Now is the time to read the smoke signals of 2019. Their message of doom is clear

Extract from The Guardian

Opinion

Essential poll

Peter Lewis

When – and if – the haze that shrouds Sydney clears it will be on progressives to regroup and do better in 2020

@PeterLewisEMC

Tue 10 Dec 2019 14.59 AEDT Last modified on Tue 10 Dec 2019 22.47 AEDT

  Smoke haze hangs over Sydney as fire danger risk heightens – video

As we draw the line under 2019, fires burn out of control along the east coast of Australia fuelling an end-of-days haze that our leaders choose to shrug off.
The smoke that obliterates the harbour city’s beauty and stings the back of our throats is an obvious metaphor for the year. The question is: what is its meaning?

Maybe it’s as literal as the harbinger of climate inaction, a final warning that if politicians choose to ignore science then science will inevitably prevail; that if the leaders of fire services entreaties’ to prepare for the worst fall on deaf ears it will be no surprise when things get out of hand.
As the blood moon glows maybe our God-fearing leader will consult the prophecy from the Book of Joel that “the sun will turn into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” and conclude this is not the work of the woke but those who are asleep at the wheel.
Maybe it’s a caution to both this leader – who proudly fondles coal and boasts of meeting unmet targets in a canter, who leads a Coalition that has wilfully destroyed a climate consensus and reaped its political dividend – and to his vanquished opponents grappling with whether to stay on the right side of history or have a bet each way.
Or maybe the metaphor is more prosaic, that the haze is a tribute to the PM’s mastery at obscuring reality and harnessing disengagement in the pursuit and ultimate attainment of power.

"The planet is in strife and we know it. Except we are still doing OK so there’s no need to do anything"

We would start with the way he confected a budget surplus before it had been achieved, conjured a $387bn tax hike out of thin air, and turned a disunited rabble into the safe alternative to death taxes and a war on the weekend and the Bill we couldn’t afford.
We would stretch the analogy to describe the way he has invited the public to think of themselves as noble and quiet Australians who are happy to stand back as unions and charities and environmentalists and even lawyers have their rights to promote their public discourse whittled away.
And the haze would obscure the fact that what is happening here is happening around the globe, as privately owned social platforms usurp the traditional safeguards of democracy, spreading lies and anger that create the climate for authoritarian populists.
But looking at the final Essential Report of the year, I think the metaphor speaks to something even more profound.

When it comes to our personal life, things have muddled along, OK or average for most Australians – the family, work, even finance – the majority are not complaining too much.
This accords with my caution in the final week before the election when, despite all polls (mine included) predicting a narrow Labor win, there was a general mood of happiness across an electorate living in one of the most affluent nations in the wealthiest moment in human history.
Of course there is nothing wrong with personal happiness – indeed it is something we should all aspire to – but what strikes me with this table is a growing disconnect between our personal world and the one that sustains it.
You can see it in the ways the satisfaction with the year dips when we start talking about institutions, such as unions, the government and more abstract concepts like politics and the economy. While we are doing all right, we don’t extend that optimism to the things that bind us as a society.
And as we zoom out the picture gets even more bleak. The planet is in strife and we know it. Except we are still doing OK so there’s no need to do anything now.

My “smoke as 2019” metaphor then? The most striking thing about the weeks of fire has been the way we Sydneysiders have come to ignore it and carry on regardless, inhabitants of a wealthy international city, kidding ourselves we are immune to broader debates, that the things that go on in Canberra are, as Scott Morrison would have us accept, just part of some bubble of make believe.
But when it’s unsafe for kids to play outside, or old folk to shop, or planes to take off, then it all becomes real. The smoke that makes it impossible to see across our harbour reminds us there are consequences to the decisions we make at elections and the decisions our elected representative subsequently make on our behalf.
When unions are weakened, wages flatline and the economy stalls; when refugees are denied medical support, people die and we lose our moral compass; when coal burns, climates change, the Earth becomes more fragile, homes burn down and people die.
2019 was such a challenging year for progressives because we failed, and now we must deal with the consequences of those failures. When – if – the smoke finally clears it’s on us to regroup and meet our obligations to do better in 2020 as citizens and forebears of generations to come.

• Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential