Images from Foreign Policy, Fairfax Media, BBC, and Owen Jones
By Situation Theatre 20/12/2019
Assuming Aesop was right that “a man is known by the company he keeps”, then old mate Smoko’s climate goals may be a touch on the questionable side.
Four of the world’s leading figures carefully tending to the fragile flame of democracy have shocked the world by joining forces like some kind of arch-villain supergroup to block attempts to at least slow down the end of the world at the recent Madrid climate talks.
Until now it had been thought that Donald Trump of the United States, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Scott Morrison of Australia, and Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia were fully committed to climate action, human rights, and democratic freedoms.
This conventional wisdom has taken a bit of a body blow after these four men departed from their roles as defenders of democracy to instead ramp up the evildoing.
While Prime Minister Scott Morrison long argued that Australia will meet and beat its Paris emissions reductions targets “in a canter”, his efforts to collaborate with Captain Planet’s worst nemeses to accelerate climate breakdown are starting to make Australians think he might be a total fraud after all.
