by I was looking at this picture of people (mostly tourists, it appears) fleeing massive fires in Rhodes, feeling despair about the future of the world when I was struck by an even more despairing thought.Almost certainly, a lot of the people in the picture are climate denialists. And even more certainly, they will mostly remain so despite this experience. Australia was one of the first countries to experience massive fires clearly attributable to global heating. In December 2019, fires burned up and down the east coast for weeks. Most of our major cities were blanketed in toxic smoke. The conservative government of Scott Morrison, which had scored a surprise election win earlier in the year, made of botch of dealing with the fires (Morrison himself secretly jetted off to
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I was looking at this picture of people (mostly tourists, it appears) fleeing massive fires in Rhodes, feeling despair about the future of the world
when I was struck by an even more despairing thought.
Almost certainly, a lot of the people in the picture are climate denialists. And even more certainly, they will mostly remain so despite this experience.
Australia was one of the first countries to experience massive fires clearly attributable to global heating. In December 2019, fires burned up and down the east coast for weeks. Most of our major cities were blanketed in toxic smoke.
The conservative government of Scott Morrison, which had scored a surprise election win earlier in the year, made of botch of dealing with the fires (Morrison himself secretly jetted off to Hawaii for a holiday) and played down any role of climate, ably supported by the Murdoch press. Despite this, the denialist National Party retained its seats in most of the worst-affected parts of the country at the next election.
Labor, which had gone to the 2019 election with a reasonably good climate policy, dumped it in favor of marginal tweaks to the governments non-policy. Since winning office in 2022, the Labor government has approved massive new coal mines and gas fields.
And there’s nothing uniquely Australian about this. UK Labour is apparently considering winding back its climate policies on the basis of a mildly disappointing by-election result, and the denialist faction of the Conservative party is gaining strength.
Perhaps there is hope to be had somewhere, but I’m not feeling it right now.