Deny it all you want but this stuff is real and it is going to stick to the Morrison Government, at News:
Sir David Attenborough, 93, spoke to the BBC on Thursday as the United Kingdom prepares to host the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
“As I speak, south-east Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing,” he said.
“That is a major, international catastrophe. And to say, ‘Oh it’s nothing to do with the climate’ is palpably nonsense.
“Who has been affecting the climate? We have. We know that perfectly well.
“So we have to realise that this is not playing games. This is not just having nice little debates and arguments and then coming away with a compromise. This is an urgent problem that has to be solved.”
John Hewson is scathing at Domain:
Both major parties, over the past couple of decades, played short-term political games with climate change rather than address its magnitude and urgency. We are left in the unimaginable position of still having no climate action plan, no energy policy, no national disaster plan, no waste-management policy, no fuel security strategy, and no transition strategies to achieve a low-carbon society by mid-century.
Even in the depths of community despair, Morrison gave no real ground on any of these issues in his Insiders interview on Sunday. It is staggering how some in the media were at pains to find some marginal policy shift in his use of the word “evolve” in relation to his climate response
As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice in “a rather scornful tone”: “When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” To which Alice replied: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” In that interview, Morrison did.
Many still completely misread Scotty from Marketing. He simply doesn’t accept either the magnitude or the urgency of the climate challenge. He is almost totally beholden to the fossil fuel lobby. Several of his senior staff are ex-coal executives; a couple of his key ministers have coal industry links; fossil fuel companies are major donors.
“Scotty from Marketing” has taken on a life of its own. David Crowe has more:
Liberals privately worry that Australians will not believe them on climate change because they think Morrison does not speak with conviction when he says the science is real and he is acting on the problem. What do words matter when Morrison is branded by the moment he walked into Parliament with a lump of coal?
Morrison talks of going “even further” to reduce emissions and building “resilience” to cope with a changing climate, but it is too soon to judge if this rhetoric signals anything other than a political panic.
The technology roadmap may include wonderful ideas for the future, but it is only required because of the failures of the past.
What, and entrenched denialism will win votes? It is my view that we are already at the point where the polity will stop listening to the Government but you’re better off marketing what people want to hear rather than the opposite.
There’s more at Domain about whether SmoCo’s narrow QLD base will crack:
…anti-establishment sentiment is not tied to any particular policy issue. It rests on perceptions of responsiveness to local concerns and events.
Morrison has made the mistake of seeing pro-coal patronage responsible for his 2019 victory. The ABS reveals only 37,800 people are employed in coal mining – barely 0.2 per cent of the voting public. There is no cultural affection for our coal export. Morrison won, in part, because mainstream Australians were turned off by the preoccupation the inner-city left in Melbourne and Sydney have with niche issues and identity politics.
But now there is likely to be a coalescing of views across the community about climate action. Australians reject anything that threatens their security, drives up their bills or risks their jobs. Now climate inaction presents that challenge – they are choking on smoke, homes and property have been destroyed, farmers are unable to grow crops or feed their stock, and fireys have had to risk their employment to protect their communities.
It was a factor. Palmer united is pro-coal. One Nation is pro-coal. They passed on the vital preferences to SmoCo. The other major factor was and remains nationalism and the desire for immigration cuts.
As the scorched states turn on SmoCo he is going to lose NSW and VIC seats. Whether the QLD seats will be shaken by fires is uncertain. SmoCo has an ace up his sleave in playing the nationalist card again and preteding to more phony immigration cuts where Labor won’t tread.
Even so, as the world burns around him, Scotty from Marketing needs something to sell.
