Journalists sabotaging public debate

Paul Kelly and Greg Sheridan shouting “Fire” in the crowded cinema of the climate and energy debate

Almost exactly 100 years ago in France, Julian Benda wrote The Treason of the Intellectuals to challenge intellectuals and journalists to cease and desist from stoking the violent political passions that were dividing the Republic.

At present commentators in the quality press have the opportunity to be role models in critical thinking about difficult and divisive issues à la Benda.

Responsible public intellectuals will engage with the signature issues of the time to establish one or more areas of competence where they have more or less well-informed opinions. They can provide invaluable guidance to advance informed public debate on those matters because they have access to the best brains in the country to help them to explain and clarify scientific and technical matters.

If they do their homework in their areas of competence they can be taken seriously, with the usual reservations about experts. On other topics they have no more credibility than their readers because we can only recycle what we regard as reliable opinions offered by other people.

Paul Kelly is a leading public intellectual on the basis the circulation of The Australian, his books, and the years that he has spent reading, observing and writing about Australian politics. That is his area of competence, as he demonstrated in his appraisal of the prospects for nuclear power.

In The Australian 10/11/2021 he described the idea of conservatives winning an election with a promise of nuclear power as “a grand fantasy” because it will take years to achieve bipartisan support at the Federal level and state levels. “It would never be established amid an energy policy war between the coalition and labour.”

Contrast that considered opinion with his position on climate change and net zero. He apparently accepts that the science is settled in favour of warming alarmism despite the empirical evidence that the warming in modern times has been beneficial and we are still short of the temperature during the Roman warm period which was even more favourable for life on earth.

Similarly, the post industrial increase in the level of CO2 has been literally life-saving because the level of CO2 during the Little Ice Age was barely enough to keep the plants alive. Still, Kelly exhorts us to make all efforts to achieve net zero even if we can’t do it by 2050. In The Australian, 6/2/2021 he applauded Morrison’s commitment to net zero and the Paris accord, against “blind conservative resistance.”

Likewise, Greg Sheridan has an area of competence in foreign affairs and defence, while he deplores the misguided folk who refuse to dance to the tune of the climate alarmists and the net zero enthusiasts.

In my opinion, when public intellectuals aggressively assert their views on important and controversial matters that are outside their areas of competency, they should warn the readers that they have wandered out of their lane. If they have not checked the facts and consulted well-qualified experts on both sides of the case they may unwittingly mislead their readers.

Climate and energy became signature issues after warming alarmism emerge in the US in the 1980s and there has been plenty of time for senior journalists to learn enough to form realistic views on climate and energy policies.

Some have done this, Terry McCrann, Andrew Bolt, Graham Lloyd, Piers Ackerman and Chris Mitchell for example. Some politicians have done the same, notably Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly, Matt Canavan, Alex Antic, Gerard Rennick and Ralph Babet. In the street there are many others, like the Five Dock Climate Realists in Sydney, who have done the hard yards to achieve robust positions without holding formal qualifications in climate science.

Too many commentators and editors have metaphorically shouted “Fire” in the crowded theatre of the climate and energy debate and enabled the unsettled science of climate alarmism to capture the hearts and minds of the people and the politicians. That process was accelerated by publicly funded activists in the ABC, the schools and the universities, especially the university-funded site The Conversation where alternative views are excluded by editorial fiat.

That unsettled science drove the net zero crusade around the world that has wasted trillions of dollars to get more expensive and less reliable power with massive collateral damage to forests and farmlands.