There’s a scene in Fight for Planet A that is both absurd and thrilling. The host, Craig Reucassel, has tracked down the prime minister, Scott Morrison, at an event at a Sydney beach. A pile of black balloons representing Australia’s carbon emissions have been attached to the back of his shirt and as he runs down the beach chasing Morrison, one really does wonder if he’ll just lift off and float away. The prime minister’s minders stop Reucassel before he can tackle the prime minister who, in bare feet and boardshorts, is walking away as quick as you can in soft sand. But the metaphor is obvious: Morrison does not want to engage with Australia’s outsized emissions problem. Over three episodes, the team that made the ABC’s highly successful War on Waste delve into the more abstract but urgent issue of carbon emissions, and with it a vital question: how do you convince Australians that something they cannot see represents their greatest existential threat? Fight for Planet A uses balloons to give Australia’s emissions a visual representation, and right from the first episode, we’re left in no doubt that there are too many of them. But what to do […]
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