First Extinction Rebellion blocks traffic claiming that the world will end unless Australia shuts down all industry immediately, then the Greens and the media claim a link between climate change and the bushfires now sweeping through New South Wales and Queensland.

Neither claim has any real basis in science but while only the usual media suspects and the Greens took Extinction Rebellion seriously, the climate change-bushfire claim seems to have fooled a wider range of players, including the previously neutral Australian Financial Review.

Although any natural disaster which involves deaths is to be deplored, it is difficult to see how the current...