Show caption Centrists may deplore movements like Extinction Rebellion, but it’s activism that gets things done. Photograph: Olivia Vanni/AP Opinion Centrism is a dead weight in Australian politics – and it's dragging us all down Greg Jericho Those wanting to appear reasonable and balanced are actually condemning us to inaction on the climate crisis @GrogsGamut Sat 23 Nov 2019 19.00 GMT Share on Facebook

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There is an invidious strain of centrism in Australian media and politics that is one of the most powerful forces against effective action on climate change.

It is a strain that has become more virulent in response to protests by Extinction Rebellion and the raised voices of those who care not to genuflect to the systems that have led us to the current crisis.

It is a strain that conservatives use to their advantage.

Two weeks ago, as New South Wales and parts of Queensland burned, the prime minister was at pains to argue that now was not the time to talk about climate change.

And the centrists agreed.

This week Scott Morrison was ready to talk about climate change and he had the script all prepared.

Morrison told the ABC’s Sabra Lane that “the suggestion that any way, shape or form with Australia accountable for 1.3% of the world’s emissions, that the individual actions of Australia are impacting directly on specific fire events, whether it’s here or anywhere else in the world, that doesn’t bear up to credible scientific evidence either”.

It’s a line straight out of the climate-change denial playbook.

No one is suggesting if we had a price on carbon there would be fewer bushfires, or it alone would significantly reduce global temperatures, but that does not mean Australia cannot make a difference.

Only on climate change do you ever hear conservatives argue we are powerless. Our economy is only around 1.5% of the world’s total GDP and yet we have no qualms in going to the G20 every year and pushing our agenda.

But on climate change? Sorry, we are impotent.

Except we’re not.

We are the 15th biggest emitter in the world, the biggest on a per capita basis among advanced economies. We have massive power, because we are wealthy enough to show what can be done. If we do nothing, it becomes a strong reason for anyone who emits less than us either in total or per capita to do the same.

And the problem is we are using what power we have to obstruct action on climate change.

Morrison argued that “if anything, Australia is an overachiever on our commitments, on global commitments, and for 2030, we will meet those as well with the mechanisms that we’ve put in place and we’ll ensure we do achieve that”.

What utter tosh.

Our Kyoto commitment is based on the dodgy counting of land use; and our commitment to Paris targets doubles down on that dodginess by using carry-over credits from the Kyoto target – something nations such as the UK are now fighting hard to have removed.

Our target is also well below what scientists say is needed to keep temperature rises below 1.5C.

Thirteen months ago the UN issued a report that concluded we have 12 years to do something to limit climate change, after which it will be too late to keep the rise in temperatures below 1.5C.

The science has not changed in that time; all that has is we now have only 11 years.

But this week it was reported that fossil fuel production by 2030 is set to be double that which is needed to keep temperature rises below 1.5C.

We are failing, and Australia’s own policy is ensuring that failure will continue.

But heck, pointing that out will seem biased, and so the centrist looks for a chance to appear balanced.

It is why they have grabbed onto the disruption of Extinction Rebellion and loud claims by the Greens – because the centrist loves nothing more than being able to tell both sides to calm down.

A clear example of this came this week from former ALP cabinet minister Craig Emerson, who wrote an opinion piece in the AFR denouncing tribalism that he argues is killing civil discourse.

In it he suggested that “national socialism is resurgent. But so is international green socialism – a variant of white supremacism”.

Yes, nothing like suggesting sections of the environmental movement are racists to get that civil discourse going.

Emerson suggested this white supremacism occurred when “well-off greens demand the races of Asia and Africa forgo economic development using fossil fuels to rectify the sins we white, affluent humans have inflicted on the planet”.

Yes “the races” of Asia and Africa.

Emerson didn’t help his case against tribalism by spending most of the week on Twitter berating Greens supporters and suggesting the ALP was the only major party doing anything good on climate change (if the ALP isn’t the biggest force of tribalism in Australian politics, I clearly need to invest in a new dictionary).

He further weakened his cause by suggesting that people were arguing that poorer nations needed to shift immediately to 100% renewable energy.

No organisation or person of any note is arguing this (although Emerson did find a random person on Twitter).

But worse, this argument that fossil fuels help poorer nations is a retread of the old argument that “coal is good for humanity” that Tony Abbott was pushing in 2014, and which was easily debunked at the time.

It was the same argument that saw coal mining companies argue to leaders of the G20 that coal was needed because the WHO had reported that 4 million people die prematurely from household air pollution because “nearly 3 billion people use primitive stoves to burn wood or biomass to cook and heat homes”.

Except what the WHO actually noted was that “around 3 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass and coal”.

And yet Emerson’s article, which pushed specious arguments about demands for immediate change to renewables, which likened sections of the environmentalist movement to white supremacists, and which echoed lines from mining companies was met with gushing praise from some very senior journalists.

That’s because the column called for calm and reason, and centrists love calm and reason and love even more to praise anyone calling for it.

And so in the space of five years we went from an argument pushed by Tony Abbott and mining companies to encourage more coal mines being shown to be clearly fallacious to it now being praised as part of a reasonable approach.

This is because centrists care more about being seen to be neutral than whether that neutrality is worthy, or worrying if the centre has moved.

It is the force that has journalists and politicians arguing that we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good, and yet spending little time examining how good something has to be before the perfect becomes its enemy.

Not all extremism is equal and no force of social or economic change happened due to people refusing to make waves. It happened because people were prepared to go to prison, be attacked, and seek to disrupt those who would go about their lives ignoring the issue.

Centrists love the final vote that sees change occur – where politicians from both sides sit together and agree; they care only in retrospect for the work, suffering and effort over decades that leads to that change.

And they ignore that throughout those decades, the powerful in the media and politics actively prevented change occurring by spending more time calling for calm and reason than noting reality.

And so long as powerful journalists believe that arguments are worthy purely because they call for a middle ground, then ever will they be a force that prevents effective action on climate change.