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November 17, 2006
Some of the commentary in the op-ed columns of the corporate media in Australia is bad, very bad. It is often far worse than what you would find on the best political blogs. The corporate media understand themselves to be promoting an informed debate. The Australian, for instance, says that this is what it does through the op-eds from people such as Bjorn Lomborg and Bob Carter. "Informed debate' gives us the criteria to to evaluate the op.-eds.
One example of the junk commentary is the recent op-ed entitled 'A bigger storm is brewing' by John Stone, an ex-Secretary of the Treasury in today's Australian newspaper. The op-ed is on 'Australia's Muslim problem and the climate change non-problem'. This is what Stone says on the latter issue to defend his claim that climate change is a 'non-problem' for Australia:
...discussion of climate change has degenerated from mild inanity into quasi-religious hysteria, with assorted opinion-formers demanding that we "get serious" in undermining Australia's main energy-producing and energy-using industries.
The phrase 'quasi-religious hysteria' is written a couple of weeks after the Stern Report mind you. Stone goes on to say:
In short, we should remain officially complacent about the most serious threat to our future, namely the fundamental incompatibility of Islam with Western society, while adopting anti-economic growth policies to address a problem that exists chiefly in the fevered minds of its [sic] UN and Green proponents. Corporate rent seekers also are angling for governmental subsidies for their economically hopeless wind farms, solar power toys and carbon sequestration follies. The kindest explanation for these people's views is that they are (as I think) merely another bunch of would-be corporate welfare dependants, much like the manufacturers before the Hawke government (chiefly) got rid of their protective tariff rackets.
Dwell on that for a moment and let it sink in: climate change and global warming is not real---as a problem it exists in the fevered minds of the UN and Green proponents. It's an illusion. There is no need for technical fixes because there is nothing to fix.
This nonsense is the response by an ex-Secretary of the Australian Treasury to an economic report produced by the British Treasury that talks about climate change in terms of market failure and externalities.
What is the significant about this political moment is that the Australian prints the junk, even though the editors cannot expect us to take Stone's rant seriously. We can treat it a paid piece on behalf of the fossil fuel lobby, or we can take it seriously as the violent expression of the political unconscious of the irrational Right. Or both.
Stone's pose as a rational neo-liberal is deceitful as he fails to mention all the subsidies handed out to the big corporations in the fossil fuel lobby by the state.
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Is it just me, or have the pop media representatives of rational neo-libs become increasingly psychotic lately?
Is it possible that the population behind populism is suddenly misbehaving?
Nah. It's just me.