Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia to Ease Climate Change Denial

“Really, they are moving from an F to a D student here,” he said. “The real risk is News Corp shifting from denying climate change to delaying climate action with nonsolutions and unaccountable long-term targets. Net zero by 2050 is almost useless if it is not enforced, if it has no short-term ambition and if there is no accompanying commitment to stop opening up new coal mines and new gas fields.”

Professor Mann, whose book “The New Climate War” looks closely at what he calls “inactivists” — the polluters, politicians and media outlets that have opposed climate action — said that News Corp may have simply realized that denial in the face of increasingly harsh climate events, especially the horrific 2019-20 bush fires in Australia, was no longer tenable.

“They’ve turned to other tactics — delay, distraction, deflection, division, etc. — in their effort to maintain the fossil fuel status quo,” he said by email. “Focusing on a target of 2050, three decades away, kicks the can so far down the road that it’s largely meaningless. It allows the cynics to appeal to promises of new technology (carbon capture, geoengineering, etc.) decades down the road as a crutch for continuing business-as-usual fossil fuel burning.”

Malcolm Turnbull, a former Australian prime minister who was often attacked by News Corp and was toppled in an intraparty dispute in 2018 over climate policy, also warned that News Corp had a long track record that a few weeks of coverage could not erase.

News Corp’s newfound commitment, he said, should be believed only if the company’s journalists and editors stop beating up on supporters of climate action and stop protecting the conservative members of Parliament who have resisted climate policy.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/06/business/news-corp-climate-change.html