Of course, Thunberg didn't actually say that. In late March she said the world needs to take on both the pandemic and climate change simultaneously.

But the post is one of many examples of an emerging argument from right-wing groups: that the all-encompassing focus on COVID-19 right now proves that the argument for urgent climate action was, in fact, a sham.



And even though emissions have fallen around the world during the pandemic, the fact remains that the world's climate is being drastically altered by our actions, and the devastating effects of climate change aren't going to stop while the coronavirus plays out.



It is of course true that people are paying significantly less attention to climate change now than they were in December and January, before the coronavirus became a global pandemic and when out-of-control bushfires were tearing through large parts of Australia.



Mentions of climate change in the top homepage positions of Australian news websites peaked during the bushfires — which were exacerbated by climate change — and have precipitously dropped since then, according to media monitoring company Streem. Meanwhile, stories about the coronavirus have far outgrown climate change.