Remember way, way back in those hazy days of the summer before last when Australia’s devastating bushfires were resetting our understanding of global warming? Remember when nothing was going to be the same again?
It was the wake-up call for Australia’s politicians and media, the alert to shift from a narrow fretting about coal exports to a broader reporting of the real-life impacts of global warming on people and communities embedded in the narrative of a world at a tipping point.
Well it’s happening again. Far away from Australia’s lockdown bickering, the 1 percentage-point rise in global warming on pre-industrial levels confirmed in 2018 seems to have tipped the world: 500 killed by the heat dome in Canada; 200 in the floods in Germany; this weekend’s video footage of the ferry rescue from the fires on the Greek island of Evia rhyming with Australia’s own New Year’s Eve images from Mallacoota just 20 months ago.
But this time Australia’s politicians and media are too distracted by our immediate concerns, from commuter car parks to COVID, to pay enough attention to the “global” in global warming.
Instead of the events from Pacific Canada to southern Turkey being journalistically hammered into the narrative of a changing climate that’s changing the world to drive the urgency of action, each event is reported for the drama of the images — terrible, sure — but torn out of the context of global warming, too easily shrugged off as the unfortunate misfortunes of others.
Today the global warming alarm is scheduled to go off again, at 6pm today in Australia’s eastern states, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its latest report on what the science tells us about how the warming of the planet will affect climate.
The splash news is likely to be a tightening of projecting when the world hits the outermost accepted limit of increase, the 1.5% barrier. In 2018, the IPCC experts predicted a range stretching out to 2052. Now it’s expected to be a far narrower range, stretching to some time in the 2030s.
It’s set to ratchet up the urgency of action (yes, even by Australia) in the debate leading into November’s Glasgow climate summit. Yet every time the climate alarm goes off, Australia’s media allows the government to hit the snooze button and wrap the country back up in the comfort of its denialist doona.
It’s a ruthless attention to agenda setting. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his ministers simply refuse to talk about the hard truths of global warming, deflecting with vague hints of a preference for 2050 zero emissions achieved by the magic of technology at some distant point, mixed up with an empowered contrarianism (hello, Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce) and a finger-pointing look-over-here at Labor over the inevitable disruption of the necessary transition (Utes! Taxes! Jobs!).
Embedding the narrative we need is hard. Journalism is optimised for the rapid run of short-run news cycles (shallow, frothy, frequent) not the long arc of a story like global warming. But journalism needs to rework itself to meet the needs of its audience.
It’s particularly hard in Australia where most of the traditional media (*cough* News Corp) is embedded in the denialist movement, promoting contrarians and feeding the talking points that ricochet around social media. They tone-police journalists at Nine and (particularly) the ABC to avoid linking the outcome (Fires! Floods!) with the changing climate.
COVID-19 gives us a clue about how journalism can adapt: reporting the pandemic has demanded integrating a similar long-arc story into daily practice where just about every story — politics, finance, society, foreign news, even sport — has had to be reshaped to incorporate the impact of the virus.
There are lessons here for integrating climate change in rolling news. Every COVID press conference has demonstrated that journalists can force governments to talk about things they don’t want to talk about. Why not use that access to prise open the locked-down discussion about global warming — every time?
Each time the warming alarm sounds, it’s harder for the government to shut it off. Maybe tonight’s call will be the moment it changes. Maybe it’s the moment Australia’s media recognises its responsibility to force the change.
Abolish the evil Murdoch empire and you may have a slim chance of MSM change…
https://murdochfreeworld.com.au
The older I get, the more I just want to “take out” these corrupt, conservative, self serving, excuses for humanity, who are doing their damnest to destroy the current life on this planet, all the while screaming obscenities at those who actually think, feel, and try to do something to alleviate their excesses. It has to come to a point, where it’s us….or them! Turning the other cheek against these monsters means oblivion!
Steady on there – you are quite correct about the problem but the solution is simple.
Not easy but simple – convince those about to start breeding that their kids are going to suffer.
We ancients have very little to lose by doing something drastic – I’m just surprised that the power structure has not realised that, for the first time, threats to their dominance are not going to come from young radicals but we old ones who know what was once possible.
They should be afraid, very afraid.
It was clear to me in the late 80s that having children was a bad and selfish idea. We’ve been running toward the edge of a cliff for decades, only gathering pace the closer we get. Hopefully Delta+ or similar will wipe us all out before we take the rest of the biosphere with us, but it’s not looking likely.
No plague kills everyone – evolution does not work like that.
Even the so call Black Deaths only did in a third of the filthy & malnourished denizens of crowded mediaeval cities. (See the Python’s ‘Holy Grail‘ – “I’m not dead!” “Shaddup!”)
As long as knowledge survives (not a given) then that is not a problem but a boon – it does wonders for artisan wages, which is not necessarily a recommendation for the wage stagnation of the last score of years in this country.
However, those who survive tend to have children who will also survive – for genetic, behavioural or social reasons – and we oldies will always need some vigorous young’uns to hew water & carry wood.
It’s mainly about numbers but not entirely.
I have to admit that I also can’t see any other way out. We’d probably get close to a civil war, but while the Right control the media and the politicians nothing will happen. And I’m sorry Selkie, but there is nothing you can do to persuade most deniers that there is an issue. I’ve tried; it’s like arguing with religious fundamentalists. The urge to not recognize uncomfortable truths is far greater than the instinct to recognize danger. Look at Sky After Dark; most of those people have kids. They’d rather the world burned than give an inch of ground to what they call Greenies.
Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.
Imagine what our media could be like – the good it could be doing – if only Murdoch wasn’t so indulgent of his fossil fueled hobbies (as emphasised by his ‘Bored’ ties to Genie Oil & Gas) and so devoted to using his toys to sell the fossil fuel message, to the expense of all else?
“Remember when nothing was going to be the same again”.
Oh so slowly, nation and the world has begun to address and accept climate threat. Alongside the parallel acknowledgment that world power disruptions, an inevitability.
Yet to be addressed. That Australian laziness omits the more immediate political threat posed by lack of national leadership. The incremental erosion of national democracy? Calibre of elected representatives, accountability and transparency, an essential trio. All three are absent. And so therefore, is leadership. Without which neither climate, the challenge of world disruption and, or, national governance can be effectively addressed. Who is responsible? We the Electorate!
The solution is not weaving the impending doom of global warming into every piece, but calling out the evils of capitalism. As long as news is run by corporate interests, the only interests will always be profit. And our planet won’t survive if we’re only after profit. The news business is broken, but it’s the business of capital that needs to be junked.
Mandating immediate disclosure and capping or better still, abolishing donations to political parties is needed to start unwinding the ‘busyness’ ties that bind the state.