Climate catastrophists see opportunity in disaster

Activists’ grand plans distract from things that will work here and now.

An aerial view of a flooded church and other buildings in the northern New South Wales city of Lismore, taken from an Australian Army helicopter taking part in Operation Flood Assist 2022.

While homes in Brisbane, Lismore and Windsor were swamped by floodwaters, again, and at least 15 people were losing their lives, and volunteers were taking risks to rescue others, climate keyboard warriors saw an opportunity to make political hay while the sun was not shining. “If not us, who?” tweeted so-called Voices of independent candidate Zoe Daniel above a reference to the latest climate report. “If not now, when?”

Thankfully, other Australians had a far more useful response to those two questions. They said “me” and “now” as they filled sandbags, crewed boats and delivered food to help others in need.

From surfing legend and great white wrangler Mick Fanning’s jet ski run for the local pharmacist, to two police officers diving under water into a Lismore house to rescue a 93-year-old woman floating on a mattress in an air pocket against the ceiling, the stories of help and heroism were great and small. But some climate crusaders sensed only an opportunity.

As they have done with bushfires, heatwaves, droughts, snowstorms (and lack of snowstorms) climate activists use wild weather to foster fear and further their political causes. Where some see natural peril and human tragedy, and act to help, others see dramatic images and political opportunity, then jump on social media.

Another so-called Voices of independent, Allegra Spender, posted pictures of the flood trauma with familiar slogans. She said a vote for her would “tackle climate change” and protect the environ­ment.

Presumably when people argue we should “follow the science” they mean we should stick to the facts and logic. Yet such an approach would see these climate catastrophists exposed as false prophets pushing false promises – they can no more alter the climate, let alone prevent natural disasters, than Superman can spin the planet backwards on its axis.

By science people tend to mean the increasingly alarmist papers published by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is much science behind these papers but also plenty of public relations in the way they are presented, with a rolling release of reports making the same points, which is why climate news sounds like deja vu.

We hear plenty about “tipping points” and last chances but seldom a word of scepticism, questioning of IPCC statements or references to the benefits of global warming; we get only doom and gloom. NASA findings on the carbon dioxide-induced greening of the planet or research about reduced mortality from milder northern hemisphere winters are not the kind of science the advocates follow.

Let us accept the general thrust of what the bulk of the climate scientists argue: that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming, that most warming is attributable to human-induced emissions and that we will see an increase in the regularity and intensity of weather events. Science also says much of this is baked into the atmosphere, even if we reduce emissions in the medium term, and that a global cut to net zero is necessary to reverse the trend.

There are debates to be had about weather records, interpretation of data, scientific modelling and forecasts. But the first thing to say about the climate activists’ response to natural disasters is that they are not new; floods, droughts, fires, heatwaves and storms have always been with us and always will be, especially in this land of droughts and flooding rains.

The pretence that climate policies can relieve us of these natural traumas is a ridiculously emotive and deceptive ploy. Do the activists really think they can deliver some Truman Show world where we dial up the weather we desire?

They are always desperate to use the word unprecedented so they can pretend global warming is visiting a wrath upon us that our forebears never knew. Every heatwave, cold snap, drought, flood or fire has to be worse than ever to suit their narrative.

In these pages I have demonstrated why this is untrue when it comes to the horrific bushfires in the summer of 2019-20. They were widespread, rampaging and deadly, but this country has had fires cover wider areas, kill more people and start earlier in the season. Firestorms are fearsome but, tragically, Australia will always suffer from them from time to time – always has.

Which is why grand plans to change the climate are unfortunate distractions from the protections that will work here and now, no matter what happens to the climate. We need to control fuel loads near settlements and ensure houses and properties are sufficiently protected in how they are built, where they are built and how much cleared area they are allowed or must have around them.

Despite repeated inquiries making recommendations about this, we have made little progress, and our complacency will lead to more damage from future fires. Instead of these difficult reforms, governments find it easier to buy firefighting aircraft that are useful for some fires but hopeless against the worst.

It is a similar story with floods. At Lismore this week’s flooding was the worst on record, more than 14m. But given there have been many floods over 12m, even in the 19th century, there will be other factors involved beyond climate, such as landclearing and urban build-up. Again, the practical solution to repeated inundations is not some fanciful plan to change the global climate but to adapt to a reality that has always existed and always will. If Lismore is the most regularly flooded town in the country, might we not rethink rebuilding in the same way at the same locations?

If we keep doing the same things we have been doing on fires, floods and droughts, and pretend our climate change policies will fix it, we are doomed to repetitive trauma. Dams can reduce flooding and droughtproof communities yet we seem to bust every dam proposed.

Even the entirely logical plan to extend the height of Sydney’s Warragamba Dam to mitigate the sort of flooding we have seen for two summers in a row has been held up by all the usual environmental objections. This is not rational or practical behaviour; science tells us floods will come and dams can manage them.

Instead of building dams, clearing bush around houses and ensuring buildings on flood plains can endure floods, activists pretend subsidising electric cars and mandating energy-saving light bulbs will tame our natural disasters, and too many politicians play along. Sometimes this country’s political system seems like a press release in search of governance.

Apart from the tackiness of spruiking for votes on the back of natural disasters, this is the first big lie of the climate alarmists: that their policies are the best way to eliminate or minimise the damage from natural disasters.

The second lie is even more preposterous because it goes to their propensity to deliver. Even if we accepted that controlling global climate was a reasonable and plausible goal, how, precisely, could an independent politician achieve this outcome?

Australian Army aircrewman conduct a rescue from an MRH-90 Taipan helicopter over flood-ravaged Lismore.

To what degree, for instance, has Zali Steggall been able to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming. She has done as much on that cause as she has on world peace.

The Greens, Labor and the so-called Voices of independents fallaciously accuse the government of inaction on climate. Reducing emissions by 20 per cent already (up-ending our energy system to do it) and committing to net-zero emissions by 2050 is more than most nations do, and too much for many informed people, so it is a bit cute to dismiss it as inaction.

But let us say, for argument’s sake, that a few of the so-called Voices of independents and the Greens win the balance of power and install a Labor government that is dependent on them for survival. This is their dream scenario, where they could dictate climate policy.

So, we could pretend they get our country to net-zero emissions by 2030 (lord knows how, perhaps by closing all industries and building a dozen nuclear reactors). We could go even further and have them shut down our coal exports.

Would this, could this, change the climate? Between 2019 and 2021 China increased its emissions by 600 million tonnes and India by 200 million. In total, that amounts to double Australia’s annual emissions. In other words, if Australia’s 1.1 per cent of global emissions disappeared overnight, they would be replaced within a year by the global growth.

And no less coal would be burned, our exports would merely be replaced by other nations, as would the produce of our closed factories and farms, adding emissions elsewhere.

The scientific, economic and practical reality is that our self-harm would not reduce global emissions, therefore not improve the climate. That is what would happen in the extreme, impossible expression of the climate catastrophists loony plans.

So imagine the futility of whatever policy morsels they might cajole out of government. The pretence that any politicians, let alone so-called independents, can change the climate is misleading, ignorant and juvenile.

The eventual elimination of greenhouse gas emissions, so long as it is in concert with the rest of the world, makes sense. The way to do it in Australia, while protecting our economy, environment and sovereignty, might be through nuclear power (as France and Germany are suddenly rediscovering) and through abatement schemes involving revegetation, soil carbon and the like.

Climate change, like most other complex policy areas, needs to be tackled with factual, realistic and proportionate progress. Emotive, jingoistic and frankly silly claims about delivering us from Armageddon to Nirvana are not worthy of adult discussion, and certainly have no right to claim science as their defence.