New York Times - Livia Albeck-Ripka | Jamie Tarabay | Isabella Kwai
The country is venting frustration with Prime Minister Scott Morrison over what many view as a nonchalant response to the disastrous blazes and his unwavering dismissal of climate change.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday in Sarsfield, Australia, a town hit by bush fires. Credit Pool photo by James Ross |
HASTINGS,
Australia — The posters have popped up on streets around Australia,
showing the prime minister looking very tropical: floral wreath on his
head, ocean-blue shirt open at the collar.
“MISSING,”
they blared. “Your country is on fire.”
The immediate reference was clear. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has been widely castigated
for taking a vacation to Hawaii
last month, and trying to keep it quiet, while Australia was in the
early clutches of one of its most devastating fire seasons ever.
But
the message went well beyond one island getaway. Angry and frightened,
Australians have been venting their frustration with Mr. Morrison over
what they see as his nonchalant and ineffectual response to the
disastrous blazes and his unwavering dismissal of the force that has
made them so intense: climate change.
With
thousands fleeing eastern towns
this weekend as fires swept from the hills to the coast, the
inescapable realities of a warming world were colliding with the
calculated politics of inaction.
Mr. Morrison has minimized
the connection between climate change and Australia’s extreme
environmental conditions, even as the country just completed its
hottest and driest year on record. He has derided calls to end coal mining as “reckless,” prioritizing economic interests and
loyalty to a powerful lobby.
He has opposed taxing heat-trapping emissions or taking other
significant steps to reduce them, although a majority of Australians say
the government should take stronger action.
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Mr. Morrison and the defense minister, Linda Reynolds, on Saturday. Credit Lukas Coch/EPA, via Shutterstock |
And
he has signaled no change in his policies even as 24 people have died,
hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and more than 12 million acres
have burned, an area larger than Denmark. On Sunday, weather conditions
eased a bit, with light rain in some areas, but blazes were still
burning in Victoria and New South Wales, and some towns were being
evacuated.
“The thing
that strikes everyone about the present situation is the federal
government’s disengagement and lethargy, to put it politely,” said Bill
Hare, director of Climate Analytics, a policy institute.
“People are just bewildered,” he added.
As
the fire conditions worsened over the weekend, Mr. Morrison defended
his government’s response and announced a military mobilization — one
that he quickly promoted in a
video on social media,
drawing widespread criticism. He also denied that his government had
played down the links between global warming and changes in Australia’s
weather patterns.
“The government has always made this connection, and that has never been in dispute,” he said.
The
prime minister said he was undeterred by the anger directed at him.
“There has been a lot of blame being thrown around,” he said. “Blame: It
doesn’t help anybody at this time, and over-analysis of these things is
not a productive exercise.”
Mr.
Morrison’s attempt at damage control came as Australians have been
voicing a growing sense since November, when the fires arrived early and
with far more force than usual, that the government is no longer
protecting them in the way it once did.
For
much of the time since, the prime minister said that it was not the
time to talk about climate change, and that those who did were merely
trying to score political points.
But
each surge of the flames into crowded suburbs and coastal getaways has
presented a fresh test of Mr. Morrison’s defense of the status quo. He
has sought to tamp down outrage mostly with photo opportunities and a
populist appeal that echoes President Trump. Mr. Morrison has portrayed
those who support greater climate action as effete snobs trying to
impose their ways on an unwilling quiet majority.
The
prime minister published a New Year’s message in newspapers across
Australia that pushed back against international pressure for the
country to do more.
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Mr. Morrison flying over bush fires in New South Wales last month. Credit Adam Taylor/Australian Prime Minister's Office |
“Australians have never been fussed about trying to impress people overseas or respond to what others tell us we should think or what we should do,” Mr. Morrison said. “We have always made our own decisions in Australia.”
Critics
suggest that his antipathy toward action on climate change has
contributed to what they consider a hands-off response to the fires,
treating them as a tragedy rather than a turning point.
For
months, Mr. Morrison rebuffed calls for a more forceful intervention by
the federal government — like a broad military deployment or the
largely symbolic declaration of a national emergency — by noting that
firefighting had long been the responsibility of individual states. He
changed course on Saturday, announcing a call-up of military reservists
and new aircraft resources.
The prime
minister also initially resisted pressure to compensate the thousands
of volunteer firefighters who are performing the overwhelming bulk of
the work to protect communities. He later relented, approving payments
for each of up to about $4,200, or 6,000 Australian dollars. The
decision came a week after he cut his Hawaii trip short and returned to
Australia following the deaths of two volunteer firefighters.
Mr.
Morrison, who began his professional life in tourism, has been mocked
online with the hashtag #scottyfrommarketing. On New Year’s Day, as fire
victims surveyed the destruction from the wildfires under orange skies,
photos emerged of Mr. Morrison hosting the Australian cricket team in
Sydney.
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Destroyed property in Conjola, New South Wales, on Tuesday. Credit Matthew Abbott for The New York Times |
“It
reminds me of the George W. Bush moment after Hurricane Katrina in
2005,” said Daniel Flitton of the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan policy
center in Australia. “He seemed to be out of touch, and misread the
depths of public concern. That became a lodestone he had to carry for
the rest of his term in office.”
More
recently, Mr. Morrison has tried to defend Australia’s environmental
policies, portraying his government as taking firm action. He said
repeatedly in a news conference on Thursday — his first since before
Christmas — that the government was on course to “meet and beat” its
emission reduction targets.
Climate
scientists say those targets were low to begin with. And Australia’s
emissions have been rising, while the leadership continues to fight for
the right to emit even more.
During
United Nations climate talks in Madrid late last year, Australia came
under heavy criticism for proposing to carry over credits from the
two-decade-old Kyoto Protocol to help it meet its targets under the
landmark Paris accord.
“We are
laggards,” said Joseph Camilleri, an emeritus professor of politics at
La Trobe University in Melbourne, where he specializes in existential
threats, including climate change.
“What
the Australian fires do best is show us that climate change is now with
us here and truly,” he added, “and everyone, including Australia, needs
to do an awful lot more than we are doing.”
Australia’s
conservative leaders often point out that the country accounts for only
a tiny percentage of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. But some
experts called the Madrid maneuver a potentially pernicious example from
a country that continues to extract and export huge amounts of coal
that ends up being burned in power plants around the world.
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Protesters marched on Mr. Morrison's official residence in Sydney in December to demand greater climate action. Credit Wendell Teodoro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Protesters marched on Mr. Morrison's official residence in Sydney in December to demand greater climate action.Credit...Wendell Teodoro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“The
government claims it has reduced emissions,” Mr. Hare said. “What
they’re using are essentially accounting tricks to justify or explain
their reasoning.”
In his news
conference on Thursday, Mr. Morrison framed the government’s climate
policy in a way he often has before, as something he will not let get in
the way of continued prosperity. He also asked Australians to trust the
government and to be patient.
To many, that appeal did not match the gravity of the fear and anxiety coursing through the country.
Jim
McLennan, an adjunct professor specializing in bush-fire preparedness
at La Trobe University, said that many of the regions affected this
season had no recent history of severe bush fires, making it difficult
for communities to prepare.
Australians are also emotionally unready, he added, for the extreme future that most likely awaits them. Some scientists say
people may have to throng to cities to escape the threat of bush fires.
“I
can’t think of a time,” he said, “where we have had so many serious
fires occurring in so many different parts of the country at roughly the
same time. It is a kind of new world.”
Mr.
Morrison may be able to weather the political storms. The next election
is two years away, and he is fresh off a surprise electoral victory in
which he was buoyed by support in Queensland, a coal-mining center.
But
across the country’s heavily populated eastern coast, the public’s
patience is nearly exhausted and turning rapidly to fury. Hours after
the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Morrison visited a fire-ravaged
community, Cobargo, to see the damage and pledge support to residents.
They
heckled him out of town. “You left the country to burn,” one person
yelled before the prime minister walked away and set off in his car.
In
Mallacoota, another devastated community in southeastern Australia
where hundreds of people were evacuated by naval ship to the town of
Hastings, Michael Harkin, a vacationer from Sydney, said his experience
during the fires had intensified his anger toward the government over
its inaction on climate change.
The Morrison government, he said, was exhibiting “incompetent governance avoiding the inevitable.”
“They’re not keeping us safe at all,” he added.
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A mural of Mr. Morrison in Sydney by the artist Scott Marsh. Credit Steven Saphore/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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