Holocaust in Australia—We Are All Guilty

Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia, has been referred to as a blockhead, which is fair, and not because his large head is rather squarish. He was warned by his Department of Home Affairs that Australia faced more frequent and severe heatwaves and bush fires due to global warming. Twice a group of former fire chiefs warned him that an emergency like we are now seeing was on the horizon and requested a meeting with him. He declined, persisting in his denial of anthropogenic climate change. He has persisted also in his rabid support of coal production (Australia is the world's biggest exporter). Now his country is burning up.

Morrison is a fool but let us not forget that Australia is a democracy and his people elected him despite his party’s lamentable record on climate change. He is, in other words, the peoples’ fool. And the Australian people are not alone. The Americans elected a similar fool as their president, and here in Alberta we have not done much better.

Australia isn’t burning just because of Australians’ behaviour. We are all in this together and Australia, like the Amazon and Siberia, burn because of the foolishness of all of us. Everyone everywhere is contributing to the greenhouse gasses that are turning Australia into an oven.

Scott Morrison suggests that as Australia only contributes 1.3 per cent of the world's greenhouse gasses, it should not bear too heavy a load in confronting the crisis. We hear the same weaseling out of responsibility in Canada, especially in Alberta. And this of course is a large part of the problem. When something is everybody’s fault, it becomes nobody’s fault. So much easier to pass the buck than to do the right thing.

It isn't everyone's fault equally of course. Not everyone in Australia voted for Scott Morrison any more than everyone in Alberta voted for Jason Kenney. And the people in some countries are a lot more responsible for emissions than those in other countries. We and the Australians (and the Americans) are in fact more responsible than people anywhere else in the developed world. Among G20 nations we three top the charts in per capita greenhouse gas emissions. By far. Each Canadian is responsible for twice the emissions of a Chinese.

So as Australians suffer, let us not place all the blame on Morrison and the people who elected him. Australia burns and the Arctic melts with lots of blame to go around.