Robert Macneil
Biographic Data
| ID | 1616557 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Macneil |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Macneil |
| SIGNATURE | MACNEIL R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3700-2846 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 134 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Meat, Morality, and Culture Wars
This paper examines the portrayal of veganism in Australia’s conservative media, focusing on The Australian, The Daily Telegraph , and The Herald Sun in the 15-year period between 2009 and 2024. Through a qualitative content analysis, it identifies three key phases in media narratives: early dismissal and mockery (2009–2016), intense cultural and political polarization (2017–2020), and simultaneous mainstreaming and persistent backlash (2021–2024…
Human rights case against Australia's fossil fuel expansion
This article contends that Australia's continued domestic fossil fuel expansion constitutes a serious breach of its international human rights obligations. While public debate has largely framed Australia's greenlighting of more than 100 new coal, oil and gas developments in environmental terms, this piece centres on the human consequences. Drawing on legal precedent and normative principles, it outlines multiple ways in which this expansion thre…
The Emotional Labour of Climate Education
This study explored the emerging issue of eco-anxiety in climate education, focussing on how teachers in New South Wales address students’ emotional responses to learning about climate change. Through interviews with 30 primary and secondary school teachers across the state, the study investigated the range of challenges and obstacles teachers faced in managing this complex emotional terrain. Upon outlining those challenges, the article argues fo…
“Focusing Events” and Public Attention to Climate Change in Australia
This research note investigates the range of “focusing events” that have driven public attention to climate change in Australia over the past two decades. While scholars have widely recognized the significance of focusing events for catalyzing stronger climate action, few studies to date have sought to assess the specific categories of events that drive the greatest public attention to the issue. Focusing on Australia, this study analyzes Google …
The case for a permanent US withdrawal from the Paris Accord
Towards a theory of ‘Big plastic
Tangled in the Tides
The role of journalistic voice in communicating climate scepticism
This brief study investigates the subtle ways that language can be used to subconsciously shape a reader’s opinions about climate science within conservative news texts. To do so, our study employed techniques from critical discourse analysis to highlight the role of ‘journalistic voice’ and consider the granular linguistic techniques these outlets may use to subliminally validate sceptical viewpoints, while casting doubt on those espousing the c…
The promise and peril of Australian climate leadership under Albanese
After nearly a decade of policy inaction by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Coalition governments, the election of Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has ushered in expectations of a sea-change in Australian climate policy, one that might allow the country to finally emerge as a global leader on the issue. Yet while years of inaction have left some relatively easy victories for the new government to rack up, the change of leadership and rhetoric ob…
Farmer perceptions of climate change and adaptation during the 2017–2020 Australian drought
Despite being the most tangibly impacted by the first-order effects of a warming climate, much of Australia's agricultural regions have remained relatively conservative in their views on climate change and the need for adaptation. This paper aims to understand how the experience of an extreme climate event like the 2017–2020 drought might shift opinions and values on these issues within agricultural communities. Through in-depth interviews with 2…
Understanding resistance to just transition ideas in Australian coal communities
On the Immorality and Futility of Canadian Climate Policy under Trudeau
This paper argues that Canadian climate policy under the Trudeau government is both self-defeating and immoral. Focusing on the central facet of the government's strategy – which trades a small carbon price for significant expansions of oil pipelines – the paper develops this argument in three principal ways. First, it situates the strategy in relation to the global warming potential of new extracted/exported emissions facilitated by new pipeline…
Swimming against the current
While a large body of scholarship has analysed the nature and dysfunction of Australian climate policy over the past generation, there has been little examination of how the Australian state has reorganised itself institutionally to create and execute climate policy. Filling this gap, I explore the evolution of federal climate institutions since the early 1990s, describing how they have fared in the midst of Australia’s highly polarized political…
Is Canadian carbon pricing here to stay? The outlook after 14 elections
When Justin Trudeau met Canada’s premiers to negotiate a national carbon price in 2016, there had arguably never been a better time to do so. With Liberal governments in most provinces, negotiation
Trump, US climate politics, and the evolving pattern of global climate governance
This paper argues that the Trump administration’s position on climate change should be understood more in terms of continuity than disjuncture. It develops this argument in four principal ways. First, it situates Trump in the US’s paradoxical relationship to the UNFCCC, as a would-be leader that struggles to commit itself to substantive action, and the evolving geopolitics within the UNFCCC. Second, the paper focuses on an on-going struggle betwe…
Trudeau's Canada and the challenge of decarbonisation
Following the Liberal Party’s landslide electoral victory in 2015, many in the environmental community expressed optimism that Ottawa was finally about to cast off its woeful record on climate to e
Between innovation and industrial policy
During its eight years in office, the Obama administration undertook an ambitious effort to transition the US economy towards the use of renewable energy technologies, and promote American leads in the global ‘cleantech’ industry. While many of the strategies selected to achieve these goals rendered positive results, others proved unproductive and/or politically toxic. Approaching the issue from a critical innovation framework (which focuses on t…
The political economy of decarbonisation
This paper aims to provide an addendum to the rapidly growing concept of a global ‘green energy race’ between major states. It argues that although this framing has been useful in underscoring important dynamics in the process of decarbonisation, its narrow focus on installed capacity obscures a much broader and more complex process at play. In particular, it overlooks the critical role played by states aggressively investing in R&D and export ma…
This changes everything? Canadian climate policy and the 2015 election
On 19 October 2015, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party shocked the pollsters, the electorate, and probably itself by rocketing from 34 to 184 seats and securing one of the most robust parliamentary maj
Death and Environmental Taxes
This article aims to explain why market-based climate policies (carbon levies and emissions trading) have had limited success at the national level in “liberal-market economies” like Australia, Canada, and the United States. This situation is paradoxical to the extent that market environmentalism is often thought to be a concept tailored to the political traditions and policy paradigms in these states. I argue this occurs because precisely in suc…
The Decline of Canadian Environmental Regulation
This article attempts to connect recent major rollbacks of environmental regulation in Canada with the re-emergence of the country’s historical staple resource bias, as well as the installation of staunch neoliberal governing principles in Ottawa. Looking specifically at the role and nature of environmental regulatory apparatuses within liberal capitalist states, the paper argues that, while such regulatory bodies were initially established as a …
Canadian environmental policy under Conservative majority rule
Seeding an Energy Technology Revolution in the United States
This article aims to contribute to comparative capitalisms debates about the nature of the so-called liberal-market economy/coordinated-market economy divide by drawing attention to the extent and nature of the developmental state apparatus being deployed in Washington's efforts to develop markets for novel climate and energy technologies. Against the deluge of literatures in comparative capitalisms debates which suggest that liberal market econo…
Neoliberal climate policy
There is a broad literature that suggests that neoliberalism is the predominant force structuring climate change policy. However, analyses that focus only on the creation of carbon markets as neoliberalism's effect on climate policy are too restricted. Focusing on the United States, as the paradigmatic neoliberal state, it is demonstrated that, because neoliberal states must nevertheless intervene to promote accumulation, and because system-wide …
Apsa Awards and Recipients
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The political economy of decarbonisation
This paper aims to provide an addendum to the rapidly growing concept of a global ‘green energy race’ between major states. It argues that although this framing has been useful in underscoring important dynamics in the process of decarbonisation, its narrow focus on installed capacity obscures a much broader and more complex process at play. In particular, it overlooks the critical role played by states aggressively investing in R&D and export ma…
Understanding resistance to just transition ideas in Australian coal communities
Neoliberal climate policy
There is a broad literature that suggests that neoliberalism is the predominant force structuring climate change policy. However, analyses that focus only on the creation of carbon markets as neoliberalism's effect on climate policy are too restricted. Focusing on the United States, as the paradigmatic neoliberal state, it is demonstrated that, because neoliberal states must nevertheless intervene to promote accumulation, and because system-wide …
Swimming against the current
While a large body of scholarship has analysed the nature and dysfunction of Australian climate policy over the past generation, there has been little examination of how the Australian state has reorganised itself institutionally to create and execute climate policy. Filling this gap, I explore the evolution of federal climate institutions since the early 1990s, describing how they have fared in the midst of Australia’s highly polarized political…
Death and Environmental Taxes
This article aims to explain why market-based climate policies (carbon levies and emissions trading) have had limited success at the national level in “liberal-market economies” like Australia, Canada, and the United States. This situation is paradoxical to the extent that market environmentalism is often thought to be a concept tailored to the political traditions and policy paradigms in these states. I argue this occurs because precisely in suc…
The Decline of Canadian Environmental Regulation
This article attempts to connect recent major rollbacks of environmental regulation in Canada with the re-emergence of the country’s historical staple resource bias, as well as the installation of staunch neoliberal governing principles in Ottawa. Looking specifically at the role and nature of environmental regulatory apparatuses within liberal capitalist states, the paper argues that, while such regulatory bodies were initially established as a …
Trump, US climate politics, and the evolving pattern of global climate governance
This paper argues that the Trump administration’s position on climate change should be understood more in terms of continuity than disjuncture. It develops this argument in four principal ways. First, it situates Trump in the US’s paradoxical relationship to the UNFCCC, as a would-be leader that struggles to commit itself to substantive action, and the evolving geopolitics within the UNFCCC. Second, the paper focuses on an on-going struggle betwe…
Canadian environmental policy under Conservative majority rule
Seeding an Energy Technology Revolution in the United States
This article aims to contribute to comparative capitalisms debates about the nature of the so-called liberal-market economy/coordinated-market economy divide by drawing attention to the extent and nature of the developmental state apparatus being deployed in Washington's efforts to develop markets for novel climate and energy technologies. Against the deluge of literatures in comparative capitalisms debates which suggest that liberal market econo…
Farmer perceptions of climate change and adaptation during the 2017–2020 Australian drought
Despite being the most tangibly impacted by the first-order effects of a warming climate, much of Australia's agricultural regions have remained relatively conservative in their views on climate change and the need for adaptation. This paper aims to understand how the experience of an extreme climate event like the 2017–2020 drought might shift opinions and values on these issues within agricultural communities. Through in-depth interviews with 2…
Is Canadian carbon pricing here to stay? The outlook after 14 elections
When Justin Trudeau met Canada’s premiers to negotiate a national carbon price in 2016, there had arguably never been a better time to do so. With Liberal governments in most provinces, negotiation
Trudeau's Canada and the challenge of decarbonisation
Following the Liberal Party’s landslide electoral victory in 2015, many in the environmental community expressed optimism that Ottawa was finally about to cast off its woeful record on climate to e
The promise and peril of Australian climate leadership under Albanese
After nearly a decade of policy inaction by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Coalition governments, the election of Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has ushered in expectations of a sea-change in Australian climate policy, one that might allow the country to finally emerge as a global leader on the issue. Yet while years of inaction have left some relatively easy victories for the new government to rack up, the change of leadership and rhetoric ob…
This changes everything? Canadian climate policy and the 2015 election
On 19 October 2015, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party shocked the pollsters, the electorate, and probably itself by rocketing from 34 to 184 seats and securing one of the most robust parliamentary maj
Towards a theory of ‘Big plastic
The Scots—Irish migrations
The following extract from The Story of English (BBC/Faber, 1986) takes us from the Scotland of James VI in the early 17th century through Northern Ireland to the Appalachians and beyond
Looking for My Country
Apsa Awards and Recipients
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Seeding an Energy Technology Revolution in the United States
This article aims to contribute to comparative capitalisms debates about the nature of the so-called liberal-market economy/coordinated-market economy divide by drawing attention to the extent and nature of the developmental state apparatus being deployed in Washington's efforts to develop markets for novel climate and energy technologies. Against the deluge of literatures in comparative capitalisms debates which suggest that liberal market econo…
Neoliberal climate policy
There is a broad literature that suggests that neoliberalism is the predominant force structuring climate change policy. However, analyses that focus only on the creation of carbon markets as neoliberalism's effect on climate policy are too restricted. Focusing on the United States, as the paradigmatic neoliberal state, it is demonstrated that, because neoliberal states must nevertheless intervene to promote accumulation, and because system-wide …
The Decline of Canadian Environmental Regulation
This article attempts to connect recent major rollbacks of environmental regulation in Canada with the re-emergence of the country’s historical staple resource bias, as well as the installation of staunch neoliberal governing principles in Ottawa. Looking specifically at the role and nature of environmental regulatory apparatuses within liberal capitalist states, the paper argues that, while such regulatory bodies were initially established as a …
Canadian environmental policy under Conservative majority rule
Death and Environmental Taxes
This article aims to explain why market-based climate policies (carbon levies and emissions trading) have had limited success at the national level in “liberal-market economies” like Australia, Canada, and the United States. This situation is paradoxical to the extent that market environmentalism is often thought to be a concept tailored to the political traditions and policy paradigms in these states. I argue this occurs because precisely in suc…
Between innovation and industrial policy
During its eight years in office, the Obama administration undertook an ambitious effort to transition the US economy towards the use of renewable energy technologies, and promote American leads in the global ‘cleantech’ industry. While many of the strategies selected to achieve these goals rendered positive results, others proved unproductive and/or politically toxic. Approaching the issue from a critical innovation framework (which focuses on t…
The political economy of decarbonisation
This paper aims to provide an addendum to the rapidly growing concept of a global ‘green energy race’ between major states. It argues that although this framing has been useful in underscoring important dynamics in the process of decarbonisation, its narrow focus on installed capacity obscures a much broader and more complex process at play. In particular, it overlooks the critical role played by states aggressively investing in R&D and export ma…
This changes everything? Canadian climate policy and the 2015 election
On 19 October 2015, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party shocked the pollsters, the electorate, and probably itself by rocketing from 34 to 184 seats and securing one of the most robust parliamentary maj
Trudeau's Canada and the challenge of decarbonisation
Following the Liberal Party’s landslide electoral victory in 2015, many in the environmental community expressed optimism that Ottawa was finally about to cast off its woeful record on climate to e
Trump, US climate politics, and the evolving pattern of global climate governance
This paper argues that the Trump administration’s position on climate change should be understood more in terms of continuity than disjuncture. It develops this argument in four principal ways. First, it situates Trump in the US’s paradoxical relationship to the UNFCCC, as a would-be leader that struggles to commit itself to substantive action, and the evolving geopolitics within the UNFCCC. Second, the paper focuses on an on-going struggle betwe…
Is Canadian carbon pricing here to stay? The outlook after 14 elections
When Justin Trudeau met Canada’s premiers to negotiate a national carbon price in 2016, there had arguably never been a better time to do so. With Liberal governments in most provinces, negotiation
On the Immorality and Futility of Canadian Climate Policy under Trudeau
This paper argues that Canadian climate policy under the Trudeau government is both self-defeating and immoral. Focusing on the central facet of the government's strategy – which trades a small carbon price for significant expansions of oil pipelines – the paper develops this argument in three principal ways. First, it situates the strategy in relation to the global warming potential of new extracted/exported emissions facilitated by new pipeline…
Swimming against the current
While a large body of scholarship has analysed the nature and dysfunction of Australian climate policy over the past generation, there has been little examination of how the Australian state has reorganised itself institutionally to create and execute climate policy. Filling this gap, I explore the evolution of federal climate institutions since the early 1990s, describing how they have fared in the midst of Australia’s highly polarized political…
The role of journalistic voice in communicating climate scepticism
This brief study investigates the subtle ways that language can be used to subconsciously shape a reader’s opinions about climate science within conservative news texts. To do so, our study employed techniques from critical discourse analysis to highlight the role of ‘journalistic voice’ and consider the granular linguistic techniques these outlets may use to subliminally validate sceptical viewpoints, while casting doubt on those espousing the c…
The promise and peril of Australian climate leadership under Albanese
After nearly a decade of policy inaction by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Coalition governments, the election of Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has ushered in expectations of a sea-change in Australian climate policy, one that might allow the country to finally emerge as a global leader on the issue. Yet while years of inaction have left some relatively easy victories for the new government to rack up, the change of leadership and rhetoric ob…
Farmer perceptions of climate change and adaptation during the 2017–2020 Australian drought
Despite being the most tangibly impacted by the first-order effects of a warming climate, much of Australia's agricultural regions have remained relatively conservative in their views on climate change and the need for adaptation. This paper aims to understand how the experience of an extreme climate event like the 2017–2020 drought might shift opinions and values on these issues within agricultural communities. Through in-depth interviews with 2…
Understanding resistance to just transition ideas in Australian coal communities
The case for a permanent US withdrawal from the Paris Accord
Towards a theory of ‘Big plastic
Tangled in the Tides
Meat, Morality, and Culture Wars
This paper examines the portrayal of veganism in Australia’s conservative media, focusing on The Australian, The Daily Telegraph , and The Herald Sun in the 15-year period between 2009 and 2024. Through a qualitative content analysis, it identifies three key phases in media narratives: early dismissal and mockery (2009–2016), intense cultural and political polarization (2017–2020), and simultaneous mainstreaming and persistent backlash (2021–2024…
Human rights case against Australia's fossil fuel expansion
This article contends that Australia's continued domestic fossil fuel expansion constitutes a serious breach of its international human rights obligations. While public debate has largely framed Australia's greenlighting of more than 100 new coal, oil and gas developments in environmental terms, this piece centres on the human consequences. Drawing on legal precedent and normative principles, it outlines multiple ways in which this expansion thre…
Political science (21 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Climate change (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Market economy (6 works) · Ecology (5 works)