What Australia’s Wildfires Can — and Can’t — Teach a Smoky US
National disasters can sway voters. But the shift is often only slight.
Choked up.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/BloombergIf you were looking for a silver lining in the cloud of smoke that’s descended on New York this week as wildfires raged through Canada’s forests, consider the effect a similar natural disaster in 2019 and 2020 had on the politics of climate on the opposite side of the world.
Australia has long had a reputation as a climate laggard. A country that vies with Indonesia and Qatar as the biggest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas, its leaders have spent decades blocking environmental action. Former Prime Minister John Howard refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. His successor Tony Abbott once dismissed the science of climate change as “absolute crap.” Scott Morrison, the incumbent at the time of the 2019 fires, brandished a lump of coal on the floor of parliament to taunt the Labor opposition.