Missy and Jonica’s Peak ABC Climate Grief Show
Several science-minded listeners possibly tuned into Saturday’s Science Show on ABC’s Radio National. But instead of a solid chunk of science, they copped the most ABC interview in recent history.
Several science-minded listeners possibly tuned into Saturday’s Science Show on ABC’s Radio National. But instead of a solid chunk of science, they copped the most ABC interview in recent history.
“This is Missy Higgins,” an announcer warned. “But what’s she doing on a science show?”
Turns out Missy is sad about the weather.
Singer-songwriter Missy Higgins talks about climage grief in ABC Radio National's Science Show: https://t.co/GjpcJjiRaX #climategrief #climateanxiety #climateemergency #bystandereffect #climateandmusic
— The Sustainable Hour (@SustainableHour) May 16, 2020
“Climate change is coming,” the announcer, er, announced. “It’s here. The threat is causing grief for scientists, but also for our artists.”
Oh no! Thereafter followed an entire hour of misery therapy involving Higgins and her equally-distressed ABC interviewer Jonica Newby. Highlights:
Higgins: “I’d always intellectually known about the importance of caring for the environment and climate change. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always felt anxiety about it.”
Her anxiety wasn’t helped by reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate:
Higgins: “It was all about these things we’re doing that are irreversible and how the change that we need to make needs to happen on a mass government scale.”
Mass government? Now I’m feeling anxious.
ABC interviewer Newby: “Everything on the news, every time I saw one of the leaders who was a chaos agent, like in America, I was just emotionally overwhelmed – up to the point where I had to get away, actually.”
Higgins empathised:
“Politics is becoming more polarised. Maybe that’s a good thing, because the left are becoming more extreme and maybe that’s what we need.”
Missy Higgins has a net estimated worth of $3.5 million and four years ago sold her inner-Melbourne house for a figure somewhere north of $2.2 million. Take her down, extreme leftists!
But enough from Missy. Her interviewer then spent the next three minutes and 15 seconds talking through her personal pain over Scott Morrison’s 2019 election win:
Newby: “The night of the election, which ended up being the trigger for me deciding to write a book, because I’d been doing other things …”
Other things like trying to make a climate change film about “love and hope and so on”. It apparently took a year for Jonica to “heal” herself following the election, who at one point obtained a prescription for anti-depressants.
Newby: “The night of the election, when I hadn’t realised how much hope I had held on to subconsciously that the politics on energy and climate would change with a change of leader …
“ … because I’d hoped that Malcolm Turnbull would be able to do it, I’d hoped various leaders at times, and so when that hope was dashed again, then I was lost for a bit.”
As were Newby’s listeners about one-third of the way through that bewildering cry for help.
Newby: “Fear is what scientists feel when they actually see the reality. Fear is what I feel when I stare at the beast. I’ve decided to personify climate change as the beast, the monster.”
Remarkably, Missy Higgins then brought some sense to this tax-funded indulgent madness:
Higgins: “It is a really legitimate fear that a lot of these people have about losing their jobs if the coal mines shut down and if we transition to a green economy. What does that mean for my kids and my livelihood? Am I going to be able to feed my family?
“I’m in such a privileged position to not have to worry about that.”
Higgins has just given the ABC its new slogan.