Tony Abbott says climate link to bush-fires is “complete hogwash”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has further entrenched his position on climate change and the bush-fires that have afflicted NSW, describing the link between the two as “complete hogwash.”

The comment, made in an interview with prominent News Ltd commentator and climate change denialist Andrew Bolt (a telling choice for what Bolt claims to be the new PM’s first print media interview), Abbott said that at some point over time “all (weather) records” will be  broken.

Asked by Bolt about the “insanity” of links between climate change and bush-fires, and Abbott’s decision to scrap the carbon price, the prime minister responded: “I suppose you might say they are desperate to find anything that they think might pass as ammunition for their cause.”

But while the conservative right struggles to see the link between climate change and bush-fires, Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt have managed to find a direct link between compulsory voting and bushfires. In a radio chat this morning on 2GB, Jones declared that if there was no preferential voting in this country, “we would be fine. There would be no fuel load on the floor”

He later said: “Why should voting be compulsory. Why should preferential voting be compulsory? That is relevant to what we’ve seen this week (with the bush fires).” Why, might you ask. Because without preferential voting, Jones assumes there would be no Greens, and no impediment to hazard reduction. Perhaps voting reform can become the new climate policy.

Abbott’s comments come two days after he told of the UN climate change body that she was “talking out of her hat” by linking climate change and the increased risk of bush-fires, and a day after Environment Minister Greg Hunt – who insists he accepts the science – admitted to the BBC that he had referred to Wikipedia to support his contention that there was no link between climate change and bush-fires. It also comes as the Climate Council issues a new report that states that climate change is increasing the probability of extreme bushfire conditions.

SMH.com.au reports that the Climate Council, a body that emerged with the assistance of crowd-funding after the Abbott government abolished the Climate Commission in September – warns of increasing days of extreme fire danger in future across south-eastern Australia.

“While Australia has always experienced bushfires, climate change is increasing the probability of extreme fire weather days,” the report found. ”Climate change is making hot days hotter, and heatwaves more frequent and severe. Last summer, Australia experienced the hottest summer on record, and now has just had the hottest September on record.”

In the meantime, David Spratt, co-author of “Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action” and a founding director of Safe Climate Australia, has written this piece about the debate around climate change and bush-fires.

 

It’s hard to imagine that one tweet from Australian Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt could change the terms of the climate change policy debate in Australia. But it has.

On 17 October, as fierce, out-of-season bush fires erupted around Sydney and destroyed 200 houses after the hottest year on record in Australia, Bandt tweeted that Australia would experience more terrible climate impacts if newly-elected conservative prime minister Tony Abbott got his way and abandoned the carbon pricing and renewable energy legislation enacted by the Labor government in 2010.

The previous day, Bandt had written in The Guardian that: “Faced with the biggest ever threat to Australia’s way of life (bush fires), Tony Abbott is failing in the first duty of a prime minister which is to protect the Australian people.” This struck a chord with many people and launched a long overdue, but until now suppressed, public discussion about the relationship between a hotter and more extreme climate and worsening disasters.

A taboo had been broken, and amidst intense debate the dam wall broke.

Support for this necessary conversation came from everywhere: climate action advocacy groups, Labor backbenchers Kelvin Thompson and Doug Cameron, senior political commentators, scientists and editorial writers. Lenore Taylor observed that “policymakers can no longer credibly look away.” UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told CNN that the Abbott government would pay a heavy political and economic price for going backwards on climate action.

For three years, Abbott has dominated the public climate debate with a relentless negative campaign on Labor’s carbon tax, a fig leaf for his long-term climate denialism that “the science isn’t settled”, is “highly contentious” and “not yet proven”, that “it’s cooling” and “it hasn’t warmed since 1998” and there’s “no correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature”.

Now accused of “failing to protect his people”, Abbott refused to respond for days, and instead headed off for duty with his local volunteer fire brigade. But shouldn’t the Prime Minister be leading the country, not his local fire brigade, at a time of emergency? For the first time in years, the prime minister was no longer on the front foot in the climate policy discussion.

That climate change would load the dice in favour of more intense disasters is well established. Fire researchers in 2007 estimated that climate change would result in a two-to-fourfold increase in extreme fire days. Between 1973-2010, Melbourne and Adelaide recorded a 49% increases in their cumulative annual Forest Fire Danger Index. And in February 2009 Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people, injured 414, destroyed 2,029 homes, and cost $4.4 billion in damage. The fire index was an unprecedented 190 on a zero-to-100 scale. Yet the possible impact of climate change on the days’ events and planning for the future was excluded from the subsequent royal commission’s terms of reference.

This week the NSW fire commissioner spoke of “unparalleled conditions” and “a whole new ball game”. Conservative NSW premier Barry O’Farrell, when asked asked if climate change made disastrous events such as the NSW fires more likely, replied: ”Well, clearly, I think that’s the science.”

Now the taboo has been broken, what does in mean for the debate in Australia as prime minister Abbott prepares to trash Labor’s legislation?

Labor and the climate advocacy movement made a strategic mistake in 2010 by trying to sell the climate legislation as about “clean energy futures” and “saying yes” without talking about how climate change would affect people’s lives. It was all about selling good news and not mentioning bad news, selling an answer without elaborating the question. Public support went down.

Climate change is a choice between increasing harm, or acting to restore safety. All the studies on health and safety promotion — smoking, obesity, drink driving, HIV, workplace safety — show same thing. Be honest about the problem and tell it like it is; show a better alternative, the benefits of changing behaviour; and finally demonstrate an efficacious path, the “you can do it” actions that the person or society is empowered to take to move from fear to success.

The debate which has erupted over extreme climate events has important lessons for all those urging more, not less, action on climate change. The story should be about people in Australia and not distant places, about now and not just the distant future, about connecting the dots between extreme events and global warming. It is a story about record heat and bush fires, about how family and friends will live in a hotter and more extreme world, about how a retreating coastline will affect where we live and work, a story about health and well-being, about increasing food and water insecurity, and the more difficult life that children and grandchildren will face. This makes climate action a values issue, the choice between increasing climate harm and climate safety.

Australian per capita income is the highest in the world, yet we are less happy than citizens in austerity-riven Spain. Society’s pace of change is creating new fears and insecurities as people struggle to keep up. They fear for the future in which their children will live. Hyper-consumption is being driven by anxiety — fear of being left behind, of being “unfashionable” in the broad meaning of the term — and an increasing sense of self-entitlement.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says that “human vulnerability and uncertainty is the foundation of all political power”. Abbott understood the politics of fear in his tearing down of the Labor government.

Can he now be stopped by constructing a narrative that recognises reasonable fear and provides a clear path to climate safety, rather than increasing personal and planetary insecurity? Can John Howard’s and Tony Abbott’s “battlers” become safe-climate champions?

 

Comments

14 responses to “Tony Abbott says climate link to bush-fires is “complete hogwash””

  1. Keith Avatar
    Keith

    I think it is worth refreshing a little reported statement Tony Abbott made in an interview with Michelle Grattan on 2 Sept 2013, as it helps understand Tony Abbott’s position re Climate Change. Based on this statement, I think the issue that is being overlooked is that Tony Abbott has not changed his position on climate change since he made the famous “Climate change is cxxp comment”.

    I’m surprised that both he and Greg Hunt are getting away with their earnest statements that they accept climate change is happening. It’s clear that Tony Abbott doesn’t.

    See http://theconversation.com/tony-abbott-interview-the-prime-minister-is-probably-a-little-more-than-first-amongst-equals-17750

    Here is the excerpt:

    MG: Turning to climate change, do you think Australians care less than previously about climate change?

    TA: I think people are very passionate about the environment. I regard myself as a committed conservationist. I think people are less anxious about climate change, for three reasons.

    First, I think they’re more conscious of the fact that the argument among the experts is not quite the one-way street that it might have seemed four or five years.
    Second, the drought, which was a fairly severe drought, has well and truly broken in most of Australia anyway.
    And third, Copenhagen changed any idea that there was some international consensus on how to deal with climate change.

    1. Gongite Avatar
      Gongite

      That whole ‘the drought is over’ line isn’t working out too well is it?

  2. suthnsun Avatar
    suthnsun

    “I suppose you might say they are desperate to find anything that they think might pass as ammunition for their cause.” should go down in infamy, Tony Abbott dismissing the well thought out concerns of responsible citizens. This statement makes it personal unlike ‘climate change is cxxp’. I see it as a reprehensible ramping up of the rhetoric. It sounds like he is declaring (psychological) war. It won’t be long before we have a set of impersonal euphemisms applied to any advocate for action on climate change and we know where that road leads…

    1. wideEyedPupil Avatar
      wideEyedPupil

      Yeah well in 18th Century France it lead to the manufacture of the Guillotine…

  3. howardpatr Avatar
    howardpatr

    Seems that Abbott may be working hard to become a renown world leader in the climate change denier movement.

    This week, along with his minion, Greg Hunt, they have shone the spotlight on Australia for having perhaps the most backward policies on climate change and the renewable energy future.

    Guess we can expect little more from a disciple of B A Santamaria and George Pell?

  4. Gongite Avatar
    Gongite

    Yup it really says it all that Tony Abbott dismisses climate change as a cause. Makes it clear that it is a cause he does not support, so undermining his claim to take the issue seriously.

    For anyone interested Getup is organising a national day of climate action on November 17th. Check their website for your local event and be there dressed in red orange and yellow!

    1. wideEyedPupil Avatar
      wideEyedPupil

      Stuff GetUp!. Their “Say Yes” Campaign was the most over-expensive, under-delivering waste of peoples energy and money. I wish to god they’d just give the $250000 they want to collect on our behalf and give it to 350.org and BZE.org.au. And how about they actually consult the CC movement for once before running off halfed cocked… I wrote to tell them so and since then they have teamed up with EV in Victoria, the same org that promotes Gas as a ‘transition’ fuel and now that they haven’t got millions of $$ rolling in from a Labor government don’t know what the F to do.

      GetUp! starting to have a wiff of Kony 2012 about them…

      1. thin_king Avatar
        thin_king

        Say Yes had a particular end point and its been and gone, so information is a little hard to get online. but here’s a quote from one website “The ‘Say Yes Australia’ campaign is supported by a group of community and environmental groups including GetUp, The Australian Conservation Foundation, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Greenpeace, The Climate Institute, Environment Victoria, the ACTU, the Climate Action Network, WWF and Oxfam. ” (http://www.ata.org.au/news/say-yes-australia-to-action-on-climate-change/). The 100% Renewable Campaign also had significant involvement. “Supported by” means active administrative, volunteer base and financial commitment. So, yes, there was pretty broad consultation with the CC movement and Get Up was only one participant.

        Say Yes’ was instrumental in giving the nervous labor party conviction to go through with a price on carbon and the CEFC. Left in an undismantled state (sigh), these legislative and economic tools, though not perfect would have laid the foundation for significant government action on emission reduction.

        Please check your facts and, really, do we need the vitriol?

  5. MrMauricio Avatar
    MrMauricio

    The guy is a dangerous fool-the ‘over the time all climate records will be broken” is another denier escapist fantasy.Warm records are running at 4 times the rate of cold records.If Abbott’s pathetic excuse of an argument was true they would be about equal.Of course investigative journalism of any quality would quickly reveal this but Bolt is a propagandist not a journalist.

    1. wideEyedPupil Avatar
      wideEyedPupil

      They don’t expect people to believe them when they say this rubbish. But they know the Australian media will write that up as an answer and not call them out on it. It passes the ‘he said, she said’ muster our local media demand.

      Strange that a BBC radio journalist has been the only person in the media so far to run an offence capable of pressing our own serial sophist/stupidest Minister for Environment Greg Hunt into incompetent ramblings and outright lies (his claim that Abbott’s comment was a private conversation despite all of Australia having noticed he said it square in front of a MSM TV camera was a laughable attempt to say repeating ‘total crap’ was rudeness on the journalist’s part).

  6. Michael Pulsford Avatar
    Michael Pulsford

    ..and from back in 2006:

    ‘THE Prime Minister, John Howard, last night embraced a key climate change forecast, warning Australians to prepare for more extreme weather events such as the current bushfires.

    Visiting north-east Tasmania, he repeatedly made the point that the region was not normally associated with bushfires, and neither were they usually so common early in the summer.

    On his last stop in St Helens, Mr Howard was asked if he accepted the scientists’ predictions of more extreme weather events.

    “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I think the country should prepare for a continuation of what we are now experiencing … I think the likelihood of this going on is very strong.”‘

    http://www.smh.com.au/news/scorchedearth/pm-expect-extreme-weather/2006/12/13/1165685752372.html

  7. Terry J Wall Avatar
    Terry J Wall

    If the world takes action on climate change and it is wrong, we end up with a less toxic more sustainable place to live.
    If the world doesn’t take action and we are wrong; we fry. You choose.

    1. RobS Avatar
      RobS

      Except the denialists add a point to each which allows them to justify inaction.

      To the action without need point they add “and we waste a whole heap of money that could be put to better uses in the process of unnecessary action”

      To the no action and climate change is real point they add that even if climate change occurs and we do nothing about it then the effects will be minimal, there will be no more fires or natural disasters, sea level rises will be on the order of a few tens of centimetres at most, deaths from cold weather events will drop, areas currently unsuitable for agriculture will be opened up, the arctic will be available for shiping cutting tens of thousands of miles off some journeys and there will be a whole heap more plant food in the atmosphere. Teh vast majority have figured out that denying climate change’s existence is a dead end argument, no their aim is to befuddle and minimise the potential consequences to the extreme point of claiming they will be positive not negative.

  8. Motorshack Avatar
    Motorshack

    While there are regular reports from the right-wing press that “97% of political scientists agree that Tony Abbott exists” and that he “is heavily implicated in the unpleasant change of climate in Canberra”, the science on this point is actually not settled, and there are even some convinced Abbott-denialists who insist that his alleged existence is a “load of crap” and that events in Canberra are purely natural occurrences, perhaps having something to do with the phases of the moon or an epidemic of abdominal cramps currently sweeping through the Labor Party.

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