Twelve years ago, on this day, March 5, 2011 veteran Australian political commentator Laurie Oakes nailed the climate denialist nutters.
“Wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork. The mad and menacing phone calls to independent MP Tony Windsor are just one indication. There are plenty of others online. The carbon tax and Tony Abbott’s call for a people’s revolt have crazies foaming at the mouth. You see it on the ‘Revolt Against the Carbon Tax’ Facebook page, for example. Like this message from a Gillard-hater about a rally in front of Parliament House being planned for March 23: ‘Just like Egypt we stay there and protest continuously until she and her cronies, Bob Brown Greens etc are ousted! We have got to get rid of this Godless mistress of deceit.”’
Oakes, L. 2011. Loonies latch on to the politics of hate. The Australian, 5 March.
Oakes, 2013: 86
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was an incredibly heated culture war that had been constructed around the question of having a price on carbon emissions. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had had multiple positions on carbon pricing and climate change (the Howard government had gone to the 2007 election with such a policy). Abbott admitted to being a weather vane n the issue
By March 2011 he had seen off Kevin Rudd and had been reportedly willing to sell his ass to become Prime Minister. In February 2011 Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard had announced that there would be an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price for two years. And as oaks puts it, all the wingnuts came out to play…
What I think we can learn from this
That settler colonies don’t deal well with the notion of environmental limits especially if someone who is only a woman is in charge.
That it is partly possible to import culture war techniques from the United States. They won’t work perfectly in other countries, but for a while, they give the appearance of effectiveness.
You also want to think about McCright and Dunlap 2011, anti reflexivity as part of the picture underneath all of this.
What happened next
Well, on the 23rd of March, there was the infamous rally with Abbott being photographed next to placards that talked about “Bob Brown’s Bitch” and “Ditch the Witch ”. The wingnuts kept coming out to play but with less than less efficacy. It’s not just left wing groups that suffer from burnout and emotacycles.
Abbott got the opportunity to show the world what a smart and effective leader he could be from September 2013. “Oops” doesn’t begin to cover it.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.