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The retreat into parochialism

2 September 2019
Paul Collins

The Coalition, like many of those who voted for them, seem incapable of grasping the big-picture evidence required to deal with global warming. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he has always believed in “miracles”, but unfortunately that’s not going to work for climate change which requires that people take responsibility for their actions. And that is precisely what we’re not doing.

Over the last decade a number of dystopian, end of the world novels has appeared. Clearly, they sell well and resonate with readers. Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of the Flood are well known. Cormac McCarthy’s description of post-apocalyptic America in The Road is both a novel and film and John Lanchester’s 2019 The Wall, set in Britain after the “Change”, depicts a destroyed world when oceans have risen dramatically eliminating whole nations and vast swathes of climate refugees swill around the world.

No, I don’t think dystopia has arrived with Scott Morrison, but since 1980, greenhouse gases have already driven up temperatures by 0.7°C. By 2050 global warming temperatures could rise from 2° to 4°C with catastrophic effects. But we’re actually not talking about the future. The 6 May 2019 release of the UN-sponsored report on biodiversity loss shows unequivocally that species extinction is already far higher than the average losses over the last 10 million years, and that extinction rates are set to increase, especially with global warming. The report finds that around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.

Thirty years hence in 2050 the effects of global warming will really be felt. Water and food shortages will really impact. With increasing average temperatures, forest and wild fires will become more common. The pollution and acidification of the oceans will deplete fish stocks, destroy all coral reefs and species extinctions will become commonplace. Breakdowns in natural systems and sea level rises will create an enormous mass of people fleeing from environmental disasters and looking for somewhere to decamp. Dystopia is on our door-step.

The tragedy of the election is that these real-world scenarios will continue to be ignored by the Morrison government. The Coalition, like many of those who voted for them, seem incapable of grasping the kind of big-picture evidence required to deal with global warming. Morrison says he always believed in miracles, but unfortunately that’s not going to work for climate change.

There are really two Australias. One is regional Queensland where Adani and coal jobs are still king and global warming an indulgence of “Greenies”. The other is inner-city Melbourne and Sydney where climate change really bites as an issue and the Greens hold their only lower house seat.

As Pope Francis says in the encyclical Laudato si’, political short-termism reigns supreme. He says that “a healthy politics is sorely needed, capable of reforming and coordinating institutions, promoting best practices and overcoming undue pressure and bureaucratic inertia” so that “a genuine and profound humanism” is developed “to serve as the basis of a noble and generous society.”

Clearly, we’ve got a long way to go in Australia, where the hip-pocket nerve reigns supreme, to get “a healthy politics”, let alone “a genuine and profound humanism”. What seems to be happening in Australia is that we’ve retreated even more from tackling big issues and have immersed ourselves in the politics of parochialism, narrow-mindedness and ignorance.

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