Is climate change greater than the rise of China?

 Climate change is more long-term- China’s rise is short to medium term risk (politics
can change much quicker than environmental changes.)
 China is about potential- but climate change effects are already occurring
 Climate change is a threat to China as well as the whole international system
How is the non-traditional threat different in nature?
 China is more important currently- dramatic shift with Taiwan
 The way that US sees China as such a big threat, AUS follows the same view
 Climate change is not as addressed because it is such a large issue, no visible direct
adversary to oppose
 Traditional threats are easy to see and create policy against, but non-traditional
threats are easy to put onto the back burner as they are not as immediate and have a
subtler effect
o What could cause death to Australians- traditional wars
 Climate change awareness is not widespread in public
o Therefore, to win votes, politicians do not put it at the forefront of their
policy
Who should be responsible for addressing the threat?
 Collective action problem
 Everyone loses in climate change- everyone should address it
 However, the more industrialised countries and most responsible for emissions are
responsible for cutting and regulating
 Difficult to do because the nations emitting waste make money from it
 Developed nations should at the same time help developing countries to deal with
their own carbons
 Norms entrepreneurs and IOs also play a part in putting pressure on governments
 Unprecedented and no historical approaches to deal with climate change
 Defence White Paper does not deal with it because we do not know who is
responsible for dealing with it/which department
 How can a country manage it exports and imports and climate change?
o Restructure economy around climate change
o Australian needs to diversify economy so it can survive later
o But issue is that everyone needs to diversify (Prisoners Dilemma) otherwise
states will just go to other states for coal
 Developing economies- high emissions but as mature, decreases
 Can give recommendations- but how to implement recommendations is also difficult