Since Australia's Government Can No Longer Flat-Out Lie On Climate, They'll Use A Slimy New Approach

The impact of climate change over the past five months across Australia has caused climate-change deniers within the media and government to quickly update their tactics to a new sinister position. Gone are the plans to just keep lying for the next decade that activists such as Greta Thunberg are predicting that the world is going to end in 2030, or to continue to flub and fudge the science – no real warming since 1998, 2005, 2010, 2016! Solar activity! Volcanoes! Greenland!

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So now that they are unable to say “now is not the time”, they have adapted. Rather than suggest no connection with climate change, they have shifted to arguing there is no connection with any particular climate change policy and bushfires. Scott Morrison argued last week on ABC’s 7.30: “You cannot link any individual single emissions reduction policy of a country – whether it’s Australia or anyone else – to any specific fire event. I mean, that’s just absurd.”

Yes, it is absurd, because no one is actually arguing that. But the prime minister is very good at defeating arguments no one is making. He is also very good at giving false hope. Right now columnists and journalists are writing articles expressing belief that maybe Morrison is about to shift the government’s climate change policy.

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The new argument is that yes climate change is probably to blame, but we can’t do anything about it, and anyway it’s too late now, so let’s “adapt”. And what does that adaptation involve? According to Morrison, “Building dams is key to that. Native vegetation management is key to that. Land clearing is key to that.” In other words doing the very things conservatives have been desirous of for the past century – building dams, reducing national parks and increasing land clearing. They will hand out grants to organisations and areas most electorally beneficial and all the while trumpet that they are dealing with the issue in a practical way, unlike the opposition which they argue will be trying to kill jobs.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2020/jan/14/the-government-has-been-forced-to-talk-about-climate-change-so-its-taking-a-subtle-and-sinister-approach