You can tell the coal-fanciers within the Coalition are panicked. Not content with scaremongering about rising electricity prices, they are now invoking the greatest carbon price of them all – death.
On Thursday morning Liberal MP Craig Kelly said people would die of cold this winter because renewable energy was putting up electricity prices.
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| Illustration: Joe Benke |
Because when it comes to climate change policy, if you're not scaring people, preferably age pensioners – a magical category of voter who can ill afford bill hikes and will never live to see the effects of dangerous climate change – you're just not doing it right.
It's not the first time Kelly has linked green policies to death – it's something of a personal brand for him.
Previously he has said high electricity prices will push up the cost of heating public pools, which will be passed on in higher prices for swimming lessons, which will deter parents from enrolling their children in them.
A generation of children will be defenceless near large bodies of water.
Result: KIDDY DROWNINGS.
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| Liberal MP Craig Kelly has repeatedly linked green energy and death. Photo: Andrew Meares |
Kelly says people will be forced to burn wood in their homes because they can't afford to turn on their heaters, which will lead to increased air pollution.
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| The effects of catastrophic climate change warrant a scare campaign of their own. |
Kelly's logic is spectacular in its circularity – note he is actually admitting that burning carbon is toxic to humans, but no way is he letting that sway him into thinking we might want to come up with a few alternatives to burning it globally, on a massive scale.
You really have to hand it to the Member for Hughes – he has cornered what is a very full fear-mongering market.
He knows conditions are perfect for his high-stakes play – when you have Alan Jones thundering that Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg's career is "finished" because he hasn't yet tattooed to his forehead his commitment to coal-fired power into the unending future; and Tony Abbott using his considerable spare time to remind everyone how spectacularly he came to power on the promise of lower electricity bills – well, you know you are riding the zeitgeist.
Kelly's death predictions operate in a fact vacuum – next he will be warning us of the risk of viral epidemics because the shivering masses will be forced to huddle together for warmth.
But it's not his absence of proof, or even his lack of compunction to show vague causality, which is galling.
It's the fact that he has stolen the thunder of those who urge climate change action on the basis of the extinction of the species if we leave things as they are.
Death, high cancer rates, drownings – that territory is supposed to be the environmentalists' (speedily defrosting) tundra.
Climate scientists, not by nature a rowdy crew, have, for decades now, been politely ahemming at the back of the room to get our attention, so they can warn us about all the various ways our children are going to get cooked if we don't act collectively soon.
A New York Magazine cover story published this week entitled The Uninhabitable Earth, laid out some of the terrifying scenarios that could eventuate "absent aggressive action", broken down into cheerful subheadings like "Poisoned Oceans", "Climate Plagues" and "Permanent Economic Collapse".
It was criticised as being overblown by some climate scientists and focusing on the worst, worst-case scenarios, but not before it lodged firmly in the amygdalas of hundreds of thousands of readers. It lays out what the author says are the possibilities of unmitigated climate change – including the annihilation of Bangladesh and Miami, tens of millions of climate refugees, deadly heat waves, cities like Kolkata and Karachi becoming uninhabitable for humans, and greater social conflict leading to war, not just because of the food shortages and shrinking land resources, but because everyone is so irritable from the heat.
A number of climate scientists have since objected to the piece, saying it is too dire – as Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania said, "the evidence that climate change is a serious problem that we must contend with now, is overwhelming on its own". But the piece also mentions a phenomenon called "scientific reticence", which describes the habit climate scientists have of being so cautious and self-censoring they fail to communicate how dire the threat is.
This is where politicians could, for once, be useful.
They are experts at fear fomentation – during any given electoral cycle they taunt us with the possibility that immigrants are taking our jobs, that immigrants are taking our welfare, that Medicare is going to be shut down like a disused kiosk, and that our preschoolers will be forced into transgender-dom if gay people are allowed to marry.
All we need is one Craig Kelly for the climate – to stand up in Parliament and, instead of brandishing a lump of coal for the amusement of the proletariat, hold up a picture of an infant with her skin peeling off, or a submerged Palm Beach mansion, or a Torres Strait Islander forced to flee his home because of rising seas, or a piece of grey coral plucked from our dying reef.
The greatest thing about this scare campaign? You don't even have to make up the facts.
Links
- 'People will die due to renewables': Turnbull government MP
- Josh Frydenberg: the minister who could make or break the government
- Frydenberg warns states not to go it alone on clean energy
- One trillion tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctic Peninsula
- G20 leaders agree deal on trade but fail on climate
- Greenhouse gas pollution up, released data reveal
- FOI documents suggest government 'hiding pollution': ACF
- France to stop selling diesel and petrol cars by 2040
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