Something else is out of control in Australia: climate disaster denialism

Myths about the bushfires grow online before finding their way into the rightwing press and the mouths of politicians

‘The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, teeters at the edge of climate disaster denialism, using coded digs that suggest there is nothing unusual about what’s going on.’ Photograph: Rohan Thomson/Getty Images

@KetanJ0-Wed 8 Jan 2020

The impacts of the climate crisis are now clearly manifesting in ways beyond rising temperatures. In Australia, the conditions for severe bushfires are occurring far more regularly (hot days, dry land and high winds). And the country is now suffering its most intense bushfire season ever. The quantity of land burnt, the smoke pollution impacts, the temperatures and number of homes lost are all breaking historical records.

At the same time, Australia is pioneering the denial of climate disaster.

There is some interesting research around denialism. Researchers have essentially discovered a strong political divide when it comes to climate science: progressives are much more likely to accept it as fact than conservatives. And presenting climate deniers with scientific information in the hope that they’ll change their minds actually reinforces their rejection, because they are so taken aback by the information.

This phenomenon affects solutions, too. If a policy proposal to reduce emissions conflicts with someone’s pre-existing beliefs – if it requires more government intervention in markets, for example – they tend to deny that the problem exists in the first place.

Over the course of the past decade, Australia was a laboratory for this type of thinking. Research has shown that “climate scepticism gets substantial favourable exposure in mainstream Australian media”. As a result, Ipsos polling finds that Australia lags behind other nations in “acknowledging the threat of climate change”. And a renewable energy target of 42% – proposed in a landmark report by Australia’s chief scientist – was rejected by the conservative government partly because the number sounded too close to the opposition’s 50%.

Rightwing media outlets in Australia have responded to the current bushfires by either refusing to give the story its due prominence or by spreading falsehoods. Specifically, there is a claim emerging that environmentalists have blocked hazard reduction efforts by supposedly opposing dry fuel loads being burned or manually removed. It isn’t one of those half-truths – there’s no truth in it at all. Once spread by a rightwing journalist over 10 years ago, it has been given a new lease of life as a meme on social media.

 

Piers Morgan grills Craig Kelly for denying climate link to bushfires – video

There is a trajectory for memes like this: the idea emerges in the fever swamps of denialist groups, it slowly seeps into fringe blogs, and from those blogs into Australia’s rightwing media. Then fringe political players take it up, and it’s consequently absorbed by leaders from major parties.

There is precedent for this phenomenon. In 2018, a fake Starbucks campaign supposedly offering free coffee to people of colour in the US was orchestrated on the 4chan message board; it was then featured on Fox News. There is already evidence emerging of 4chan boards trying to spread misinformation that fires are being started by Muslim terrorists.

The latest story doing the rounds is that the fires have been caused by arsonists or even climate activists – and it has been particularly potent. It is currently somewhere between the blogs and the rightwing media; I imagine that it’ll be in the papers – and on the lips of politicians – shortly.

In the comments of Sky News Australia tweets, the meme already dominates. The account of Gwyneth Montenegro, a “personal empowerment” influencer, tweeted to her 94k followers “climate terrorism, perhaps?”, which received thousands of retweets before being deleted. A Channel 7 Australia tweet declared that “Police are now working on the premise arson is to blame for much of the devastation caused this bushfire season”, receiving hundreds of retweets despite the voiceover in the clip stating: “7 News has been told that early indications are the south coast fires were likely started by lightning.”

It was retweeted by the BBC journalist Andrew Neil with the judgment: “appalling”. The Australian government MP Craig Kelly appeared on Good Morning Britain, insisting that the climate crisis is not to blame for the shocking intensity of the country-wide disaster.

Denialism comes directly from other leading Australian politicians. In 2013, this was more explicit, as when Tony Abbott said “fire is part of the Australian experience”, while then-environment minister Greg Hunt used Wikipedia to dismiss the link between the climate crisis and bushfires.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, always teeters at the edges of this style of disaster denialism, using coded digs that suggest there is nothing unusual about what’s going on. “We have faced these disasters before” and “I know how distressing that [smoke haze] has been, particularly for young people who haven’t seen it before” both stand out as examples of Morrison’s strategy: disguise straightforward climate denialism with appeals to “common sense”, collective memory or the misguided passions of young activists.

When he won the election in May 2019, Morrison declared it a victory for the “quiet Australians”. That may have been true, but there are far fewer quiet Australians left today, as hundreds of thousands have experienced the largest mass evacuation in the history of the country.

Still, anecdotal dispatches from Christmas dinner tables outline the success of rightwing memes in denying that Australia’s disaster is in any way related to the climate crisis. Morrison seals the deal, offering a comforting alternate reality that satisfies the craving to deny anything related to the climate crisis, whether it’s the science, the solutions or the impacts.

If it works, it’ll kick off another decade of sustained inaction in a country that has incredibly disproportionate influence on the world’s climate system. This time, we must nip it in the bud.
• Ketan Joshi is an Australian energy and climate science communicator