Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, in Australia right-wing politicians "fiddle" as the country burns

Nero “fiddled” while Rome burned. Donald Trump did the same (metaphorically) as wildfires raged in California, and now in Australia conservative leaders are doing so as catastrophic wildfires grip practically the entire country. Every corner of the country where there is something capable of burning seems to be burning, or in imminent danger of doing so. Back in November the fires were scattered in isolated areas; the interior of Australia has been mostly untouched, although mainly for the reason that it is mainly desert with seemingly little to burn. But today nearly every part of the country has been affected, particularly the eastern seaboard areas, no thanks to the initial lethargic responsive of the right-wing national leadership which has only belatedly responded by enlisting the military in firefighting and population evacuation duties.

This fire season, Australia is enduring record high temperatures continent wide, easily surpassing 100 degrees everywhere. A possible reason for this? Clive Irving of The Daily Beast writes that even among left-wing politicians in Australia, there is little incentive to reduce the country’s carbon footprint, generated mainly by coal-fired energy plants. Irving notes that “At the same time, Australia is actually planning increases in fossil fuel production that would mean that by 2030 Australia, with 0.3 percent of the global population, will be responsible for 13 percent of the globally generated greenhouse gases.”

At the head of the “class” in climate change and human responsibility denial is conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who ran on a platform that included cutting environmental taxes. Morrison, who until the situation got completely out-of-control refused to employ national government resources to fight the wildfires while taking a vacation in Hawaii, has had some voters belatedly wondering why they voted his party back into power last year even though most polling had suggested it would lose.  Nick Cohen of The Guardian opines that although the world is full of leaders who are “torturers” and “mass murderers,” few are more “pathetic” than Morrison, and at this time of crisis some voters are finally realizing this:

“’By not recognizing climate change as a serious threat you fail to prepare overworked, underappreciated first responders for larger, more frequent bushfires that devastate communities,’ said one previously solid Morrison voter, after he had learned the truth about conservatism as his family waited to be evacuated from a New South Wales beach.” While the first reporting on the wildfires seemed more focused on endangered Koala Bears, now that human  habitat seems to be “endangered,” people are waking up to Morrison’s unconcerned “if it burns it burns” response, only unlike Trump’s response to California wildfires in the very scale of the disaster. 

Cohen goes on to say that climate change denial against all common sense remains a “winner” among right-wing politicians and their supporters: “Despite its failure, perhaps because of its failures, the do-nothing Australian right remains admired across the conservative world. The 2019 election was meant to be a climate change election about the killing of the Great Barrier Reef, the extreme drought and average summer temperatures across the continent hitting 40C. Yet Morrison and his campaign team managed to turn it into an election about the Australian Labor party’s tax plans.”

Just days ago, former conservative prime minister Tony Abbott proclaimed that “While we still seem to be in the grip of a climate cult, the climate cult is going to produce policy outcomes that will cause people to wake up to themselves.” If Australia is in the “grip” of a “climate cult,” one must question what “cult” he is referring to. Abbott sought to fan the flames of voter paranoia by making the false claim that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would cause blackouts and higher energy bills; those like Morrison and Abbott and all the rest who buy into their alternate fact universe clearly base their judgments on the fact that they are not “personally” affected by climate change, meaning they live in well air-conditioned homes far from the fires with a swimming pool in the backyard. Like Alfred E. Neuman, they say “What, me worry?” while millions do not have the “luxury” of living in a world of illusion. 

While not all in government are in the grip of ignorance, as one government minister likened the impact of the wildfires as that of “an atomic bomb,” but many politicians insisted that it was “business as usual” in the country. The Daily Beast’s Irving noted that the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, “was facing calls to call off one of the city’s most famous events, the New Year’s Eve firework display launched from Sydney Harbour Bridge. Bush fires were ringing the city to the west, casting a pall in the sky, but she refused: The display would ‘give hope to people at a terrible time.’” 

And Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned. As  Richard Flanagan of The Guardian noted, "The prime minister must accept that public men are judged by public acts. Real empathy would mean speaking honestly to our nation about what the climate catastrophe means for our economy, our environment, our society, and each of us and for each of us personally." That is a truth that other world leaders like Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro seem incapable of learning.