Australia’s political media is slowly — too slowly — waking up to the denialist schtick of post-Abbott conservatism. Conservatives aren’t arguing the science anymore. They’re fighting the transition.
How much ground will the conservatives concede? What space will the denialist ultras on the backbench (and in News Corp) give up? And will the media pick up the shift and hold the government to account?
There was a hint of what’s to come in a quiet leak to The Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend. The government was going to stop digging in on the hill of Kyoto carryover credits.
It was classic Morrison media management: sliding out the hard truth for his backbench with an assurance that it doesn’t make any difference anyway, in a drop about a speech he won’t make until next weekend.
This came after British PM Boris Johnson let the world know in late October he’d told Morrison it was time for bold action on climate change (Australia’s official account was silent). It also followed Morrison’s meeting with new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who had recently committed Japan to net zero emissions by 2050.
Toss in China’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2060 and New Zealand’s declaration of a climate emergency, and Australia’s stance looks increasingly compromised. And all that’s before President-elect Joe Biden rejoins the Paris accord with a commitment to 2050 net zero emissions and a promise “to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets”.
Concede the science. Fight the transition. That was the heart of Morrison’s 2019 election strategy. And Australia’s media happily went along with it.
Remember Labor’s modest nudge on electric vehicles that would “end the weekend”, amplified across the News Corp tabloids? Or the serious journalists at the ABC who couldn’t resist the bait of guessing the impact of Labor’s policies on years-long GDP forecasts?
It’s a strategy underpinned by a confidence that Australia will be given a free pass by the world: we’re not important enough to make a difference, not worth the fight, yet too important not to accommodate. That’s worked for the Liberals and Nationals since the Kyoto conference in 1998. But it’s a strategy that depends on not getting too far away from the global pack.
Morrison knows the case fatality rate of Australian prime ministers actually trying to do anything about climate change action. He’s long pandered to the denialist base. His 2017 coal miner cosplay as treasurer was a heavy wink to the backbench that he was one of them.
Now, wedged by the global shift, he needs to adjust. His core problem is that he’s trying to send three different messages to three different audiences.
To the backbench, the fossil fuel industry and the Sky “after dark” audience, he’s trying to say: no retreat, we’re just, umm, straightening our defensive trenches to resist the transition.
To the media, he’s trying to say: we’re, er, managing the transition without cost. Unlike Labor.
And to the global community, he’s saying: we’ll always have Paris… all the while winking over the world’s shoulders at the US Republicans and local mining industry.
It’s a remake of the Howard government’s “no regrets” policy (as Marion Wilkinson’s recent book The Carbon Club reminds us). Howard’s plan depended on Bush in the White House. Morrison has relied on Trump.
But pressures are mounting. And, as those pressures drive the grinding of global policy, Morrison risks getting his fingers caught in the gears.
It is reassuring to hear global leaders committing to “net zero” instead of “reductions”. “Reductions” is a weasel word; you can make token reductions forever without making a significant change, whereas “zero” means zero – no ifs or buts. For that matter, we should be vigilant lest cheats take advantage of the weasel word “net”. No leader should excuse a fossil-burning plant with empty promises of sequestration sometime later. We have always known that there is nowhere to put all that gas, so we can call them out for lying. In our own speaking and writing, we should drop the weasel word and speak the plain necessity, “zero emissions”. Zero means zero!
True Roger. Reductions could just mean that your aren’t growing your emissions as fast as you used to.
To use Red Dwarf’s computer Holly’s explanation, although slowing their speed was still increasing.
So it will continue to be so long as so many people demand cheap, disposable crap to fill the holes in their souls.
Rather than repair one in their sole.
Lucky, for some, that a dampish La Niña may mean a slightly less inflammable fire season.
However it will certainly mean a fine growth of understorey for the years to come – if, by some unforeseen miracle, Labor is in office guess who will NOT be holding the hose of responsibility.
Election cycles – gotta love ’em.
See in the Guardian where Scotty From Marketing’s not been allocated space to sell his snake-oil during the up-coming Climate Ambition Summit?
Is it a “B/S Free Zone”?
Was Scotty’s “big ambitious commitment to the world” to be “I’m cutting the creative accounting credits to Carry On Kyoto”?
After Boris “invited” him, imagine the blow-back on Boris when Scotty’s “evidence” was blown apart?
But not having a spot works both ways for Scotty :-
1) For domestic consumption there’s “How bad are bloody international greenies that won’t let me speak!”, and
2) Not speaking means he won’t be put under the international forensic microscope?
Scotty From Marketing – a master’s degree in ‘Banalities to Mask Masterful Inactivity’.
Our ‘fourth dilapidated estate’ in Australia is problematic because it cannot hold power (or their peers?) to account and worse, many (culturally similar) journalists become conditioned by the constant political PR and dog whistling they are expected to transmit.
This leads to no insightful journalism on relevant issues, drawing on science, research and global experience, but simply following whatever domestic/nativist political PR issue is released on the day; reminiscent of Frederick Taylor’s scientific management re. production lines?
Some years ago a wag commented that Australian journalists/media see their role as insularising Australians from the outside world, making the job of the LNP and IPA easier or some perceived high status ‘top people’.
Related to climate change, how many times do we hear from media (or reprinting media releases) of e.g. the Faragist ‘traffic congestion’ due to too many cars on the road but blamed on (undefined) ‘immigrants’ or ‘population growth’?
If they had an ounce of investigative skill they would know it’s an old trope developed by the US fossil fuel and auto industry….. further, with a steep drop in the NOM it’s an ideal time to statistically test some of these old tropes…. but appears many journalists lack skills of data analysis?
No doubt that the current crop lack the skills to do any analysis but that could be corrected.
Their lack of will however takes us back to the old saw “when a man’s income depends on ignorance he will not want to be enlightened.”