Despite stalled global negotiations for a climate treaty, several advanced economies have unilaterally enacted domestic climate reforms. What accounts for variation in the timing and content of national climate policies? Drawing from detailed case studies of climate policy bargaining in Australia, Norway and the United States, I advance a distributive account of climate policy conflict to explain cross-national differences in climate policy outcomes. Climate policy preferences cut across pre-existing economic and ideological cleavages, generating cross-class coalitions that oppose climate reforms. Consequently, economic losers from climate policy enjoy a double representation within policy debates. This dynamic results from their links to both left-leaning political coalitions, through industrial unions, and right-leaning political coalitions, through carbon-intensive business associations. However the double representation of carbon polluters can be strongly or weakly institutionalized, through policymaking institutions or links between organized interests and political parties. This institutional variation can explain differences in the timing and content of domestic climate reforms. Ultimately, ambitious domestic climate policies emerge when institutions empower climate advocates to impose costs on carbon polluters, not when institutions facilitate collective action.