Greenhouse economics: the Australian Government mobilises the numbers in the lead up to Kyoto

The Australian Government has not always opposed the setting of targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, in 1992 it was one of only three countries to support the then Toronoto target to stablise emissions by 2000 and reduce them by 20 percent by 2005. This thesis surveys the Australian government's policy and rhetoric on climate change since the endorsement of the Toronto target and in the lead up to the meeting in Kyoto. Using sociology of science theory, the thesis analyses how the environmental reality constructed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was overshadowed in Australia by an economic reality constructed by the Australian Bureau of Resource Economics with its macro-economic model MEGABARE. The thesis documents how the outputs of this model were translated both domestically and internationally and how efforts to tackle climate change that were deemed to have inevitable negative economic implications for the resource sector were effectively avoided.