Morrison, God and Climate

Government makes climate change noises, but no pressing need for a more urgent policy setting ... Fools paradise persists ... God will show the way as science takes the backseat ... Miracles galore ... Inspiration from Trump ... The editor comments  

God will decide 

IT has been a rough time for Scotty from Marketing as his normally well-oiled spin machine lurches and splutters.

It didn't seem so long ago that he was carting a lump of coal into parliament, carefully varnished so his hands didn't get grubby. And it was only a month ago the prime minister said he liked the idea of rebooted coal fired power plants for NSW and Queensland. 

His emissions minister, Angus Taylor, was even more indulgent, telling Sky News in October that he didn't know what a climate emergency actually meant. To him it was "empty" virtue signalling. This, while Taylor engaged in a fresh round of figure-fudging to claim that emissions are lower than they truly are. 

Virtue signalling is something only lefties do, maybe because paleo-conservatives have no virtues or, if they do, they are reluctant to signal them. 

The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, in November described those with climate concerns as "inner-city raving lunatics". By the following month he thought "further action" was needed to lower emissions. 

British prime minister Harold Wilson said, "a week is a long time in politics". In Australia, a month in politics is like a nano-moment. 

It's a sight to behold as a maladroit government, packed to the gills with climate deniers, scrambles to change gears without making too much of a terrible crunching sound. It's now about fine-tuning the right "balance" between carbon and the future. 

The backlash is palpable, even a Murdoch has spoken out, which raises the alluring thought as to what would happen to a newsroom of climate deniers if the patriarch had a Damascene moment and changed the editorial settings. 

While Australia is rapidly becoming an international laughing-stock with pariah status, corporates on home soil gallantly try their darnedest to decarbonise. AGL, the nation's biggest coal power generator, is moving away from fossil fuel to a low emissions energy regime. Mining giant RioTinto has exited coal mining and BlackRock, the world largest investment manager, has announced a withdrawal of investment in thermal coal - what it describes as a climate-driven "fundamental reshaping of finance". 

Qantas is working on sustainable aviation fuel, Telstra is committed to reducing carbon emissions, so too BHP and the big banks and anyone who sees that future profitability and happiness is dependant on a clean-green social contract. 

The great upward thrusting pistons of capitalism are leading with their wallets - but the supposed champions of free enterprise, the Liberal Party and the Murdoch papers, are in the dust. According to an Essential Poll in November, 60 percent of respondents wanted more action to mitigate climate damage. By this month, according to an online Nine mastheads poll, the figure was 88 percent. 

Whatever way you look at it, it's a mighty chunk of people who feel trapped in a country where politicians make hollow noises about "evolving" policies. 

Coal, nonetheless, is ingrained in our economy and psyche. To realign from an industry that contributes $A58 billion to exports, about three-and-a-half percent of Australia's GDP, and directly employs 50,000 people there needs to be bolder, braver steps. 

In which event, it is not a good time for Australia to have a prime minister who holds God, rather than science, as the deciding force of our fate. The power of prayer and the blessings of the almighty are strongly entrenched throughout his government. 

If we understand Pentecostalism correctly, our past present and future is in the hands of God, with fire, flood and pestilence being a natural precursor to the rapture and the second coming of Jesus. 

Hallelujah. 

Philip Almond, emeritus professor in the history of religious thought at the University of Queensland, wrote in May that this explains why reducing carbon emissions "may have little intellectual purchase with the PM".  

"If the end of the world through climate change is part of God's providential plan, there is precious little that we need to or can do about it." 

It's all down to miracles, in which Scott Morrison is a firm believer. As he told a rapturous Liberal Party gathering on the night of his election, "I have always believed in miracles," the suggested subtext being that reason, enlightenment and science have nothing to do with his election. 

Presumably, he prayed for rain and it arrived. Another miracle. 

Morrison: miracle man 

What sticks is his earlier untroubled approach: firefighters like fighting fires, they are well-resourced, the government is content with the current arrangements. 

Now, as the politics of the situation has made itself palpably clear, we have the sight of his undignified post-Hawaii scramble: wantonly grabbing the hands of distraught people, dashing about desperate for photographic moments, jabbing his fingers into maps of fire-torn territory, putting "boots on the ground" and producing a grab-bag of money and a tacky social media video conflating the Liberal Party with national salvation. 

This is a control-freak who has lost control, a fear-monger who is afraid - mainly for his own political future. 

It is easy to see how a dystopian world can unfold - shortages of food and water, people fleeing, cars and trucks log-jammed, communications cut off, fear, panic and society progressively under the command of the military and the security state. 

There is a struggle between God and science, and at the moment God knows the way ahead. The picture is even more pronounced in the United States under President Trump, an inspirational figure for our prime minister. 

Trump has been busy cutting support for scientific programs and having his political appointees shut down government funded studies. As The New York Times reported just after Christmas: 

 "The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus." 

In Australia, the word "science" scarcely falls from the government's lips. The minister for science is so unimportant that few people knew of Karen Andrews, an LNP MP from Queensland, until she made noises this month that she had signed-up to climate reality, even though she made no proposals how to mitigate global warming. 

It was claimed only weeks ago at the King Jesus International Ministry in Florida that Trump was "sent to us" by God to protect Christianity. 

Legislation in Australia designed to allow religious organisations, churches, and affiliated business to discriminate against those regarded as deviant or ungodly is Morrison's version of the King Jesus International rally. It's the same political project. 

When the Pew Research organisation looked at religious belief and the causes of climate change it found it is the religiously unaffiliated who are particularly likely to say the earth is warming due to human activity. On the other hand, "white evangelical Protestants stand out as least likely to have this view". 

Should we need to be reminded, the research also showed that seven out of 10 white evangelical Protestants and 66 percent of white mainline Protestants favour allowing more offshore oil and gas drilling.

There is also a well-recognised link between adherence to a lopsided notion and a person's identity, how they want to be seen by the sort of society to which they aspire and from which they seek recognition. Climate denialism therefore can deliver both social and spiritual validation. 

The Coalition's current lame position, to which it has been dragged kicking and screaming, is a sulky acceptance that anthropomorphic climate change is sort of real but don't panic because our very minimal and grudging effort is all the nation needs and can afford. The Labor Party has been infected by much the same go-slow virus. 

No clearer example of the PM's reluctance to do anything outside the government's current constipated policy settings was his slap-down of the NSW environment minister Matt Kean, who does wants to achieve zero emissions by 2050

 The short-hand version is that it's better to destroy our country to save the economy. 

J.S. Mill put it aptly, "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservative". 

From Richard Ackland