Right now, a devastating climate disaster is underway in Australia. While some insist that the situation is part of a phenomenon that is repeated every year, the reality is that the magnitude and gravity of this year’s blazes is unprecedented:At least 27 people have already died, several dozen more are missing, the conflagration has destroyed an area more than twice the size of Belgium: more than sixty billion square meters, six times the size of the Amazon fires in 2019.
More than a thousand homes have been destroyed, hundreds more damaged, thousands of people evacuated, clouds of smoke the size of Europe… and more than a hundred fires are still active. To pretend that something like this is normal is simply proof that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Fires are a regular event in Australia. Some species of eucalyptus, in fact, depend on fires to release their seeds. But this year things are different. the fire season started much earlier, coinciding with record high temperatures and following a prolonged drought: exactly what scientists predicted when they calculated the effects of a climate change that is now an emergency.
Estimates for the number of animals lost reach as high as a BILLION. Up to 25,000 koalas may have been wiped out by these fires, with many more badly burned and suffering, and it may spell extinction for the species.
Australia’s current season of fires are what happens when an incompetent government is faced with the effects of climate change. Fires and climate change are linked, and to deny this is simply to ignore the facts. But beyond the scientific facts, what Australia’s entry into the Age of Fire, the Pyrocene, proves conclusively are the consequences of irresponsible policy. The fires in Australia are a chronicle of a suicide foretold. Years of conservative governments funded by the coal industry and with no environmental policies have put the country at the bottom of the list of nations working to combat the climate emergency. And when you ignore emergencies, that’s what happens: you suffer their effects.
Australians back strong environmental policies. But the powerful coal lobby in a country that is the leader in exports of this poisonous product, together with a media panorama led by climate change denier Rupert Murdoch plays down or simply ignores the situation, means no action has been taken: hence what we are seeing now. Scott Morrison, surely a candidate for the worst prime minister in the country’s history (and that’s a low bar) won the election last year by dismissing the concerns of out of touch city dwellers. His support for Australia's huge coal industry remains undimmed, despite it's role in fuelling the climate crisis. In a theatrical flourish that has come back to haunt him, Morrison brought a lump of coal into Parliament in 2017 and waved it around while taunting the opposition. “This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared,” he laughed, passing the prop around to his guffawing colleagues for effect.
Morrison personally called Narendra Modi to congratulate him on his election win and assure him that the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland — a controversial Indian-owned mega-polluter — would go ahead. With environmental concerns threatening delays he offered a stern directive to all players involved: “Get on with it.”
The fires he says are a crisis that he is dealing with though in spectacularly poor timing, he still found time to disappear on a family holiday to Hawaii), while his country was burning and it would be ‘reckless’ to set a stricter emissions target for Australia or end coal exports, and since returning home, has tried to play down the catastrophe, saying Australia has been through similar crises, but the evidence is against him.
On return from Hawaii he was asked about the international independent report that rated Australia worst out of 57 countries; instantly, he said the report was “not credible”. He could have said “Sorry, I haven’t read it yet”, but his brain told him the report could not be true whatever it said.
Six months before the fires, and then again in September, Morrison declined to meet with a group of former fire chiefs who wanted to warn him that an emergency like this was on the horizon. Rural firefighting services in Australia are state-based and largely voluntary. They are often woefully underresourced, and some have been subject to recent budget cuts. Volunteer firefighters watched this season approach — the deadly combination of intense heat and Australia’s worst drought in decades — with dread. Where were the extra resources they needed? And why was Australia still refusing to act on the climate emergency?
The fires in Australia show what happens when we ignore the scientists’ warnings. What is happening in Australia will eventually happen everywhere there is something to burn. People will die, houses will go up in flames, species will disappear and things will be lost that can never be recovered. Either we believe that this is an emergency and take action, or we are destined to see more fires around the world.
Months into the crisis, defense forcerce reserves are finally being deployed to provide much needed logistical support to firefighters. But Morrison still must answer for all the delays, for failing to communicate with rural fire service and for his governments continued advocacy of fossil fuels.
“This is not about any one individual,” Morrison said when asked about the public anger he is facing, and in a way he is right. Experts have been warning governments about the effects of warming for at least 30 years, and few in Canberra — or in Washington, or in so many other centers of power around the world — have listened. But no longer can the climate emergency be posed as a problem of the future. We are moving beyond denial and into a hazy twilight of blame. with many coming tp the conclusion that Morrison is no longer fit to hold the high office of prime minister.
Our world is in meltdown. While Australia burns, Indonesia has suffered deadly floods – the worst for a decade. And in the Philippines, Typhoon Phanfone hit on Christmas Day, leaving a trail of death and destruction.
All of these tragedies point to an emergency, a serious climate emergency, so let’s not shy away from accepting or responding to it. We have gone way past the discussion stages, and actions need to happen immediately and quickly.
We have been given 12 years to drastically reduce emissions, lest our world warm to the point where humans face an existential threat.Climate change is a global human rights and environmental issue that affects us all. The bushfires, drought and flooding prove that beyond doubt, in these challenging times, we must continue to stand together and fight fora safe,a sustainable future for all of humanity.
Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds Are Burning’ was the opening song on the 1987 ‘Diesel and Dust’ album. The song was written by Peter Garrett, Rob Hirst and Jim Moginie. It was a protest song about giving land back to the Pinupi, the last people to come in from the Gibson Desert.
Patti Smith recently set the Oils classic up with a poem about Australia’s toxic destruction of the environment. How can we sleep when our Beds are Burning?
"From the centre of the world,
down deep in the earth,
down were the swirl of dreams are made,
long before the beginning of time,
the gods formed a great rock that grows through the desert,
and this rock was ruby in the sun,
red as blood when the sun smiled upon it,
and from its essence man created Dreamtime,
and they slept in its shadows,
but they did not walk upon it,
but then the settlers came and the tourists and those who did not believe,
and they tramped upon it,
and some fell to their death pulling the red skin of the red rock down into the desert,
creating the dust of sorry all the way to the sea,
and beneath the sea, so many leagues beneath the sea,
Great Barrier Reef, red as blood, red as a ruby,
until man infused it with his toxics, with oil, with his plastic,
and choked the life out of it,
until that great red reef bleached white like the bones of saints in the sun
down deep in the earth,
down were the swirl of dreams are made,
long before the beginning of time,
the gods formed a great rock that grows through the desert,
and this rock was ruby in the sun,
red as blood when the sun smiled upon it,
and from its essence man created Dreamtime,
and they slept in its shadows,
but they did not walk upon it,
but then the settlers came and the tourists and those who did not believe,
and they tramped upon it,
and some fell to their death pulling the red skin of the red rock down into the desert,
creating the dust of sorry all the way to the sea,
and beneath the sea, so many leagues beneath the sea,
Great Barrier Reef, red as blood, red as a ruby,
until man infused it with his toxics, with oil, with his plastic,
and choked the life out of it,
until that great red reef bleached white like the bones of saints in the sun
