Australia Chooses Deadly Heat, A Dying Reef And Delicious, Wonderful Coal In Election

[hatrack]

SYDNEY, Australia — The polls said this would be Australia’s climate change election, when voters confronted harsh reality and elected leaders who would tackle the problem. And in some districts, it was true: Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who stymied climate policy for years, lost to an independent who campaigned on the issue. A few other new candidates prioritizing climate change also won.

But over all, Australians shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef and the extreme drought punishing farmers. On Saturday, in a result that stunned most analysts, they re-elected the conservative coalition that has long resisted plans to sharply cut down on carbon emissions and coal. What it could mean is that the world’s climate wars — already raging for years — are likely to intensify. Left-leaning candidates elsewhere, like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, may learn to avoid making climate a campaign issue, while here in Australia, conservatives face more enraged opponents and a more divided public.

“There has to be a reckoning within the coalition about where they stand,” said Amanda McKenzie, chief executive of the Climate Council, an Australian nonprofit. “I think it’s increasingly difficult for them to maintain a position where they don’t talk about climate change.” Even for skeptics, the effects of climate change are becoming harder to deny. Australia just experienced its hottest summer on record. The country’s tropics are spreading south, bringing storms and mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue fever to places unprepared for such problems, while water shortages have led to major fish die-offs in drying rivers.

EDIT

Despite his Sydney upbringing and former career in advertising, Mr. Morrison, 51, won in part by presenting himself as an Australian everyman — a rugby-crazed beer drinker who was the first prime minister to campaign in a baseball hat. Mr. Morrison’s coalition also benefited from deals with two right-wing groups: One Nation, the anti-immigration party led by the Queensland senator Pauline Hanson, and the United Australia Party led by the mining billionaire Clive Palmer, who spent tens of millions of dollars on a populist campaign with the slogan “Make Australia Great.”

EDIT

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/world/australia/election-climate-change.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Well, have fun guys.

[Hortensis]

1. Just wow. 'We have lost Australia for now,' warns climate scientist.

From Think Progress:

“Australians elected someone who once brought a lump of coal into Parliament urging us to dismiss the warnings from climate scientists, and to dig up more coal instead,” Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, an Australian cognitive scientist, told ThinkProgress in an email. “There is little doubt that his government will do precisely that.”

Rupert Murdoch’s grip on the Australian media — and his support of climate disinformation around the world — led one Australian scientist to write in 2011, “The Murdoch media empire has cost humanity perhaps one or two decades of time in the battle against climate change.” In re-electing Morrison, a long-time opponent of climate action, Murdoch and his allies have triumphed again. In fact, Morrison first became prime minister back in 2015 following a party coup against then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who supported the climate action.

[corbettkroehler]

4. That's Right, At Least A Decade (n/t)

[pscot]

5. The Murdochs should be on trial at the Hague

for crimes against humanity and life on Earth.

[Thyla]

2. Let's be honest about it

There is only one party in Australia with a policy platform that would meet international obligations of climate reform and it's not the Labor party.

Yes much was made of the reports that climate reform was the number one issue for voters but they were never, ever going to vote for the party that would fix this. The public lied.

Granted Labors policy was a marked improvement over the libs but still not good enough.

They chose their back pocket as the number one issue seemingly. No surprises, just greed.

[Hortensis]

6. I don't know Aussie politics, but hard to understand

when the climate crises are hitting them so hard. Is it the same kind of insanity as here?

I noticed the conservative party is called the Liberal Party there, some switcheroo in the past no doubt. Lincoln's Republican Party bore not the slightest comparison to today's, but within a couple of decades its business-serving conservative wing was growing powerful.

[FM123]

3. Such a sad & horrible scenario, seems almost unbelievable that the election turned out like this...

[srobertss]

7. I just listened to an interview with David Wallace Wells

on the Majority Report. They were trying to predict what it will take for people to respond to the climate crisis. They pointed to this election as not such a great sign. I’m in my 60s and without children, so I listened to their discussion of how they deal with thinking about their children’s’ future. One thing they discussed is how they compartmentalize and manage not to think about it for periods of time. I wonder if this vote is a collective compartmentalization to self comfort.