Deliberately locked into the politics of climate hysteria
When even our major party politicians talk about a ‘climate crisis’ we can expect radical action from young activists. Idiocy and extremism are endemic in this debate.
They really should have just forklifted the car to the side and left her there, listening to Triple J and the sound of internal combustion engines being driven around her. But we are too kind; the day was disrupted for thousands of people as she was disconnected from her steel and plastic contraption and sent for a non-vegan meal at the city watch-house.
Many of the politicians and media types who fulminate over the selfish disregard for others implicit in these protests are partly to blame, of course. Other politicians betray their greater complicity with silence.
When even our major party politicians talk about a “climate crisis” and the fringe parties are ever more maniacal, we might expect radical action from young activists. You cannot deliberately spread hysteria and be surprised at hysterical responses.
When even an otherwise sensible premier, South Australian Labor’s Peter Malinauskas, asks parliament to declare a “climate emergency” and the Liberal opposition supports the motion, we can deduce two things: language has lost all meaning; and our political class is not interested in a rational approach to climate change.
“Scott Morrison is a threat to life,” Greens leader Adam Bandt tweeted and ranted when the Coalition was in power. This absurd and caustic claim was not called out; most media report such crazy abuse in a matter-of-fact way as if it is perfectly acceptable political rhetoric.
The following year Bandt said, “Scott Morrison is putting Australian lives at risk with his 2030 death sentence targets.” He added that the Coalition’s targets would be a “recipe for more droughts”.
Again, no scrutiny, no challenge; even a balance-of-power party is not dragged back to the facts, sanity or decency. We have seen nothing, by the way, but cool weather and floods since.
This sort of catastrophism has an impact, especially given it is amplified by compliant media. The alarmists talk mainly about heatwaves, droughts and bushfires but they often throw in the catch-all phrase of “extreme weather”, too, so that cold snaps, early ski seasons and floods do not spoil the narrative.
The ABC is to climate alarmism what Fox Footy is to post-match analysis. A quick flick to its website turns up a doomsday feature on the Pacific Islands entitled “Postcards from the front lines of climate change.” Dramatic pictures and quotes push the thesis that global warming is an “urgent existential threat” to these island nations and will lead to a “refugee crisis” and the “loss of one of the most culturally diverse, vibrant and important regions in the world”. Global warming, apparently, will be Armageddon for the Pacific Islands.
The piece fails to mention that many Pacific nations (let us start with Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea) are mountainous and therefore certain not to disappear, regardless of how high oceans rise. Nor does the article cite inconvenient facts such as the recent University of Auckland study that shows the land area of low-lying Pacific Islands actually has increased in recent decades, despite sea level rises.
Oh well. Why ruin existential angst with facts? It is enough to make you lock your head on to your steering wheel.
Such fearmongering, understandably, troubles people, especially if they have been fed an alarmist view at school, university and in their media diet. Little wonder some think extreme action is warranted to save the planet. If you truly believed the planet was imperilled and that Australian policies could save it, there are a whole lot of things you might do. You might vote for a so-called teal independent, take a day off school for a climate strike or risk a non-vegan meal in jail.
Much of the domestic climate spiel pretends that Australian action lags the world and we could make a difference. It neglects to relay crucial facts such as the minuscule share of global emissions we contribute, how our reductions are proportionately better than most countries deliver, or how China and the rest of the world will continue to increase emissions for years to come, rendering our cuts next to useless.
Yet, while they deliberately fuel the anxiety that leads to protests, and profit politically from the focus on their pet issue, many green-left politicians go missing when the activists hit the Harbour Tunnel road. As the Blockade Australia disrupters threw barricades and bins across city streets, their political motivators were as colourless and invisible as carbon dioxide.
Teal independent for Wentworth Allegra Spender was tweeting about freeing Julian Assange and railing against the US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v Wade but, so far as I could see, did not weigh in on the climate extremists and their wildly disruptive protests. Perhaps Spender is one of those eastern suburbs residents who prefers not to concern herself with harbour crossings.
But Kylea Tink, the teal for North Sydney, seemed to be silent too, preferring to pontificate on her clutch of non-climate, leftist causes. The member for Warringah, Zali Steggall, also did not seem to express concern for her constituents, who regularly head south of the harbour for work and play. There was turmoil in Sydney for two days thanks to climate extremists promoting similar messages to the teals, yet the teals were silent. Did they dare not condemn the chaos? Or dare not endorse it?
This was the extraordinary silence of the teals. This was their primary issue dominating the news cycle in what is the home city for four of them, and their response was to avert their eyes. Were they ashamed of the message or the tactics? Or did they feel gazumped? The teals were much more vocal in demanding extra taxpayer-funded staff, claiming the additional staff member they were allocated above the normal backbencher allowance was insufficient to do a job most of them are yet to begin. Instead of buying into climate protests, they were fighting for resources that would increase their carbon footprints.
This might go down in history as our political system’s most premature exaction. A pre-emptive personal indulgence from independents who campaigned on bringing a new integrity to politics.
Still, the teals are fringe players; the real problem is how there is no pushback, no advocacy for a rational approach, from the governing parties. There is more politics than science at play in the climate change debate, therefore more bowing to emotionalism and alarmism than corrective points about the facts.
In Tokyo, on his first overseas trip as Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese told the leaders of the US, Japan, and India about Australia’s “ambitious action on climate change”, which he described as the “main economic and security challenge” for the Pacific. Never mind the ambitions of communist China.
In March, then prime minister Scott Morrison visited flood-devastated Lismore and declared it was “just an obvious fact” that Australia was “becoming harder to live in because of these natural disasters”. He said the world was dealing with “a different climate to the one we were dealing with before”. This is not just bowing to the zeitgeist, ignoring the weather records or even ignoring the trials of our forebears in this “land of droughts and flooding rains” – this is surrendering the argument to alarmists. Yes, I know, some scientists will echo this sort of rhetoric, but it is not rhetoric that counts, it is facts.
Many other scientists will urge caution about judging long-term patterns on short-term information. While, in this case, Lismore had a record flood, Australia has had many worse floods, decades and even centuries ago, and the Lismore catchment has had heavier rainfalls. Elsewhere the floods were not records.
When it comes to the bushfires of 2019-20, Australia has seen worse on various criteria – area covered, damage caused, lives lost – repeatedly since European settlement. This is not to downplay their severity. Rather, the context is important for two crucial reasons. First, to push back against the hyperventilating alarmism. Second, to debunk the dangerous idea that climate policy can mitigate the threat – when catastrophic fires, floods and droughts will always test us, and we need to prepare for them in practical ways, other than with climate policies.
When you add the other crucial reality, that it will be the actions of China, India, Indonesia and other nations that will affect the climate, rather than whatever we do in Australia, it becomes clear that our national debate is as misguided as it is alarmist. To argue sense and proportion, almost certainly, is to be labelled a climate denier.
But it is the fact deniers, the science deniers, who need to be called out. Is there anyone in the political realm prepared to reset the debate?
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When a 22-year-old woman parks her car across the Warringah Freeway to block access to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and uses a bike lock to fasten her head to the steering wheel so the vehicle cannot be removed easily, ensuring cars bank up for kilometres during peak hour, we should not be surprised. Idiocy and extremism are endemic in the climate change debate.