Climate change body chief: 'bad guys' won when the 'good guys' lay down
Bernie Fraser says ‘brazen falsehoods’ and ‘misinformation’ have confused a switched-off and fed-up public
One of the country’s most experienced policy thinkers draws a brutal conclusion about Australia’s climate change debate: the “good guys” have lost the argument because they failed to contest untruths peddled by “bad guys”, including the federal government.
Bernie Fraser, the chairman of the independent climate change authority, which the Abbott government intends to abolish, is a softly spoken former governor of the reserve bank and former secretary of the federal treasury, not known for simplistic assessments of major policy discussions.
But he is clearly frustrated at what he believes has been the wilful misleading of a confused and increasingly fed-up public by politicians and industry groups who, he says, deliberately spread misinformation about climate science and the policies that might reduce Australia’s emissions.
The “bad guys” are winning because their “brazen falsehoods”, “untruths” and “misinformation” are often going unchallenged.
“The good guys are way behind and seem to be not making up ground,” he says, in an interview with Guardian Australia ahead of a speech he will make to the national press club on Thursday. “The public generally are getting bored with it all and switching off. The problem seems to be to be that the bad guys are spreading untruths and exaggerations and assertions without a lot of hard evidence and serious debate, cheered on by the big companies who make similar assertions and repeat those assertions without thorough debate.”