Sorry. If you believe COVID-19 will change everything, that Australia will “bounce forward” and begin a new era of sustainability, you’re indulging in magical thinking.
The momentum for climate action after the Black Summer bushfires has been trampled by coronavirus, and the economic downturn will ensure it doesn’t get back up.
How do I know this? Because we’ve been here before.
The last time there was a concerted public push for climate action in Australia was 2006. The millennium drought produced the driest year on record for many parts of the country.
Then 82% of Australians were concerned about global warming; 67% thought that if we didn’t act immediately it would be too late. Only 13% thought climate fears were overstated.
But then the drought broke, we had the global financial crisis and were subjected to a $22 million campaign by the Minerals Council of Australia — backed by the Liberal Party and some media — to stop the mining super tax.
That campaign perpetuated the big zombie lies that can’t be killed: only mining can sustain the Australian way of life and create jobs.
It cost then-prime minister Kevin Rudd his place in The Lodge and ensured no politicians would seriously challenge mining profits again.
By 2013 only 40% of Australians thought we had to act immediately and a whopping 33% thought climate risks were exaggerated.
Now look at today.
Under the cover of COVID-19, while parliaments were not sitting, we’ve seen coal and gas run rings around checks and balances. This includes a coal mine under Sydney’s drinking water, a multimillion-dollar relief package for miners, more than 7000 square kilometres being opened to gas exploration in Queensland, and the moratorium on onshore gas exploration in Victoria being lifted.
Exemptions were given to mines to keep operating while most businesses were forced to close, despite concerns about fly-in-fly-out workers spreading coronavirus to remote communities.
The federal National COVID-19 Co-ordination Commission is stacked with fossil-fuel executives, and an oil and gas baron is leading the Northern Territory’s Economic Reconstruction Commission.
And the public campaigns to protect fossil-fuel interests are going gangbusters.
Companies have used the pandemic as an opportunity to boost their credentials as good corporate citizens and humanise their trade, even as their activities damage our climate and the right to a safe future.
The Adani group has a social media campaign #PortsOfProsperity, which talks about how it has kept working so #GoodnessNeverStops. BHP and Rio Tinto have promoted their donations to communities because we’re #InThisTogether.
Head of the Queensland Resources Council Ian Macfarlane had a joint press conference with Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in which he was lavishly praised for his organisation donating laptops to secondary schools.
Running concurrently is the campaign for tax breaks, a reduction in environmental rules, taxpayer-funded “incentives” for exploration and “flexible” workplaces.
No, state and federal governments will not learn the lesson of the Black Summer bushfires, which, including deaths caused by bushfire smoke, killed 484 people — more than the number of Australians who died in combat during the Vietnam War.
The biggest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. The public will refocus on immediate back pocket concerns, the fossil-fuel lobby will prevail in public policy, and the greenhouse gases will keep heating our atmosphere.
It’s up to ethical individuals and organisations to redouble their efforts to try to stop history repeating itself.
Belinda Noble is the founder of BeNoble Communications and the co-founder of Communicators Declare
The ‘silver Coal-ition lining’ to the Covid cloud?
The very small dot of an iota of a miniscule quantum minority public on Crikey wont even be able to properly comment freely on/about a Dyson, with due justice. So let us not think too much about the squawks n squeeks of overwhelming insignificant majority publics, being able to effectively free speak, apart from talk is cheap, about matters of significant accelerating climate changes .Indeed, power/wealth is inscribed/subscribed (as one of the current {verboten comment} Crikey articles say) right through a sense of social justice….and so we will just have to keep grinding upon, right down, those grinding wheels of justice, with the very fine particles of its own substance ..of course, all along with a rough knowing , that it could be nothing, but a bitter/sweet onion peeling state of affairs .
As you note “…explain how power is used and abused in Australia, and the systems and people who facilitate it.” by being so frank & fearless as to have comments switched off for the the first three articles – a tie, for 1st place in the pusillanimity prize, with..err.. previous editions of this flaccid organ.
It would take quite a lot of naivety to think that this is going to be some catalyst for a better world. There’s absolutely nothing that suggests the political machine cares about doing something for climate change, even if it’s the transition we need to make in the mid-to-long term. When this pandemic broke out, we had elements of the media cheering on the idea of sacrificing part of the population for the good of the economy and politicians treating the lockdown as an aberration that needs to be corrected as soon as possible.
The only way things are going to change is if elections start to swing on this issue. The voters are as big an obstacle as anything else. They care about climate change in the same way as evangelical voters in the US care about Christian values – professing to care is all that matters.
Judging by its track record, the Left couldn’t care a tinkers cuss about climate change. Sure, the phrase “climate change!” is ritualised abuse to be called against the government of the day. But 100% decarbonisation is something that few of us want discussed. Anyone who asks how to 100% decarbonise is shouted down with cries like “100% solar!” despite it being obviously impossible. We seem convinced that come our day of judgement, the kiddies could not hang all of us. Let’s not bank on it.
Are you signling out the left because you think they’re not doing enough, or signling them out because climate change ought only to be a left wing issue?
The sad reality of the debate now is that it’s far too politicised – it wasn’t polarised like this 30 years ago, but now where one stands on climate change is a reliable signaller of political allegiance. It’s easy to see how that’s politically weaponised and used against any party trying to do anything about it.
Honestly, the sooner this issue is depoliticised, the sooner there might be cause for something other than fatalism. That it’s politicised, and cheered on as a political issue, the quicker and more severe the damage to the planet is going to be. Couldn’t care less which parties do something, or if silicon valley billionaires solve the problem – something needs to be done beyond talking left-right politics.
“A plague o’ both your houses!”
Kel S, you are dead right. Climate change threatens all of us. The one industrial group that really has moved on climate change is Australia’s farmers, adapting as it changes. The one political group that is focused on demanding action on climate change are our school kids. The need to decarbonise the economy could have been effectively sold to Left, Right and Centre, but we have failed to do so.
Yes, reform should start from the Left. Instead, we have left the running to the religious nutters who believe that the world is running out of mineral resources and must restrict our energy to “renewables”. This religious baggage is repellent to the Right and Centre, so government regulations maintain business as usual and the gas barons remain in command.
Some farmers might have woken up but there will be no adapting to 3 degrees of warming and probably not to 2. I’ll believe farmers in general have woken up when fewer Nationals are elected to various parliaments. And I’m a farmer.
Roger isn’t so much left/right as he is ‘it’s nukes or nothing if you want a future’.
His one-trick pony – “too cheap to meter” – died a long time ago.
Nuclear has become more expensive than fossil power, but nukes are the only way to provide noncarbon power on demand. If we are to decarbonise completely, we must demand that noncarbon-fuelled generators be made cheaper, smaller, and faster to deliver. Pretending that renewables are adequate for the purpose is fooling nobody. Certainly not the kiddies who will judge us for failing to act at all.
Well this individual cares so that’s a start! And I’m sure I’m not alone!
Me too. Trouble is there’s not enough of us beth!
Might not be up to the govt, Minerals Council has decided to help.
And we know how we can trust Mar’n Fer’son!