What threat does Morrison see in the UN?

Crikey readers took some time out on the weekend to hack into Scott Morrison’s brisk nationalistic turn — from his swiping out at the UN’s “globalism” to hitching his wagon to the Trump-Johnson pain train. Elsewhere, readers discussed the likelihood of a Christmas stimulus miracle, and questioned how the economic system might survive.

On Morrison’s nationalist turn

Roger Clifton writes: Achieving net-zero carbon emissions globally will require us to cooperate with one of the supranational bodies that Morrison decries. Unwilling nations — still emitting — face the prospect of their trade being blockaded. Perhaps ScoMo has a nightmare vision where Australia’s coal and gas ports are blockaded by UN ships, ships of a type that does not have smokestacks.

Steven Westbrook writes: Why doesn’t the Coalition stop talking in code and admit their regret at signing the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Mike Buky writes: Nationalism ticks many boxes in this weird era. It appeals to those who feel disempowered as well as to the isolationists, the paranoid and the insecure. Nationalism additionally appeals to governments cherry picking which international laws they will comply with… It also permits them to sideline the herd of climate elephants stampeding towards us. The slow erosion of the international rules-based system such as that prescribed by the UN directs us to consider the regression to a more unpleasant world that may well be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

On stimulus

Malcolm Burr writes: A Christmas bonus to lower-income and middle-income Australians is the answer. Rudd and Swan did it in 2009 and it saved Australia from the GFC, making Australia one of the few countries to survive more or less intact.

On the banking system

Simon Mansfield writes: Going forward both traditional Marxist and capitalist economic theory are basically obsolete. It’s possible that the problems of climate change and environmental stress are the perfect economic demand that can be addressed while the entire existing economic/social contract is shredded. All that economic stimulus needed to fix the planet should keep us busy for decades to come while Greta and her children figure out what comes next.

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