{"id":383271,"date":"2025-06-14T12:03:53","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T10:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=383271"},"modified":"2025-06-14T12:03:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T10:03:55","slug":"guardian-choose-your-news-media-is-contributing-to-climate-inaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=383271","title":{"rendered":"Guardian: \u201cChoose your news\u201d Media is Contributing to Climate Inaction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by\u00a0<\/strong> Eric Worrall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026 If there\u2019s no common framework, there can be no consensus commitments. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Parts of Australia are suffering another devastating drought, but you wouldn\u2019t know it in the cities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Badham<\/a>
Wed 11 Jun 2025 17.09 AEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not so much that rural and metro communities hold different opinions about climate change but rather they are holding completely different conversations

\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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There\u2019s been a record-breaking drought that\u2019s been afflicting the states of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and parts of New South Wales for over a year, but depending where you live \u2013 and how you get your news \u2013 you may not know much about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This represents a problem Australia desperately needs to confront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Australian farmers have adapted their agricultural methods and listened to science to prepare for unpredictable conditions, but no one was prepared for this. Now, 18 months after farmers began trucking water and hand-feeding their animals<\/strong>, stockpiled feed is running out. Shipping in more pressures the farmer to front the capital for its purchase \u2013 a burden that\u2019s pushed many to sell off animals<\/a> and sell off land. The bush telegraph in rural communities like mine has been relaying stories of abattoirs so full with the unsustainable stock that some farmers are left with animals that will simply \u2013 pointlessly \u2013 have to die.

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to environmental policy, gaining \u201csocial licence\u201d is an omnidirectional struggle \u2013 not because rural communities are climate deniers or that climate activists are self-appointed moralisers or even that governments steamroll communities into policy decisions. An overwhelming majority of Australians believe in climate change<\/a>, but evidence suggests communities are no longer holding different opinions so much as they are holding completely different conversations<\/strong>, and I suspect the pick-and-mix, choose-your-news nature of modern media<\/a> may be contributing to a terrifying problem at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s no common framework, there can be no consensus commitments.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where and how that honest community conversation takes place is now the challenge.<\/strong> It demands a cultural humility the internet is unlikely to encourage. Overcoming the silos between rural experience, urban attention and the policy bunkers of government is hard, but it has to happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We once valued the ABC as the instrument for this kind of national discussion<\/strong>, but as the broadcaster sheds shared forums like The Drum and Q+A, we\u2019re staring down the reality of environmental disaster understood as niche programming.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Read more:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/jun\/11\/parts-of-australia-are-suffering-another-devastating-drought-but-you-wouldnt-know-it-in-the-cities<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Clearly the real problem is a lack of water where it is needed, not climate change.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think about what is happening on the ground \u2013 farmers in Victoria, South Australia and parts of New South Wales are being forced to truck water in and hand feed what is left of their cattle herds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it isn\u2019t dry all over Australia \u2013 in Queensland, a thousand miles North of Victoria, much of the state was inundated by dozens of inches of water which fell over four weeks from the end of January to the end of February this year. In my home in South East Queensland, it was raining on and off since the floods right up to a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t just this year \u2013 New South Wales also endured major floods in 2023 (see the picture at the top of the page).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do farmers need trucks to move that water from reservoirs in the North to their parched southern pastures?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because government after government squandered billions of dollars of tax money on renewables, and never invested sufficient resources in large capacity long distance water pipelines. Government water budgets are in the 10s and hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a>, not the 10s of billions of dollars which could have made a real difference. There are not enough large pipelines, in many cases no large water pipelines, which can transport the water from where it falls to where it is needed. And there are not enough dams and reservoirs to capture the water which falls, even if there was sufficient pipeline capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a fraction of the money which has been wasted on wind turbines and solar projects, we could have had a large capacity pipeline running from Queensland to Victoria.\u00a0Science Direct estimates the Gulf of America oil and gas pipeline network cost around $3 million per mile to construct.<\/a>\u00a0A 1200-mile water pipeline of that capacity, using Science Direct figures for oil and gas pipelines, would have cost US $3.6 billion, which is a lot of money until you compare it to the 10s of billions of dollars which have been wasted on renewables and renewable electricity infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Claim: The Energy Transition will only cost $3-12 Trillion per Year<\/a><\/blockquote>