The News Corp climate denial machine — all those cogs in its opinion pages finely tuned to reverse Aesop’s fable and repeatedly croak out: “No wolf here!” — has a problem. Extreme weather events have made it all but impossible to ignore the climate wolf threatening to blow our houses down.
No worries, it’s time to call in the ideology engineers for a bit of message realignment. With just a spot of tinkering, the machine has cranked out two new talking points for the US company’s loyal political wing in the Liberal and National Parties. These are the “ute tax” and the “absolute travesty” of the aesthetics of offshore wind farms.
They’ve reengineered the underlying denialism, too. Sure, they say now, the climate may be changing, but it’s not our fault. It’s not, as the cloistered academics would say, “anthropogenic”.
If global heating is not caused by humans burning fossil fuels, why would humans be able to do anything about it? (And, just in case, why not go, umm, nukular?)
This so-called “attribution” denialism accepts the effect while denying the cause. It’s long been part of the denialist toolkit (remember sun spots?), along with what Australia’s leading analyst of denialism, John Cook, calls denying the trend (“it’s just not happening”) and denying the impact (“it’s not making any difference anyway”).
“Attribution” has always been the weakest form of denialism, raising doubts rather than definitively rejecting. But as a recent US study found, its danger lies in being the gateway drug to a more full-blown repudiation of the science itself.
And the guide at the gate ushering them through? Why Fox News, of course, and the grab bag of right-wing media voices following on behind.
Rupert Murdoch’s bold 2007 commitment to zero corporate emissions (under, it was said, urging from his then likely heir James) was short lived. Once the global right embraced denialism as a core strategy, his media outlets, particularly here in Australia, quickly pivoted.
From Abbott’s “absolute crap” moment in 2009, it became central to News Corp’s editorial positioning. A 2013 study by the University of Technology Sydney found that the company’s then two largest papers –Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun in Melbourne — were overwhelmingly hostile to climate change, with more than 60% of articles on the subject either outright rejecting the science or raising doubts about it.
In 2014, even the normally cautious Press Council felt compelled to express “considerable concern” about inaccuracies in the company’s coverage of data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Shrug. “Whatever happened to global warming?” the company’s Wall Street Journal insouciantly asked later that year.
Why did climate denial suddenly become a touchstone for the global right? After all, when Rupert was pumping zero emissions, John Howard seemed to have been dragged reluctantly by his then environment minister Malcolm Turnbull to the idea of an emission trading scheme. The following year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain mouthed similar support.
Follow the money. Fossil fuel corporates and the foundations they fund together with corrupt petro-states built a climate change denial countermovement. Surprising, I know, but here in Australia too.
As we’re discovering again with “ute tax”, offshore wind farms and largely astro-turfed protests against solar on farmland, this denialist countermovement has built its protests around neoliberal, anti-regulatory talking points. It’s been tagged “the anti-reflexivity thesis“, which is the argument that denialism is standing up for industrial capitalism.
It appeals to a certain old-style machismo — the good ol’ days of physical, manual jobs that matter for poorly educated men (and to the regional communities built around them).
It was this thesis that Abbott captured in three words: “Axe the tax!”
Now, the Liberal-National-News Corp coalition is having another go at the same old play. But, suddenly, it’s finding the going that much harder.
Continued heat records have shattered denials of the trend, while bushfires, floods and mass extinctions are shattering the comfort of impact denialism. The enduring attribution denialism is proving just too weak to sustain the right’s countermovement.
In October 2021, in the wake of the IPCC report that definitively linked extreme events like Australia’s bushfires to global heating, News Corp attempted to shift to talk of “real practical solutions” (unsuccessfully as it quickly turned out). It coincided with Canberra’s political gallery having one of its regular collective hope-over-experience frissons when Morrison (remember him?) committed to net-zero by 2050 (insert: smiley face) devoid of any practical measures (insert: sad face).
Now, about 30 months later, we’re back where we started. The only change? Right-wing media and the political parties they support seem determined to leap over the science to a fact-free denial in practice.
The tragedy of the re-invented “ute tax” is not so much that Dutton dragged it out of the archives but more, that Labor completely collapsed in the face of something so weak coming from an opposition leader so predictable.
You’d almost think that Labor doesn’t have its heart in Climate Action.
Labor is always in paranoid fear of being wedged by the Liberals so they go Liberal lite on policy. If they cannot stand by their values and by extension their polices they are not fit to govern. Australia desperately needs a third viable party to challenge the duopoly.
Same for Labor and AUKUS and the deportation bill and migrants.
What are “their values and … their policies”?
Good question.
A Mystery for the Ages but we don’t have that long.
With the amount if Liberal policies they’ve subsumed on climate, defence, foreign affairs (to the detriment of the nation), you’d almost think that Labor doesn’t have a heart or a brain between them.
Time to ditch both the majors and give the Greens and Indies a go at running things. Couldn’t be any worse than the past 11 years or so.
Exactly. In fact the science has failed to stir the masses and neither major party sees any advantage in creating a million or two jobs or in turning Australia into a major energy powerhouse or in preventing thousands of early deaths which now happen from air polluion.
Problem with science is that no scientist is prepared to be unequivocal: It’s always, “might”, “could”, “maybe”, at which point we all assume there’s no real problem, and go back to worrying about the usual trivia. Remember the AIDS ads? Visceral fear gets results.
The same people bribing the LNP are now bribing Labor since they are holding the steering wheel. But make no mistake the fossil fuelers are in the drivers seat and the duopoly will do what they are told to keep the gold flowing to the relevant tax havens.
Not helped with our broader and compliant RW MSM who follow the same talking points as News, not original but imported including tactics using related fossil fueled players for deflection.
Think according to DeSmog Koch’s climate science denial Heartland Institute informed the IPA, then RW MSM and influencers spread to word of mouth narratives; the latter is the most rusted and powerful message reinforcer (Advertising/Marketing 101).
Once Howard stopped following climate science 20 years ago, like News, LNP and RW influencers, then the old fossil fuel ZPG US Tanton Network linked SPA stepped in for a ‘one two’ deflection using artificially ‘jazzed up’ data on ‘immigration’ and/or population growth became the environmental issue of our time for RW MSM and ALP; wedged well done.
Result? Most dismiss the need for fast transition to renewables, EVs, solar panels etc. vs. evidence outside of Australia, then our RW MSM focuses and obsesses (presently) for a dog whistle on headline immigration and population data spiked by students, to deflect; matching old white Australia sentiments with ageing electorates to wedge ALP vs. RW MSM, influencers and word of mouth.
Re “the “absolute travesty” of the aesthetics of offshore wind farms“, this has landed in WA courtesy of the Seven/West ‘media’ outlets (I think, its not always clear) – so entirely predictable to see the good folk of trendy Busselton getting distressed about wind towers 20 kms of ‘their’ shores. But, as its one of the two Liberal seats in the State assembly, perhaps they’d be thrilled to have one of the Liberal’s friendly nuclear reactors built on the shores of Geography Bay, just beside the photogenic Busselton Jetty – no aesthetic problems with that I presume for the oligarch’s propaganda outlets.
Recent surveys have shown young voters are dropping away from Labor. Likely this is the same demographic which is not in thrall to New$ Corp, a good number of whom support renewables &/or Extinction Rebellion’s message on global warming. The stale publisher is playing to a diminishing audience.
Sadly, their captured audience appears to be Labor MPs.
A ‘ute tax’ is a bloody good idea, regardless of its origins or reality.
The American behemoths that are increasingly and terrifyingly rampaging on the roads are deliberately designed to be intimidating. They’re a raised middle finger to anyone else who presumes to use the roads and all too often the drivers of these monsters exploit their size and power to tailgate and speed.
I bet those drivers don’t believe in climate change either, or consider that it either won’t affect them or that it’s someone else’s problem to manage.
So, yes, tax those vehicles right out of Australia. Nobody needs a big black ute with massive bull bars to carry two plumbers’ friends and a tool kit to a fix a blocked drain. Some of the drivers of these Mad Max machines probably have never fixed anything in their lives anyway.
Bring it on.
As for the Coalition: see the Macquarie Australian dictionary for definitions of bastardry, stupidity and useless. I believe Peter Dutton’s name (and several of his besties), appears in all of them.