Benchmarking climate change strategies under constrained resource usage

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.This doctoral dissertation presents evidence based research into climate change policy. The research technique of political economy is used to investigate policy development. A major change in the Anglo-American growth paradigm from unconstrained to constrained growth is identified. The implications of this change for climate change policy are identified. The political economy of climate change policies is expressed in a new Spatial Climate Economic Policy Tool for Regional Equilibria (Sceptre). This is an innovative bechmarking approach to computable general equilibrium (CGE) that provides a spatial analysis of geopolitical blocs and industry groupings within these blocs. It includes international markets for carbon commodities and geophysical climate effects. It is shown that climate constrained growth raises local policy issues in managing technology diffusion and dysfunctional resource expansive specialisations exacerbated by the creation of global carbon markets