LEFTISTS have turned to alchemy to try to transform the Covid-19 pandemic into their fabled climate emergency.

Former ABC journalist Quentin Dempster tweeted on Thursday: “Australia’s National Cabinet should stay on to coordinate decarbonising of energy/transport/manufacture to urgently mitigate climate change.”

Well no, Quentin. If I wanted Daniel Andrews to run my life I would move to Victoria, lock myself in my home and vote for him.

The National Cabinet, formed by the PM to help steer Australia through the pandemic by determining such things as whether or not we may see our mums on Mother’s Day, should be disbanded the moment the lockdown ends. And the lockdown should end yesterday.

But gloomy environmental doomsdayers – who practice social distancing when they meet, not by shaking hands but by shaking heads – are insisting on the old adage that one should “never let a crisis go to waste”.

They imagine current restrictions on our freedom continuing after Covid-19, but this time in service of their grand Green agenda.

Wednesday’s Sydney Morning Herald editorial was headed: “Scientific approach for COVID-19 must be applied to climate change”.

Of course, our “scientific approach to Covid-19” has been no more scientific than the approach to the great plague of 1666 – social distancing, face masks and an emphasis on personal hygiene – except that we have an app.

But I digress.

The SMH went on to say: “Our response to the coronavirus provides important lessons for how we should respond. It is time the federal government accepted the warnings from scientists about climate change just as seriously and took a similarly proactive approach.”

It’s not difficult to guess the lessons environmental activists might have learned over the past two months.

1. Say that our computer modelling – which is another way to say “our guessing” but it sounds scientific when you use the word “computer” – indicates we are on the verge of the apocalypse. And don’t just say it; have someone sign it for the deaf, like in an actual emergency.

2. Insist that millions upon zillions of people will die. And don’t be afraid of using outrageous numbers. The more unlikely the number, the more enthusiastic the media will be to report it and the more inclined people will be to believe it.

3. No more of these “we have three years to act” warnings that environmentalists have been using for the past decade. The threat must be immediate. “A gazillion people will die every day starting next Tuesday if we don’t act now,” is much better.

4. Hold up a graph and use a catchy, memorable phrase to tell people what they must do. “Flatten the Curve” has already been used so another slogan would need to be thought up, but this should easy enough since the public love to rally around pithy slogans that are quite meaningless  – Free Tibet; Love is Love; Hugs Not Drugs. A Fair Go for All. Something along those lines.

5. Tell people we must “flatten the curve”, or whatever, by locking ourselves in our homes until enough solar panels have been built or until a reduction in global temperatures has been achieved – whichever comes last.

6. Keep people in lockdown by constantly moving the green goal posts. “We started with 0.5-degree average reductions, but now computer models say death and destruction unless we double that. So no-one is going back to work anytime soon. And no, you can’t play golf.”

The past two months have taught us that people will nod in agreement before calling the police to report a neighbour who shows any sign of dissent.

7. Churches can remain closed, as they were during the pandemic, to prevent pastors speaking faith to people’s fears.

8. Declare people not working with the wind or the sun (peace be upon Gaia) to be “non-environmental workers” who must lose their livelihoods. A nice touch would be to have them stand on their front lawns and clap appreciation for environmentalists at 8pm every Thursday.

9. Require people to stay home and watch Netflix (YouTube will be blocked so that no-one can view Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans) until the climate emergency is over and the earth is healed which will be whenever Greens Leader Adam Bandt says so. And all of this can be done without ever going through the hassle of giving annoying people, by which we mean the public, a vote.

10. Anyone who complains should be accused of literally hating the planet and of wanting people to die. “How dare you question the climate lockdowns?” they should be told. “Your Facebook posts are actually polluting the Earth.”

French philosopher Bruno Latour, quoted in The Guardian last month, said: “We have learned that it is possible in a matter of weeks to slow the economy, which until now had been considered inconceivable.

“The incredible discovery is that there was in fact in the world economic system, hidden from all eyes, a bright red alarm signal, next to a large steel lever that each head of state could pull at once to stop ‘the progress train’ with a shrill screech of the brakes.”

As the threat of Covid-19 recedes and Governments look to ease restrictions, watch as the environmentalists try to wrestle control of the lever for their beloved climate emergency.