The pond can safely ignore the usual railing at the ABC - anyone wanting to read about the report can head off to the venerable Amanda Meade at the Graudian here ... though all they'll find is the usual storm in a teacup.
With the venerable Meade's Weekly Beast not yet out, and the last one about the Bolter bolting, that leaves the pond time to study the hurt pride of the reptiles at being snubbed, when really has there ever been a country that's done more for the climate and the planet than dinkum, pure, clean Oz coal and its plucky devotee, one SloMo?
Black with the wreck of a coal that broke; —
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the coalition blind with coal dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And the seas are rising, and honour a name,
But the voice of a SloMo rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the climate game! '
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her dinkum sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a coal pitch tar torch in flame,
And falling fling to the coal lover behind—
'Play up! play up! and play the climate game!
Will the pond ever tire of pointing out to the reptiles and to SloMo himself why there might be something of an image problem? Does the pond ever get weary at the constant repetition?
Of course not. Never!
Such fond memories. Oh Barners, where is he now? And the poodle? Such a pleasure. And look, there's Malware himself in the thick of it, and going along with the game ... because that was Malware then, a sell-out bullshit artist of the sort that would wreck the NBN in the name of the onion muncher and think nothing of it.
Oh the Gatling might have jammed occasionally, but the pond has stood proudly with the reptiles, even as they abandoned coal and turned to gas, and began to realise that they should at least pretend they cared, pretended they gave a fig and a flying fuck ...
And so to the lizard Oz editorialist, trying to pretend, after years of climate science denialism, that it truly cares about the collective canoe ...
It was at this point that the pond broke, and decided it should draw attention to a piece by Christopher Warren some days ago in Crikey here, for those who can get past the paywall ...
Australia’s political media is slowly — too slowly — waking up to the denialist schtick of post-Abbott conservatism. Conservatives aren’t arguing the science anymore. They’re fighting the transition.
How much ground will the conservatives concede? What space will the denialist ultras on the backbench (and in News Corp) give up? And will the media pick up the shift and hold the government to account?
There was a hint of what’s to come in a quiet leak to The Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend. The government was going to stop digging in on the hill of Kyoto carryover credits.
It was classic Morrison media management: sliding out the hard truth for his backbench with an assurance that it doesn’t make any difference anyway, in a drop about a speech he won’t make until next weekend.
This came after British PM Boris Johnson let the world know in late October he’d told Morrison it was time for bold action on climate change (Australia’s official account was silent). It also followed Morrison’s meeting with new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who had recently committed Japan to net zero emissions by 2050.
Toss in China’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2060 and New Zealand’s declaration of a climate emergency, and Australia’s stance looks increasingly compromised. And all that’s before President-elect Joe Biden rejoins the Paris accord with a commitment to 2050 net zero emissions and a promise “to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets”.
Concede the science. Fight the transition. That was the heart of Morrison’s 2019 election strategy. And Australia’s media happily went along with it.
Remember Labor’s modest nudge on electric vehicles that would “end the weekend”, amplified across the News Corp tabloids? Or the serious journalists at the ABC who couldn’t resist the bait of guessing the impact of Labor’s policies on years-long GDP forecasts?
It’s a strategy underpinned by a confidence that Australia will be given a free pass by the world: we’re not important enough to make a difference, not worth the fight, yet too important not to accommodate. That’s worked for the Liberals and Nationals since the Kyoto conference in 1998. But it’s a strategy that depends on not getting too far away from the global pack.
Morrison knows the case fatality rate of Australian prime ministers actually trying to do anything about climate change action. He’s long pandered to the denialist base. His 2017 coal miner cosplay as treasurer was a heavy wink to the backbench that he was one of them.
Now, wedged by the global shift, he needs to adjust. His core problem is that he’s trying to send three different messages to three different audiences.
To the backbench, the fossil fuel industry and the Sky “after dark” audience, he’s trying to say: no retreat, we’re just, umm, straightening our defensive trenches to resist the transition.
To the media, he’s trying to say: we’re, er, managing the transition without cost. Unlike Labor.
And to the global community, he’s saying: we’ll always have Paris… all the while winking over the world’s shoulders at the US Republicans and local mining industry.
It’s a remake of the Howard government’s “no regrets” policy (as Marion Wilkinson’s recent book The Carbon Club reminds us). Howard’s plan depended on Bush in the White House. Morrison has relied on Trump.
But pressures are mounting. And, as those pressures drive the grinding of global policy, Morrison risks getting his fingers caught in the gears.
But, but, his fingers have long been caught in the coal, and in later times, they've been caught in the gas, and now the reptiles, caught in their denialism, do their best to deny their denialism ...
Concede the science, fight the transition, and mouth platitudes of the "Australia is not so far out of substantive global action" kind, a special form of News Corp bullshit and denialism.
And yet the pond remains haunted to this day by the sheer glee on Barners' face ... and the stance of the man who prompted that glee, while speaking in forked tongues ...
And so to the treat of the day, and it was possibly wrong of the pond to hold our hole in the bucket man back, when rightly he should have been at the head of the parade, but the pond learned long ago that a treat delayed is a treat all the more enjoyed ...
Why the wiki on delayed gratification will explain it better than the pond, because let the Henry roam wild and free ...
The great thing about our hole in the bucket man is that all the pond has to do is occasionally murmur 'fuck, that's weird man' and move along ...
The pond recalls feeling the same way when wandering through a museum in Amsterdam looking at ancient period clinical paintings of medical examinations ...
This wasn't one of them ...
But still, that elegantly positioned skeleton allows the pond to say 'fuck that's weird', and move along to a similarly strong sensation when caught in the bowels of our Henry's thinking ...
No doubt there will be some correspondents that will have more to say than the pond, which is to say that comparison of Egypt and England is fucking weird man ... as well as the notion that once again western civilisation triumphed in a way that all those damned furriners couldn't manage.
Elgin marbles anyone? A little pillaging for pleasure, then blame it all on how the plague made imperialism and colonialism a real bonus?
So much conflation and confusion and in the end, bullshit, not least that talk of a calling with profound spiritual dignity.
Easy for a wanker with a keyboard no doubt ... not so easy for someone on a Model T production line, or perhaps being assailed by a robber baron's private army ...
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Yes, there's your profound spiritual dignity, roaming somewhere in those dark Satanic mills ...
Well it wouldn't be a hole in the bucket Henry piece without an epic piece of Billy goat buttism that makes a nonsense of all that came before, so here we go ...
There she blows ... "obviously, none of that should be read as placing medieval England, with its horrors and injustices, on a pedestal."
Equally obviously, the only reason to read our Henry is to marvel, to wonder, and finally to say, that's fucking weird man, fucking weird ...
And having said it, move on to an infallible Pope for the deeply spiritual dose for the day, featuring the pond's favourite rap dancing coal lover ...
Today we have hiphoppy Henry: "But the Black Death was a defining moment that, perhaps for the first time, brought into stark relief the crucial role of secure property rights, strong incentives and unshackled ambition in determining whether economies can overcome even the most devastating crises."
ReplyDeleteWell I dunno about that. As far as I recall, the Black Plague had a considerable effect on the position of various labourers: the working population had become so small that those "secure property" owning types had to actually compete to attract workers for their farms and properties. And they had to 'free the serfs' so that they could legally entice workers away from other propertied landholders.
And since the Black Plague also afflicted many of the 'aristocrats', there was basically a plethora of 'adverse possession' properties available for the taking, and the legal holding after 30 years. I think both of those factors had some effect on the social, legal and economic shape of Europe at the time.
And besides, Holely Henry didn't mention the great Spanish 'inflation' from the hoards of gold, and particularly silver, brought back from the Americas colonies and shared out with Europe via the efforts of Francis Drake and his ilk. A little later than the Plague, it's true, but still a significant impact on economies and workers.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteThe output of all the reptiles has become ever more shrill and disconnected from normal reality. An outcome of them all living in an ever more isolated echo chamber I suppose.
However Henry’s offering today was particularly strange. He evidently realises there is a pandemic going on but as a retired economist he hasn’t got anything pertinent to say so goes back to a bit of schoolboy history and references that old chestnut the Black Death.
Why the comparison between England and Egypt in the Middle Ages? Probably the opportunity for a bit of Islamobashing and the chance to play up the Anglo-Saxon Christian Work Ethic (if such a thing exists).
He wisely doesn’t take the opportunity to ponder on why Medieval France a similarly Xian country as England and much closer in terms of society and climate than Egypt remained stubbornly feudal and rural.
Instead of any “Uniquely Western sacralisation of hard work, thrift and aspiration” wouldn’t it be easier to explain Englands later Industrial Revolution as a result of land made fallow, due to lack of a workforce, being put over to sheep.
Instead of requiring a huge workforce to till the land, plant crops and harvest them, a flock of sheep simply required one shepherd and possibly a dog.
The cash crop of wool was highly profitable for land owners when sold to the weavers in the Low Countries and later would kick start a domestic weaving industry in England. As a result England became a more mercantile society than many of its European neighbours and with increased urbanisation and a highly fortunate geology (plenty of coal) was uniquely placed to be the birthplace of industrialisation.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-impact-of-the-black-death/
DiddyWrote
But, butt, DW; wouldn't a flock of sheep have required a flock of sheep shearers - people and hand powered equipment - once a year in order to supply an annual cash crop of wool ?
DeleteDorothy, thank you for the (implied) invitation ‘No doubt there will be some correspondents that will have more to say than the pond’ - but, life is too short to engage in a line-by-line with the Henry.
ReplyDeleteSetting aside Egypt - if only because the differences with England at the time involved a little more than forms of land tenure - there was, um, let me see - geography and climate, just for starters.
But the Henry happily boils down the events of England’s 14th century to that simple conclusion - it was the Black Death wot dunnit - secure property rights, strong incentives and unshackled ambition - that took its people along the triumphal road.
Just making comparison with England immediately before and after the Death is fraught. Early in that century geography and climate in England gave the economy a right seeing-to. Then the Death, then - well, the strong incentive for survivors was to continue to survive. Land was used under all manner of assumed ‘rights’ - much of it because previous occupiers no longer existed. Entire villages simply ceased to be. Remember the total population is widely reckoned to have been less than 5 million before the Death, and perhaps 2 million after.
Geographic historians note a shift in actual land use from arable cultivation to pasturage prior to the Death, and this change continued through and after the plague. I note DW’s more detailed observation on this - perhaps that has a lesson for Australia post COVID?
But, of course, the happiest myth is that workers, almost universally, were able to claim much better wages. The Henry mentions the rebellion of 1381 - as ‘easily suppressed’ - without mentioning the proposal for a Poll Tax, which was the catalyst for a steady ferment of unrest, leading to that, and other, large gatherings of irate people.
‘Whether the West still understands the lesson’ - what lesson, exactly? Yes, one of the initiatives that worked for England for a while was seizing property in France. Is that what Boris is about this weekend? Another might be the futility of ‘labour laws’. I looked in vain for some sense that what works with a population of 2 million might not be easily scaled to 25 million, or 250 million, and the time period that the Henry covers is about 50 years for ‘recovery’.
Oh, and - not a lot of mention of the church in his, necessarily condensed, account. I guess the good clerics just went on providing solace to the dying and distributing alms from their substantial assets through the period of the Death, and for as long as was necessary afterwards.
Well it seems that the lesson about 'poll taxes' was quite forgotten - in the time of Maggie Thatcher, anyway.
DeleteBut even though the 1381 rebellion - the Peasant's Revolt, so-called - was perhaps 'easily suppressed', it was also the beginning of the end of that form of humans as property known as serfdom. In England anyway, since Betty I freed the last of them in 1574, but in mainland Europe serfdom apparently lasted until 1861.
As to the clerics at the time, it really is wondrous just exactly what God is not held accountable for.
Even better than Holely Henry's contribution to the Australian, Cory Bernardi joins SNAD (Sky News After Dark). Now that'll bring in a million paying subscribers, surely.
ReplyDelete