COP26: Why does Scott Stay Rigid On Anti-Climate Policies?

COP26 is the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and this event is hosted in Glasgow, Scotland by the joint efforts of the UK and Italy, between 31 October and 12 November 2021. It is the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is named COP26. The UK preside over the conference.

Day by day, both striking and frustrating news regarding climate change is coming out. Humans are in a struggle for their and their co-residents’ existence because climate change will destroy almost all ecosystems.

When Mr Donald Trump was the President of the US, he didn’t take the climate issues too seriously and dropped the Paris Treaty proclaiming that it will bring a lot of loss for the country. But the truth is that he was ignorant about the coming disaster. If the temperature increases again, many countries will suffer, including the submerging of Maldives in the Oceans. Even China had proclaimed that they will reach net zero emissions by 2060.

But Australia, which is one of the major exporters of Coal, after Indonesia, had decided to exploit their resources till the end, says the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Many of the surveys including the Lowy-commissioned poll and YouGov on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation held in Australia said the people are ready to take needful measures to prevent the hard climate changes that will affect the whole world.

So why Scott stays rigid on anti-climate policies?

Is the fossil fuel companies forcing him to stay on anti-climate policies? In a conference with the World Leaders, reports The Guardian, Scott Morrison told that “The future generations will thank us not for what we have promised, but what we deliver.”

I don’t know what he meant by that. In the case of Climate change, it was said that Australia pressurized UK to drop the climate policies for the future. And Scott Morrison didn’t deny the fact of his pressurizing of UK, reports CNN.

The UK Prime Minister Borris Johnson criticized Scott for his lack of climate policies for the future, which will bring huge relief to the whole world.

The lack of Scott’s concern over climate change is really weird because Australia already suffers from climate change and global warming.

Australian museum’s official blog states that Australia is having a heated time in its history, and suffers a lot due to global warming. An excerpt from the post is given below:

“Australia is experiencing higher temperatures, more extreme droughts, fire seasons, floods, and more extreme weather due to climate change. Rising sea levels add to the intensity of high-sea-level events and threaten housing and infrastructure. The number of days that break heat records has doubled in the past 50 years. Heatwaves are of particular concern: they are occurring more often and are more intense than in the past. In recent decades more people have died in Australia in heat waves than all other natural disasters combined. Some parts of Australia – inland areas particularly, are expected to warm faster than along the coasts.”

From my searches, I realized the current effects that the heated climate destroys many of Australia’s assets of nature such as the whitening of the Great Barrier Reef, and the destruction of unique aquatic ecosystems. The frequent forest fires, and increasing heat during the daytime, are getting worse. These all state that this will demolish the natural environment of Australia, and the further exploitation will make them pay a lot than their estimation.

The Guardian states the impacts of the ecosystem, further, and with more concerns. The article points five major issues such as the temperature getting higher than the point of record, destruction of proper ecosystems for native animals, less water the flows through the rivers, which is getting lesser with the course of time, and the rising of carbon dioxide in the Australian atmosphere, and of the oceans, that rises and acidifies day by day, which becomes the most crucial issue.

In a conversation with a BBC journalist, Scott said: “For Australia, it is not a question of if, or even by when, for net-zero but, importantly, how.”

What is this when, or what is this how, he had said? The major world powers always had accused on how irresponsible Australia is when it comes to the climate crisis.

A UK official had told CNN that, “They’re a developed country, they’ve got a huge amount of capacity, and they’re being devastated by climate change, quite frankly, and we’ve been pretty strict on that. They haven’t come forward with a long-term strategy.”

So what is pulling back Australia, as a developed nation?

My answers for these are, quite simple - A huge amount of profits that Australia will miss in the absence of coal mining. So Scott’s concern is, maybe of money.

Reports on the coal mining profits by Statista provide more clarity. Australia makes around 73.28 billion Australian dollars. That’s alone from coal! So coal is the food of many of the Australians. If coal mining is dropped, there will be a huge reflection of that in Australia’s GDP, and unemployment will occur, for those who rely on the mining sector. So naturally, Scott is not ready for such a big political decision, and maybe he fears his vote count will go down. Already, due to the lack of efficiency in handling some forest fires, and the Covid pandemic, Scott is being criticized a lot, and his popularity had gone down.

According to Reuters,

After a 2019 general election gave the coalition a wafer-thin majority, Morrison’s popularity initially surged during the COVID-19 crisis as measures including closing the international border, social distancing and speedy contact tracing kept Australia’s overall exposure relatively low. The country has recorded just over 31,900 cases and 914 deaths. But delays with the vaccine rollout - just 13% of the country’s adult population of around 20 million are fully vaccinated - have frustrated voters. Morrison’s handling of the pandemic fell nine points in the past three weeks to 52%, according to the Newspoll, far below the 85% rating at the previous peak of the pandemic in April last year. Confidence in the vaccine rollout slumped to 40%.

So probably this will be the major reason for Scott to lag his decision on Climate issues. But Scott fails to understand that his lag decreases his popularity day by day.

Another reason is that Scott may have pressure from the Fossil fuel companies because they will be Scott’s political sponsors. So Scott cannot handle such a case, which will harm them, and him, at the same time.

If the people of Australia want big climate policies that will reduce Global Warming and thereby the Climate Crisis, they should take immediate actions. Or else, the world’s most beautiful Island continent may not exist with its own beauty for a long time.