Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Preface -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Climate Change and International Response -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Climate Change Origin -- 1.3 The International Response to Climate Change -- 1.3.1 The Kyoto Protocol -- 1.3.2 CDM and JI -- 1.4 Paris Agreement -- 1.5 Summary -- References -- Chapter 2: Climate Change Mitigation -- 2.1 Approaches to Climate Change Mitigation -- 2.2 Economic System and Environmental Problems -- 2.3 Policy Responses -- 2.3.1 Command and Control Regulations -- 2.3.2 Economic Incentive Instruments -- 2.3.3 Tax Incentives for Forest Conservation in Australia -- 2.3.4 Environmental Education -- 2.4 Environmental Taxes -- 2.4.1 Taxes and Climate Change -- 2.5 Emissions Trading -- 2.5.1 Methods of Emission Permits Allocation -- 2.6 Adverse Effects of Taxes and ETS -- 2.7 Carbon Taxes in Practice -- 2.8 Emissions Trading in Practice -- 2.8.1 European Union Emissions Trading Scheme -- 2.9 Summary -- References -- Chapter 3: Australia and Climate Change -- 3.1 Australia and the Climate Change Agenda -- 3.1.1 Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme -- 3.2 Climate Change Mitigation 1990s-Early 2000s -- 3.3 Climate Change Mitigation 2007-2013 -- 3.3.1 Carbon Pricing -- 3.4 Climate Change Mitigation 2013-2021 -- 3.5 Emissions Reduction Fund Operation -- 3.6 Summary -- References -- Chapter 4: Australian Forests and Climate Change -- 4.1 Australian Forests -- 4.1.1 Deforestation in Australia -- 4.2 Regional Forest Agreements -- 4.3 Deforestation in New South Wales and Victoria -- 4.4 Deforestation in Queensland -- 4.4.1 Queensland Forest Regulation -- 4.4.2 The 2018 Amendments to the Vegetation Management Act 1999 (Qld) -- 4.4.3 Vegetation Management Act 1999 (Qld) and Reef 2050 Plan -- 4.5 Australian Governments' Forest and Climate Policies Dichotomy -- 4.6 Australia's International Climate Commitments -- 4.7 Conclusion -- References.

The primary question explored by this thesis is what alternative, carbon tax or emissions trading, would be an optimal policy for climate change mitigation in Australia. This thesis focuses on assessing carbon tax and emissions trading policy options on the basis of multiple criteria related to climate change policy in the Australian context. The study analyses the issues of environmental degradation, policy responses to the climate change issue, carbon taxation and emissions trading as a theoretical foundation for addressing the research question. The weaknesses of common evaluation methods and practices in dealing with climate change policy are also critiqued. After reviewing policy evaluation methods, the study builds a methodological framework to assess the climate change policy options based on the multi-criteria and Delphi methods. To facilitate the evaluation procedure, the criteria necessary for the climate change policy evaluation are identified. This study employs the Delphi method to verify the evaluation criteria in the Australian context and to assess the relative importance of these criteria. The thesis also attempts to construct carbon tax and emissions trading policies for Australia using a combination of theoretical and practical considerations. Further, these two contrasting policies are qualitatively analysed with reference to the identified criteria to assess potential performance of the proposed carbon tax and emissions trading. The resultant evaluation criteria and performance ranks of each proposed policy option allows building a decision matrix which facilitates the final evaluation and selection of an optimal policy. The evaluation results reveal that the carbon tax policy constructed by this study outperforms the designed emissions trading in terms of many criteria. As a result, the carbon tax is identified as an optimal climate change mitigation policy for Australia. The results of this study also indicate that the emissions trading proposed by the Australian Government might be a ...