Climate Change Action versus Complacency: How Political Power and Influence Shape National Environmental Policy

The catastrophic effects of climate change are being felt around the world – in both developed and developing countries, with expeditious action needed to avoid a serious global crisis. There has been an array of political responses that have been developed with hopes of forestalling, or even completely eradicating, these impending environmental catastrophes. However, there exists large differences between the responses of countries, particularly amongst the Anglo-Saxon liberal welfare states (LWS) – Australia, Canada, UK, and USA – and the Nordic social democratic welfare states (SDWS) – Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The SDWS have created policy that simultaneously responds to climate change while also promoting existing public policies that emphasize the economic and social security of the population. Alternatively, the LWS continue to emphasis non-governmental responses that serve to depoliticize and individualize the solutions towards the climate crisis. Using a political economy framework, I continue to explore the relevance of the “eco-social welfare state” literature and define how the robustness of a country’s welfare state is explicitly linked to the proactiveness of the environmental policies that are put forth. Furthermore, I provide evidence of five public discourses that demonstrate how public opinion and the resulting conceptualization and framing of the climate crisis may also be influenced by the political economy of a nation. Overall, I conclude that, currently, eco-social welfare state environmental policies are the most proactive, however despite their intentions, are unlikely to control climate change as even the world’s “best” policies are not contributing enough preventative action. Finally, I suggest that only a post-capitalist eco-socialist state can avert a global environmental catastrophe.