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12 May 2021
The single most definitive driving force behind Scott Morrison’s climate policy has been avoiding talking about climate policy.
For the majority of the time, it isn’t too hard to achieve. Media and political discourse is mostly reactive and if neither major party wants to talk about climate all they need to do is simply ensure they don’t talk about it. The rest follows neatly.
Sometimes, external global forces make that impossible. In September 2019, a series of global climate strikes drew traction in Australia, and marches filled the streets. Only months after that, the Earth’s climate-intensified atmosphere was the primary driving force behind some of the country’s most catastrophic bushfires. One full year worth of pandemic gave a reprieve, but this year, a drumbeat of climate summits is increasing global scrutiny on the government’s terrible record on emissions, the most recent being a summit held in the US in which Morrison struggled through, grimacing