Tony Abbott

Alarmism, Australia & (Tony) Abbott

In my last column, I wrote about Donald Trump’s 2013 tweet, in which he implied that the term “global warming” wasn’t working for the green left, and that lead to the new lingo:  “climate change.” I noted that the term “global warming” was too alarmist for the moderate greens, which led to the adoption of “climate change” terminology. But neither “global warming” nor “climate change” was working for the radical green left, who needed a clarion call to action for their global movement. Thus, we saw the radical greens looking for something a little more spicy.

Since then, I had the chance to meet former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (PM from 2013-2015). He shared my view about how the terminology has evolved, which is interesting considering that it was in Abbott’s Australia where “climate emergency” declarations originated. Abbott is a supporter of the oil and gas industry in his country, and still an influential conservative voice in the world. He accepted the term “climate change” and was, himself, not a climate change “denier,” as it was obvious to Abbott that climate change is a fact, especially considered over the very long term. 

 But Abbott’s use of the term comes with one very big proviso: even granting that some version of “man-made” climate change may be occurring, he was steadfastly opposed to the climate alarmism of the radical green movement. Abbott especially rejected – and continues to reject – the political agenda that follows the false, cartoonish and apocalyptic conclusions that follow from the fact of climate change. Government climate change policy, according to Abbott, should never include policies that make life less affordable for consumers. In addition, governments must embrace and safeguard the benefits that oil and gas production brings to their respective countries. 

It is conceivable that Abbott and other conservative politicians of the last decade who accepted climate change terminology, but rejected the green political agenda that usually accompanied it, in fact contributed to the green left’s rejection of this moderate terminology. How so? Well, if even the so-called right-wing can comfortably use the term climate change, then the term can hardly act as an effective motivator for the green left’s propaganda purposes. Something more alarmist would be needed for their communications.  

How about a climate “crisis” or “emergency”? 

The first declaration of a “climate emergency” was in the Australian municipality of Darebin, a suburb of Melbourne, on December 5, 2016. It was a victory for the local radical green left over the more moderate, go-slow approach of the Australian green NGOs and their ilk. Next came another Melbourne area council – Yarra – on February 17, 2017, then Vincent on April 4, 2018. The climate emergency declaration strategy was also spreading to the USA, first to Hoboken, New Jersey on November 1, 2017, followed by Montgomery, Alabama on December 5, 2017, Berkeley, California on June 12, 2018, and then Los Angeles on May 1, 2018. Bristol, UK, joined the party on November 13, 2018.  

Climate emergencies were also declared throughout the Province of Quebec in 2018, with climate change emergency debates spreading to council chambers across most cities and towns in English Canada in 2019. The result: a veritable tsunami of climate emergency declarations! 

Did mainstream Canadian political opinion suddenly lurch dramatically leftward in 2019, so far left that middle-class awareness of climate change led, overnight, to a “climate crisis”? Did the milquetoast municipal political class of hundreds of Canadian municipalities suddenly find radical left green religion? Uh, no.   

The green left activists who impressively orchestrated dozens, and then hundreds, of climate emergency declarations across Canada in 2019 soon discovered that the same band-wagonism that prompted lemming-like municipal politicians in this country to declare “climate emergencies” quickly reduced these declarations to a pathetic status of empty virtue-signalling symbolism. 

Following the hundreds of 2018 and 2019 municipal climate emergency declarations, there was virtually no follow-up action – anywhere – by these municipal councils. Why not? No doubt municipal leaders were distracted for quite a while by the Covid-19 outbreak and, after that, a multitude of other pressing issues. But quite a lot of time passed, and still nothing happened. No new policies, no sense of urgency. And so the climate emergency deception became apparent to those paying attention. 

Perhaps it wasn’t a true emergency after all.  

From 2016 to 2019, climate emergency declarations started out as a radical far-left green strategy, then became a very mainstream concept. And when nothing was done about them, these same declarations revealed the climate “crisis” to be merely the old wines of “global warming” and “climate change” in a new bottle. 

In short, there was no climate emergency back in 2019. And there isn’t one today. Sure, as Tony Abbott readily conceded, there is indeed climate change, and always has been. But a climate emergency? Nope. 

Climate Terminology and Rivalries Among the Green Left

Last month, I published my opinion piece “Understanding the “Municipal” Green
Agenda: The Example of Ad Bans.”
The subject matter was the City of Ottawa’s March
2024 decision to pursue the outright banning of advertisements by the oil and gas
industry in the City of Ottawa facilities, such as bus shelters and hockey arenas.

The proposed advertising ban is the, ahem, dramatic “first big step” after Ottawa’s 2019
climate emergency declaration. It seems that the City of Ottawa had its hands full with
the Covid-19 emergency of 2020-23, interrupted by the Trucker Convoy emergency of
the early winter of 2022. Now, a full five years after declaring a climate crisis and a
climate emergency, Ottawa is racing toward… an advertising ban.

Maybe the climate crisis is not such an emergency after all?

How can we make sense of this? When did “climate change” become “climate crisis”
and then “climate emergency”?

Donald Trump’s Twitter history can help us shed some light on this. Trump did not
mince words in his pre-presidential career, frequently trolling the green left and their
somewhat elastic and sloppy use of terminology. Trump took delight in mocking the
green left’s multi-decade inconsistency in their doom-saying over global “cooling” (aka
the coming ice age) and then the global “warming” scare, after which they seemed to
settle on the more neutral, and far less scary “climate change.”

Trump’s Twitter-mocking of the green left on terminology was quite entertaining but it
also pointed to a deeper truth: the struggle within the green left over their strategy and
tactics, and even their more fundamental goals.

In the years before and after Trump’s famous 2013 musing about the left’s apparent
shift from “global warming” to “climate change” there was, within the green left itself, a
raging debate about the goals of their movement. Some of them were impatient and
wanted immediate action which meant pushing a “global cooling” or “global warming” –
or an even more alarmist – narrative. Others favoured a go-slow approach, determined
to steadily inculcate the broad middle of public opinion that there was indeed some sort
of climate problem, while simultaneously avoiding any sense of alarm: in other words, a
less alarmist terminology such as “climate change.”

Trump, it seems, was only half right. While it was true that the terminology was changed
for strategic purposes, it turns out that it still wasn’t working for either faction of the
green left.

Only the moderates and non-alarmists found the “climate change” position appealing.
Softly and gently, they could plod along. But the other faction pined for more radical
action and immediate activism. “Climate change” wouldn’t do and even “global
warming” became too tame for them. It was time for a crisis – a climate crisis! Enter…
climate emergency declarations! A new approach for the green extremists.

Even among the go-fast-hardliner-alarmist crowd, there later emerged rival approaches.
Who should declare the climate emergency? Some thought “big” and were set on
persuading national and regional state and provincial governments to make the climate
emergency declarations. Others pursued a more “think globally, act locally” approach
and took a bottom-up approach, focusing primarily on local activism to push local
municipal councils. In my next piece, I’ll tell you about the local angle, how, why and
where municipalities around the world came to believe that climate change had all of a
sudden become a crisis which necessitated emergency municipal declarations.