Abbott has nothing to offer a nation - Monbiot

George Monbiot carves Tony Climate Change Is Crap Abbott up in The Guardian on the 18^th January:

“So far Abbott has commented, as far as I can tell, only on the fires: "Our thoughts are with the people and the communities across the country who are impacted by the bushfires," he says. Quite right too, but it's time his thoughts also extended to the question of why this is happening and how Australian politicians should respond. He says he's currently on standby with his local fire brigade, but as his opposition to effective action on climate change is likely to contribute to even more extreme events in the future, this looks like the most cynical kind of stunt politics

To ask him and others to change their view of the problem could be to demand the impossible. It requires that they confront some of the most powerful interests in Australia: from Rupert Murdoch to Gina Rinehart. It requires that they confront some of the powerful narratives that have shaped Australians' view of themselves, just as we in the United Kingdom must challenge our own founding myths. In Australia's case, climate change clashes with a story of great cultural power: of a land of opportunity, in which progress is limited only by the rate at which natural resources can be extracted; in which this accelerating extraction leads to the inexorable improvement of the lives of its people. What is happening in Australia today looks like anything but improvement.

This, I think, is too much for Abbott to take on: as a result he has nothing to offer a nation for which this terrible weather is a warning of much worse to come. Australia's new weather demands a new politics; a politics capable of responding to an existential threat.”