The Veil of Kyoto and the politics of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia

This paper investigates how the Kyoto Protocol has framed political discourse and policy development of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia. We argue that ‘Kyoto’ has created a veil over the climate issue in Australia in a number of ways. Firstly, its symbolic power has distracted attention from actual environmental outcomes while its accounting rules obscure the real level of carbon emissions and structural trends at the nation-state level. Secondly, a public policy tendency to commit to far off emission targets as a compromise to implementing legislation in the short term has also emerged on the back of Kyoto-style targets. Thirdly, Kyoto’s international flexibility mechanisms can lead to the diversion of mitigation investment away from the nation-state implementing carbon legislation. A final concern of the Kyoto approach is how it has shifted focus away from Australia as the world’s largest coal exporter towards China, its primary customer. While we recognise the crucial role aspirational targets and timetables play in capturing the imagination and coordinating action across nations, our central theme is that ‘Kyoto’ has overshadowed the implementation of other policies in Australia. Understanding how ‘Kyoto’ has framed debate and policy is thus crucial to promoting environmentally effective mitigation measures as nation-states move forward from COP15 in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto international agreement. Recent elections in 2009 in Japan and America and developments at COP15 suggest positive scope for international action on climate change. However, the lesson from the 2007 election and subsequent events in Australia is a caution against elevating the symbolism of ‘Kyoto-style’ targets and timetables above the need for implementation of mitigation policies at the nation-state level

Has EU Equality Law Gone Too Far?

This chapter considers whether EU equality law has gone too far, or not far enough, in seeking to regulate for equality. I argue that EU law in some respects has not gone far enough, whilst in other respects there is a danger that it may go too far.

Ambiguous Devices

Developed and performed in collaboration with Tom Davis (Bournemouth University), the work explores notions of presence and absence, technologically mediated communication and audience perception through the staging of ambiguous but repeatable performative interactions taking place on a co-located but distributed musical instrument. Public performances and installations include: CCRMA, Stanford University (2012); NIME conference, University of Michigan (2012); SARC, Queen's University Belfast (2013); INTIME symposium, Coventry University (2013); RE-NEW digital arts festival, Copenhagen (2013).