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Prime minister of Australia

Canberra, Australia

Reversing a campaign pledge, the Labor Party leader bets her job on a plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions.

When Julia Gillard took over as Australia’s prime minister last year, her predecessor served as a pretty good cautionary example. After all, the political opening Gillard seized upon to win her job was presented after Kevin Rudd botched efforts to pass a law taxing greenhouse-gas emitters.

Gillard seemed to heed the lesson. “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,” she said while campaigning.

And yet, today Gillard is championing a massive new climate bill complete with a carbon tax—and risking her political life in the process.

Nudged out onto this limb by the politics of coalition-building, Gillard chose to make her about-face in order to align her Labor Party with the newly influential Green Party, concluding that a bold carbon tax is, after all, what Australia needs to fight climate change. Whether you see the move as politically expedient or as a principled course correction, there’s no denying the risk that it entails in a country where climate change is a wildly contentious issue.