Danish windmill industry. Interestingly, this latter question has not been analyzed theoretically before. Our point of departure is a three-stage game between a government in a small country with a climate restriction, and a limited number of firms supplying carbon abatement technology. The government moves first, and may use its climate policy strategically to influence the behavior of the upstream technology firms. An especially stringent climate policy towards the polluting downstream sector may then in fact be well founded. It will increase the competition between the technology suppliers, and lead to lower domestic abatement costs. However, to our surprise, a strict environmental policy is not a particularly good industrial policy with respect to developing new successful export sectors.

Our politics -- working-class self-emancipation -- are given a new urgency by the danger of catastrophic climate change. The need to move society to, at the least, a low-carbon economy, based on production for need rather than profit, is extremely urgent. But one of the many tragic legacies of Stalinism has been the virtual disappearance from Marxism of the nuanced ecological politics and analyses that were once integral to it. Beneath the excrement generated by Stalinism runs a rich seam of independent working-class ecology, which we believe has a great deal to offer the fight to tackle climate change. We argue that class is central to the fight for a coherent ecological politics in the twenty-first century. Adapted from the source document.

Review of: Convenient action: Gujarat's response to challenges of climate change, by Narendra Modi. New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers India Ltd. 2011, 234 pp. ISBN (10) 0230-331920The picture and perception that the Western world and its media have painted of Indian politicians is uneducated and excessively corrupt individuals who manipulate the system to hang on to power. Narendra Modi's Convenient Action removes this myth and reveals a politician in a different light.

AbstractMost countries struggle to implement CO2 reducing policies. Implementation is politically difficult since it typically forces politicians to trade‐off different concerns. The literature on how parties and members of parliament (MPs) handle these trade‐offs is sparse. We use structural topic models to study how MPs in an oil dependent environment responded to a shock in the oil price that created spatially concentrated costs of climate policies. We leverage the rapid oil price drop between parliamentary sessions and MPs' constituency adherence in a difference‐in‐differences framework to identify if MPs respond differently to variation in the salience of trade‐offs. We find that MPs facing high political costs of climate policies tried to avoid environmental topics, while less affected MPs talked more about investments in green energy when the oil price declined. Our results suggest that the oil price bust created a 'window of opportunity' for advocates of the ' green shift'.

Most countries struggle to implement CO2 reducing policies. Implementation is politically difficult since it typically forces politicians to trade‐off different concerns. The literature on how parties and members of parliament (MPs) handle these trade‐offs is sparse. We use structural topic models to study how MPs in an oil dependent environment responded to a shock in the oil price that created spatially concentrated costs of climate policies. We leverage the rapid oil price drop between parliamentary sessions and MPs' constituency adherence in a difference‐in‐differences framework to identify if MPs respond differently to variation in the salience of trade‐offs. We find that MPs facing high political costs of climate policies tried to avoid environmental topics, while less affected MPs talked more about investments in green energy when the oil price declined. Our results suggest that the oil price bust created a 'window of opportunity' for advocates of the ' green shift'.

In two studies 200 subjects played repeated trials of Prisoner's Dilemma with a simulated other who could send verbal communications. In the first study, the other began intensifying conflict by being behaviorally unresponsive over a long duration, by being totally noncooperative, by responding more quickly to the competition than the cooperation of the subject, or by coercing cooperation with threats for the purpose of exploitation. Then the other introduced a program of carefully communicated conciliation. The results showed a significant increase in cooperation by the subjects across conditions. In the second study, the subjects' competition was intensified by the other's choice of verbal communication—threat, insult, or challenge. Then the other introduced conciliation; the subjects responded cooperatively in all cases. Finally, the other lapsed into uncommunicated competition, and the subjects became highly competitive once more. The results are discussed in terms of Deutsch's (1983) "crude law of social relations" and the evidence suggesting that an atmosphere of either cooperation or competition can be quickly altered in a situation of interdependence when one party clearly acts inconsistently with what is characteristic of that climate.

Despite many claims by high-ranking policy-makers and some scientists that climate change breeds violent conflict, the existing empirical literature has so far not been able to identify a systematic, causal relationship of this kind. This may either reflect de facto absence of such a relationship, or it may be the consequence of theoretical and methodological limitations of existing work. We revisit the climate–conflict issue along two lines. First, at the theoretical level we specify the mechanism through which climate change is likely to affect the risk of armed conflict. We focus on the causal chain linking climatic conditions, economic growth, and armed conflict, and also argue that the growth–conflict part of this chain is contingent on political system characteristics. Second, at the methodological level, we develop an approach that takes care of endogeneity problems in the climate–economy–conflict relationship. We test our theoretical argument on a global data set for 1950-2004. The results show that the climate change–conflict hypothesis rests on rather shaky empirical foundations: we do find some negative effects of climate change on economic growth, while stronger economic growth is associated with a lower probability of civil conflict. However, the climate change effect on growth is not robust to changes in climate indicators and samples. Our results also indicate that non- democratic countries are more likely to experience armed conflict when economic conditions deteriorate. Our results suggest that investing in climate-friendly economic growth and democracy can qualify as a no-regrets strategy.