By the title of this article I figured , for sure , it was about the united states
6
Warm air didn't start these fires, people did, some intentionally and some through negligence.
How else did they start, spontaneous combustion?
Dry conditions certainly exacerbated the situation, but even those aren't, NECESSARILY, due to climate change.
I just like the truth...REALITY.
Climate fanatics automatically blame everything on climate change, and that's just not valid.
We have always had disasters.
Perhaps you recall the great Minnesota forest fire that burned almost 400 square miles, in 1894.
I know you heard of the dirty thirties in the USA, a drought that actually started in the late twenties and lasted a decade. We haven't had anything like it since.
The deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, Huracán San Calixto, occurred in 1780. Approximately 25,000 people in the Antilles died.
You can't just credit climate change, automatically, for every disaster.
4
@Raz Most forest fires in Australia are ignited by lightning strike as was the case in these fires according to the NSW Rural Fire Chief although there were a couple that were intentionally lit. The fires were so ferocious that they created their own weather pattern with pyrocumulonimbus clouds that in turn create their own lightning.
35
One more form of anthropogenic climate change, contributing to ferocity of fires, is already deployed Geoengineering (Climate Engineering, Solar Radiation Management, Chemical Ice Nucleation).
FYI: 'Geoengineering Is Fueling Firestorm Catastrophes'
https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/geoengineering-is-fueling-firestorm-catastrophes/
Note:
* In South Australia, I took a straight-from-the-sky rain sample and had it tested - found Aluminium, Barium, Strontium, Sulphur - all ingredients in patents for Solar Radiation Management.
* A colleague in Victoria recently had a snow test sampled (Mt Macedon) - found surfactants, i.e. ingredients in patents for Chemical Ice Nucleation.
7
Warm air didn't start these fires, people did.
Over 180 people, so far, have been arrested for starting fires in some way, some intentionally and some through negligence.
12
@Raz Sorry, but that is a news story that has been put out by right wing climate deniers. Only a fraction of those actually started fires - the rest is just miscellaneous stuff.
Australia is dried out, overheated, drought-stricken and it is climate change that has turned it into a tinderbox. Why is it so important to you to believe otherwise?
254
@Raz
Some people may have started fires, but rising temperatures were caused by the carbon pollution in the atmosphere, and that in turn led to the drought conditions which turned Australia into a tinderbox. The tinderbox was just waiting to explode into fires millions of acres wide. We have the same situation in California with out of control fires expanded and worsened as every year the world climates get hotter and hotter.
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@Cheryl Hartnett
I live in NE Montana where the average annual rainfall is about none inches. Believe me, it gets dry up here.
We have small fires, generally started by lightening...easy to put out.
8
I suppose if a country is determined to commit suicide there is nothing we can do to stop it. Rupert Murdoch could be stopped but that would wind someone up in jail. No one forces anyone to read or watch his hate filled ignorant drivel or to vote for self serving ignorant leaders but Aussies aren't the only ones doing such stupid things are they, my fellow Americans?
6
Mr. Flanagan's article is primarily about Australia, but it might as well be about the USA which has elected, sort of, an administration aggressively and willfully pursuing policies dedicated to the destruction of the planet we inhabit. History will record this as a crime against humanity.
Meanwhile, the Lilliputian criminals blather on about their opponents' putative intentions for attempting to hold the Criminal-in-Chief accountable for his endless malfeasance.
11
My sympathies for a nation, a people, a land with all the life contained.
4
It seems that George Miller has now joined Nevil Shute as a prophet for an all-too-likely future.
4
It won't be just brittle grief it will be abiding anger toward Rupert Murdoch and other science deniers who let this happen and sealed our fates.
6
Nearly every year is hotter than the last and the trend is accelerating faster than expected. But you won't learn that on Fox News.
7
"How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Murder?" should read "How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Suicide?"
4
Well this is the US too. We can dump in our streams even more pollutants, they want the Arctic Opened up to drilling, etc. We have three fingers point back at us.
What I don't understand is they just elected him and knew he was pro-coal. We will do our best here, yet who knows....10 years from now we'll say "we shoulda".
4
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
This applies equally to businesses and governments as well as people ('men').
10
Until governments recognizes that safer nuclear power is a vital component (at least in the interim) in a fossil fuel- free world, talk of reversing climate change is wishful thinking and unrealistic.
3
Climate change is a global problem. The US must take it's share of responsibility for what happened in Australia. The US is not taking the necessary actions needed to prevent climate change.
8
It breaks my heart to see my native country ravaged by flames and also by willful ignorance of the existential threat on its doorstep by those currently in power there. My family immigrated to the Pacific Northwest for my father's work when I was a teenager and then they returned to Australia when I was in college here. Ensconced in studies and local ties, I stayed in the US. Still, I always held on to the hope that I'd one day move back so that I could be near family and again experience the easygoing sunshine-filled joy of life in Australia that fills my childhood memories.
Alas, certain worthwhile forces incrementally delayed a return... studies, work, love, marriage, children. But now this, a slowly unfolding climate disaster that will only get worse in my and my children's lifetimes. I have slowly and reluctantly come to realize that a permanent return home would be unfair for my children. Better to remain in a region that hopefully stands to offer more insulation from the effects of climate change. This is not quite the calculus I had anticipated using in contemplating a return home. But it has come to this. The effects of climate change become less abstract and more real and confronting day-to-day. Thank you NYT for keeping this issue front and center.
13
The problem is big money politics.
The mining industry owns the present federal government.
Instead of the political system being the means to effect the necessary climate policy changes in the public interest the mining industry very deliberately uses the political system to prevent those changes - for its own financial advantage.
We firstly need genuine political financing reform focusing on transparency and prompt reporting.
And as we seem to be entering a long-term, continuing environmental crisis we may next have to consider nationalising the mining industry.
14
Very discouraging to hear from the comments that Australia suffers from the same economic forces of destruction for profits at all costs, as we do in the U.S. My heart breaks every day for the poor little animals suffering so horribly, in these horrible fires, despite the heroic efforts of the wildlife rescuers there. We need much more reporting, investigation, and stories on climate change and global warming, and coverage of the actions of these companies and developers that are destroying the planet. All the cable news channels cover are partisan politics, what a waste of time!! We need the facts and tools so that we can fight against this destruction. The planet cannot survive this relentless devastation.
8
Young people are mobilizing for a sane future; old people are joining the march. Those currently in power have been purchased by the oligarchs if you will. They won't budge from their positions without a major push from the masses. Now is the time to stage a concerted revolution the world over; model it on Ghandian civil-disobedience and the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe but be prepared for slaughter as demonstrated in the Tiannamen Square massacre and by Russian agents in Ukraine against those protesting Yanuchovych.
I have more confidence in a quasi-socialist republic like Norway to do the right thing (even though it is a petro-nation) than an authoritarian country like the USA or China. Let's model our government on noble parliamentary systems like the Scandi-who-vian nations, where sober voices are heard and listened to.
Let's start with a vote for Bernie in the Primaries; he at least supports a New Green Deal.
Brace yourselves.
7
Okay, let’s say Bernie gets elected. But with an obstructive Senate still in place, what are the chances of any of his campaign plans getting passed into law?
2
In arguing that Australia's contribution to climate change is inconsequential because it generates only 1.4% of global carbon emissions, the Oz government is taking their citizens and the rest of the world for a ride. Australia is the world's largest coal exporter, yet doesn't add the very substantial pollution from this exported coal to its own emissions total. If it did, this would raise its per capita emissions contribution to around 10 times the global average. In effect, Australia outsources its polluting activities. It's the carbon equivalent of a drug cartel--uses little of its deadly product itself but sends it out of the country for others to consume. Of course, this ultimately rebounds on Australia because it is not sequestered from the global nature of climate change. No matter how hard the government and the Murdoch press try to gloss it over, Its effect is suicidal.
21
Australia is the canary of the global heating. What fitting irony to use canary as a metaphor here.
Will Australians rise to the occasion?
Will they organize through protests, petitions, boycott and disobedience to replace this government by one that will radically rebuilt the Australian society?
If this doesn’t occur, it won’t happen anywhere else in the world.
We know what comes next when the death of the canary is ignored.
10
Mother Nature is at the start of her revenge. The undeniable tragedy, though, Is that Homo sapiens are first killing off the animals, then the less fortunate Homo sapiens, before the very rich and the corporations are paid their due. It’s completely reversed in other words.
In this sense Darwinism has been re-asserted in the most wicked of ways. You can easily say that the Oligarchs and the corporations are committing a slow genocide on Mother Earth and the 99%.
Eventually Mother Earth will cone for the very rich as well though.
When population finally starts declining it may be too late. Lassez faire seems very much the rule of the day from the hyper-capitalists.
9
Australia gave a giant middle finger to the idea of climate change and now is reaping the whirlwind. No longer Oz, they have been reduced to a resource colony of China.
Devoted to short-term gains over longer-term goals, they evoke their penal colony past. Their environmental crimes fit the cruel punishment
8
de·sert·i·fi·ca·tion
/dəˌzərdəfəˈkāSH(ə)n/
noun
Desertification is a type of land degradation in which a relatively dry area of land becomes increasingly arid, typically losing its bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife .[2] It is caused by a variety of factors, such as through climate change (particularly the current global warming).
This, folks, is what is happening in the western U.S. Get used to it, as it will continue to occur with global warming. Please don’t act so surprised when your house burns down. This is just nature readjusting as we heat up the environment.
7
At this point I believe it is just too late to change the climate on a massive scale, perhaps back in the 1960’s until the year 2000 there was a window of opportunity but the fate of many area, California and perhaps Australia is sealed; action should have taken place decades ago, blame the folly of our governments for much of the problems; but yep, we have a lot of millionaires on both sides of the isles here in America and most didn’t enter the Congress or the Presidency as millionaires; they got rich on the backs of citizens by pandering to the baselessness of overpopulation and degradation of the environment.
4
Fifty years ago, another Morrison, Jim Morrison of the Doors rock fame, recorded, "When the Music's Over". He wrote some amazingly prophetic lyrics about ravishing nature. But boomers never did like poetry.
Further, anyone who watched the movie, "Titanic", ought to have been alerted to how badly the rich would behave when a disaster threatened humanity.
It's sadly clear the rich think they can buy their way out of any disaster and make the poor pay for it.
12
"But the government is intent on doing nothing."
Thank you, Mr Flanagan for your excellent column. Our plight in Australia should serve as a warning.
I used to be proud of the fact that the Australian political system honoured the memory of how hard our forebears fought for the right to vote by making voting compulsory. Now it just seems embarrassing - we put a party whose leader is beholden to the fossil fuel lobby in power and we can't say, "that's partly because not enough people turned out to vote" the way you can in America. Over 90% of those eligible to vote, voted in our last federal election, and the majority voted for a party that doesn't care about our long-term future, only short-term profit.
That was in May 2019, well before the fires. I was disgusted then. I'm frightened now.
157
@Delph - if Shorten had won in landslide in May 2019 the fires would have been equally bad. They are the result of decades of errors, omissions, and lack of foresight from successive state and federal governments.
13
@Phil Daniels How does that let the population off the hook for action not taken now? Any move forward taken now that isn't addressing the climate emergency in an absolute way is indeed "omnicide."
24
It doesn’t take long for us Aussies in the city to be out in the bush, so many of us have friends who have either lost properties or are still living with cars packed ready for immediate evacuation as the fires continue to rage. We often wake to a stinking hot day forecast, and there is a feeling of dread that intensifies as the day wears on and we know the later cooling fierce wind brings with it a swirling nightmare for our brave fire fighters. We cannot talk about our suffering wildlife without tears spilling, even though we have an army of carers tending to burnt animals and the donations still pore in. We may not live in a catastrophic fire zone, but our psyche has been changed, and there is a feeling our beloved country has been irreparably harmed. I can assure your readers that the vast majority of us do care, there is anger at politicians who have let us down for many years, and we will not forget.
140
@Verity Morris
But we voted the climate deniers back in Verity, and you've read all the misinformation about arson, fuel reduction, and "we're only 1.4%", just like the rest of us.
14
@Verity Morris,
I am so deeply sorry for your grief and suffering.
We simply must find the strength and energy to care about our fellow man, or we are all facing a very bleak future.
I wish peace and comfort for you, and may we all connect with our better angels before the level of fear gets any worse, and the entire planet becomes a Hobbesian nightmare.
15
@Annie Gramson Hill
Hear, hear.
Our fellow man and our fellow creatures.
I share your empathy and sense of urgency and call to our higher, wiser selves.
8
I think the focus on the Australian Government's response to the bushfire crisis has let the Australian electorate escape scrutiny. The summer of 2018/19 was Australia's hottest ever recorded. Just 3 months after it ended, Australians reelected a climate change denial Government. Many of the electorates through which this summer's fires have raged have been the most consistent electoral opponents of action against climate change. Australia is not a nation of people demanding climate change betrayed by a feckless government. In reality it is a nation reaping the consequences of an electorate that has consistently chosen it's own short term economic benefits over the long-term health of our planet.
175
So just like America?
23
@Melbourne Town We do the same thing here in America
16
@Melbourne Town There needs to be some reckoning on the Media environment that recklessly ignores the science and promotes denialism.
Step forward the Dirty Digger himself. Rupert Murdoch, destroyer of societies, both moral and physical.
32
Australia is an economic basket case. Like many Western nations we abandoned manufacturing to the Chinese and off-shored many service jobs to India. Mining, financial services and agriculture are all we have left.
To make ends meet the government is dependent on mining royalties. Add to this a razor thin majority and a government that can ill afford to lose seats in coal districts and you have today’s political inaction.
As Australia burns our PM has grudgingly admitted that the climate is changing, but he’s dead set against meaningful action. Any real changes will require the Australian people to stand up and demand change.
130
@Barry Henson you are right about the wafer thin majority. And one intractable issue behind that is that Queensland - the coal state - is by and large not suffering these wildfires. So likely to keep voting for their coal jobs.
28
@Barry Henson
You would be aware the Australian Govt doesn't get royalties. The State governments do.
Australia is far from an economic basket case, but is certainly over governed and heavily regulated.
In the election, 8 months ago, the government was returned despite a strong emissions agenda by the Labor opposition.
The Labor opposition have now pretty much adopted the governments emission strategy.
Most countries are having debates about suitable ways to address emissions. For some, who have available alternatives, it's a simple process. For others not so.
7
@Barry Henson You & your countrymen & women need to fire that idiot.
8
Sadly, Richard, you are right. Australia has approved new coal mines in the Carmichael Basin of Queensland. These mines will create a huge volume of emissions. There is no fore thought in relation to young people's welfare. Young people have every right to feel rage about how they are being left a dystopian future.
112
As an Australian who usually votes for Scott Morrison's Party ( though not at the last election) I can readily assure you that the current PM and his party will not be in power after the next election...which cannot come soon enough.
181
@Loomy Unfortunately they have two more years of faux solutions and delaying real action to go.
7
The problem is capitalism itself. Australia has been captured by the rich and powerful with vested interests.
Rupert Murdoch controls the media. His 'The Australian' newspaper brazenly promotes climate falsehoods. I am a long time paid subscriber to it.
If you cross Mr Murdoch by threatening his interests, such as by protesting against coal and mining industries, you lose the election. Politically I see little hope.
258
@PK Jharkhand : Why don't you cancel your subscription? Isn't there some reasonable source of info similar to the BBC? Or, the actual BBC's coverage of Australia? Or The Guardian's coverage of Australia?
Surely there must be a way to get the news you need w-o putting money in Murdoch's pockets and w-o tacitly saying "I approve of what this newspaper does."
12
@PK Jharkhand
"His 'The Australian' newspaper brazenly promotes climate falsehoods. I am a long time paid subscriber to it."
Shall we conclude you like lies?
11
@PK Jharkhand
You get The Australian and it's sister paper the Telegraph for free in so many places because Rupert prefers to lose money on it rather than lose his platform to sprout his ideologues, I wonder why you bother to subscribe.
6
The fires in Australia are horrifying and the intransigence of the government in reacting to this tragedy is frightening.
I live in the U.S. and am watching a political fringe movement murder our democracy. Its not the same as watching your country burning up and the loss of over half a billion animals who have been lost in Australia.
But in a sense I feel my country is being murdered all the same.
8
It is not coal. It is not global warming. It is failure to practice appropriate underbrush management. And now the environmentalists have Koala blood on their hands.
1
@carltonbrownchicago What you call "underbrush management" we call "hazard reduction burning" and it's conducted by the Rural Fire Service and the National Parks Association. In 2019, they exceeded their planned burns and the place still went up including areas that were underbrushed managed. The climate denialists in Australia of which politicians number many have begrudgingly conceded the link between these fires and climate change but have now shifted tack and are blaming "greenies" for preventing hazard burning, despite no green parties being in power at any level in Australia, never have been and probably never will. Conservative politicians, commentators and mining executives are calling for more reduction burning but the scientific evidence overwhelmingly tells us that burning in Australia makes the problem worse as it destroys the hardy native grasses allowing the combustible invasive species to dominate and allows for more saplings to sprout which after fire are unchallenged and the have more light from the damaged canopy and become the fuel for the next catastrophic episode.
Australia has many problems and near the top is the disdain for expert opinion and the cacophony of self interested uninformed comment cheered on by Rupert Murdoch, the cancer of the English speaking world.
7
Amazing planet, where a continent burns up at a cost of 68 billion USD, and one man across the ocean has in excess of that amount in his bank account. Only a sentient species could design circumstances so bizarre, so seemingly designed to lead to its own extinction. The doomsday clock ticks ever closer to midnight not as a metaphor but as a timepiece.
7
Meanwhile the Murdoch news organizations are still waging the campaign of false doubt and spreading lies. At what point does spreading false propaganda that kills people become criminal? The equivalent of sabotaging fire alarms and causing deaths. Aren't those who cause deaths by spreading deliberate falsehoods guilty of murder?
7
No one seems to look at the link between climate deniers in western countries and their religion.
Scott Morrison is only trying to do God's work in accordance with his religion
Scott Morrison belongs to a new age Evangelical church that believes in 'end days' and the 'rapture' where the world ends in a decent into chaos and all the true believers are brought into heaven.
Notice also the overwhelming support the Climate Denier Trump has among evangelicals.
Why worry about destroying the Earth if it assures you everlasting bliss?
14
Ultimately the people are responsible for their own destruction. Australia has a democratically elected government. Just as in the US where Republican voters vote against their own interests, the Australian voters have chosen economic interests over their own survival. They are not alone.
This is the future of planet earth. The supposedly brightest of the world’s leaders pay lip service to the threat of climate change at Davos. Our planet gets warmer, ineffectual goals are not achieved. We have met the enemy and it is us. Extinction is our future.
3
Trump is repealing environmental regulations.
Wall Street is booming.
California and Australia are burning.
7
It’s an oddly discomfiting emotion to set one’s time perspective to the clock by which climate change operates. All around are people so “busy” with their daily lives. It’s an annoying trope commonly used to signify success and also to claim victimhood, as if if one had enough time one would employ it doing something more useful. Meanwhile the clock ticks on until such time as it ceases. Failure to address climate change isn’t so much murder as it is the denial of death itself.
3
We have met the enemy and it is us . It is beyond saddening to see the ongoing devastation of our planet ; all in the name of greed and comfort . The kill-off will continue until those in power realize how wrong they were ; until it is too late . It is tragic to see those animals that have been saved literally cry out in pain from their ruined and burned bodies ; they deserve better . Not only will our world turn into a barren place , but so will our souls .
3
And to think a single spark started the fire that killed billions of animals and $100 billion in damages.
1
Why are three countries with such messed up priorities targets of the Murdoch influence cabal? Why is this family so wrapped in denying science, promoting racism and discord, and stunting real policy discourse?
Here in the US, it is said that GOP operatives said they thought that FOX worked for the GOP, but realize now that the GOP works for FOX. Play by the rules, and FOX will literally have a job for you after your political career is over.
6
The problem with Australia is the invasive species that arrived from England and laid waste to its ecosystems, one that even today doubles down on the evils it would commit.
The much-vaunted "honor" and "values leadership" of Anglo-Saxon nations is a chimera. In its place, the witless greed and childish truculence washing over the UK, US, and Australia.
Would-be heroes in their own minds, now demonstrably zeroes when true mettle is called for. At least have the decency of taking down all the WWII monuments and melting them for scrap, as that fight was clearly not about democratic values, rather shareholder value. Dismissed!
2
What concerns me is when, and it will happen, the tragedy of the fires becomes a memory clouded by the next news cycle, and the rains come to provide some green pick to the bush and water for the rivers, the impetus for change by the general public will evaporate and the climate change issues will move to the back of the news until the next inevitable time a tragedy strikes. In the meantime, the Murdoch puppet masters will continue to manipulate enough people into thinking the catastrophic weather events occurring more regularly on our planet are somehow normal, nothing to see here folks, go home and watch the latest Kardashian inspired reality TV nonsense.
3
If only the connection of Rupert Murdoch both to the "omnicide" unfolding in his homeland and to the political tragedy unfolding in America were the stuff of fiction. I keep wondering whether his grandchildren are going to have to change their names. What is frightening is how well he seems to understand the audience of ignorant and poorly educated creatures in the English speaking world. Murdoch was “educated” — as the ignorant are fond of saying — at Oxford; his sons at Princeton and Harvard. Does this tell us anything at all about how we have confused education with pedigree? Our failure to educate — even in the best of cases — will continue to produce more suffering until we learn the hard way that ignoring the truth of our experience is too often deadly.
2
Australia is, like the US, a democracy and it is the electorate who must ultimately bear the responsibility as well as the consequences of their government's failure to act.
3
yes, and the same is happening here in the U.S.--which is what makes Brett Stephens op ed defending Trump totally unacceptable. THe Oligarchy of the wealthy, the corporations, and the MIC, now lead by Trump, will absolutely destroy everything in its greed, our democracy, our rights, and the environment. Trump is busy reversing NIxon-led EPA rules for clean air and clean water. We need serious change, and serious leaders to affect it and not more Citizens United bought off politicians.
American citizens can smell the smoke, why can't our supposed leaders?
5
Gee. Australia Looks and sounds like Coastal US today. The future is not the future, it is the present and is already here. The reactions, the attitude of leadership, and the ignorance are all familiar to this concerned citizen.
3
“Ecocide” IS inadequate to describe the devastation of Australia’s fires. "Omnicide”, the killing of everything, is not accurate either. "Suicide" is the only accurate description of what we are doing to the planet and, of course, ourselves.
2
How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Murder?
Nations can commit suicide in various ways, as current events in Australia, the USA, And Britain show.
Apart from Australia's insufficient response to its own self-immolation, a nation can can allow corrupt characters to hijack its system of government and legal system and the people's faith in either and rot from the inside, as the USA is doing. While a hostile foreign power (Putin's Russia) fuels the process and cackles at how unbelievably they've succeeded in wakening a foe.
Or a nation can have its leader, the prime minister, hatch a cheap political stunt like the Brexit vote, allow various dishonest crooks (and apparently also the same hostile power, Russia) to spread lies to "win" the vote. And then have two successive PMs (May and BoJo) decide to drive the bus off the cliff, and lie about the results for their nation, and utterly deny political and economic realities.
Basically, all 3 nations have let their own folly, greed, and corrupted institutions head straight for icebergs dead ahead, claiming there are no icebergs and that even if there were, there's no danger.
The end results will be more or less the same: destroyed nations, who essentially did themselves in, thereby weakening themselves irreparably and doing major damage to most other nations in the process, from toxic vapors, destroyed lands, subverted institutions of government, and of course the rising tides all around them all...
5
The Canadian government is going down the same road. Plenty of pretty speeches and virtue signalling, an attempt to introduce a too low, therefor not effective, carbon tax and some tree planting. At the same time they are expanding the Alberta tar sands and continuing massive subsidies to the fossil fuel multinationals, including spending billions of tax dollars on a pipeline to the B.C. Coast. Same outcome as the Australian government just more hypocritical.
4
Bushfires are a natural part of the Australian landscape. Some years are worse than others.
This has been a particularly bad however. What you are not reading about is some of the other contributing factors which have added to the ferocity of this years bushfire season. (yes, that is what we call summer down here)
The main contributor has been policies implemented by the Greens party in this country. These policies include a virtual halt to "fuel reduction burns" conducted to lessen the available fuel on the forest floor.
The stopping of access by vehicles to our National Parks, resulting in fire access trails falling into disrepair and leaving them impassable.
These 2 factors alone have done nothing but add the proverbial "fuel to the fire" with the result being what you are seeing on your TV screens.
Even the indigenous Australians have for centuries, used controlled burns to maintain their environment with great success. It protects both the people and the wildlife on which they hunt to survive.
We have been hijacked by so called "experts" in environmentalism, and are now seeing the end result of poor policy.
Bushfires have always been with us.... and will remain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia
@Ed Pryor It has been often too hot and dry to allow the controlled burns or too wet from torrential rains - remember, with climate change, these weather patterns are common . From what I've read, this is more of Murdoch's misinformation to blame the Greens.
4
@Ed Pryor I'm sorry Ed but I must call you out on this. I posted earlier in the comments that in all three levels of Government in Australia (Federal, State and Local) there is not a single Green in executive power. All hazard reduction burns are planned and executed by the State Rural Fire Service with the National Parks and Wildlife. Government is not involved. In 2019 the RFS and NPWS exceeded their planned reduction burns and the fires ravaged areas that had been hazard reduced.
I challenge anybody to find even the slimmest chard of evidence that environmentalists are in any way influential in preventing hazard reduction anywhere in Australia
5
I really have a difficult time having sympathy - Australians have voted time and time again for a party which has made no secret of its contempt for climate science (i.e. that the earth is warming much faster than normal owing to humans). Nor has the government made any secret of its support for the fossil fuel industry. Reap what you sow, I say . . . except, darn it, we are all in the same boat and we shall sink together (though some much sooner than others - I am looking at you Australia).
3
If the Australian people do not unite to throw Scott Morrison and his party into the dustbin of history, they deserve whatever fate awaits them. And frankly, if we in the USA do not do the same to Donald Trump and his party, we deserve a similar fate.
6
@will-colorado : The problem is, the people of the U.S. didn't truly vote for Trump either. Clinton won the popular vote by over 3 million. It is the archaic electoral college that put Trump into power -- and may well keep him there.
5
It sounds oxymoronic. How does anyone, let alone a nation, "...Adapt to Its Own Murder?" The metaphor makes no sense unless murder is not the end of existence.
Although animals are being murdered by immolation, Australia is not. It is being transformed into something very different from it was prior to the magnitude of this pyro-catastrophe. It is a horrible example of what is happening to planet Earth as climate change unfolds, not murdered but transformed, undergoing dramatic change, much of which is causing enormous suffering, and there is so much more to com.
1
Australia mines the coal. Japan, China, Korea and India burn it. They are the nations which should be held accountable.
Gordy,
Greta and her ilk are saying are saying: Nothing else matters! Wake up, people!
But Australians are experiencing the impact of the climate crisis right now and, even with it staring him right in his face, the Prime Minister Morrison and his government are carrying on, Business as usual.
I can sort of understand how people can ignore warnings and clear evidence of future threats, but here we are seeing civilized, educated people walking down the hallway to their executions, indifferent to it all. Right past guillotines and severed heads Lying around.
I feel like some kind of a freak, banging this drum, but I know in my brain and in my gut that Greta is right. This should be the number one issue in everyone’s heads and in my social circles it doesn’t come up. We and our families are in the dining room on the Titanic. The difference is, here we know full well about the iceberg.
6
Here is modern Christianity at work:
Australia’s situation is now no different from that of low-lying Pacific islands confronting imminent destruction from rising seas. Yet when last August those states protested against the Australian government’s refusal to act on climate change, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said, “I also get a little bit annoyed when we have people in those sorts of countries pointing the finger at Australia and say we should be shutting down all our resources sector so that, you know, they will continue to survive.”
6
The most disturbing book I have ever read was the dystopian novel “Oryx and Crake,” by Margaret Atwood. In it, civilization collapses because of the twin crises of climate destruction and a virus that can’t be controlled. Welcome to the Roaring Twenties!
5
"Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said, “I also get a little bit annoyed when we have people in those sorts of countries pointing the finger at Australia and say we should be shutting down all our resources sector so that, you know, they will continue to survive.”"
At some point in the not too distant future, people who literally have nothing left to lose will literally come gunning for him and his cohort. The Unabomber will be a quaint folk hero to them.
I would have thought that the ruling classes would avoid provoking the pitchfork and torch classes of the world, but I guess that lesson is never really learned, more's the pity.
1
Educated people who I know also believe the Murdoch press and conservative talkback radio hosts when they peddle the lie that most of the fires this summer were caused by firebugs.
As if rounding up a few delinquent kids will stop the fires.
4
The Aussies are saying a good chunk of these fires are the result of arson. It doesn't help that its a dry summer and that eucalyptus trees are common. They don't catch fire, they explode.
Australia is the dying canary at the bottom of the global cage. If its calamity isn't enough to wake the world, nothing will. We'll see what happens in the next election. If Morrison, or someone like him keeps power, we're all done.
4
Because of his passionate views, Richard Flanagan is all but ignored by the Murdoch media in Australia. The fact that he has to go overseas to air his condemnation of this corrupt and incompetent government, says a lot about contemporary Australia.
3
Emdash,
And overpopulation didn’t have an affect on any of this?
Overcrowding is probably a significant contributor to climate change, fix that can you?
1
But how does a nation adapt to its own murder?
Easy.
Promise another round of tax cuts.
More funds for private religious schools.
Another billionaire spending A$60 million on FUD ads to corrupt a federal election (& boasting of it)
More tax dollars to 'foundations' owned by the fossil fuel industry.
If you're unlikely to be alive in 2070, why disrupt your lifestyle for a time you'll never see?
83
I (reluctantly) have to defend Siemens, the company blamed for profiting from "omnicide" - it is wrong to blame them for selling machinery to coal mines. A company has only one purpose: namely to earn money for its owners. How a company does that has to be controlled by laws put in place by the government, which is voted into power. This is a concept that many fail to understand - it is the responsibility of the citizen to vote and so control what companies are doing.
The remark regarding Siemens's Nazi past is also uncalled for in this context, this is just as useless as pointing out the terrible crimes of slavery or the genocide of the Native Americans each time one happens to mention the USA.
By the way, Siemens would rather sell its wind turbines than coal trains. Unlike Australia and the USA, who are doing absolutely nothing to prevent climate change, Siemens is from a country which is actually putting laws into place to limit CO2 emissions, at great cost to its companies and people, despite the fact that Germany will be much less affected by climate change that Australia. I can only wonder why Australia (and the USA) have - and are blocking any international effort to limit CO2 emissions despite the fact that they will be disproportionately affected by the consequences.
29
@Oliver You make a fair remark in Siemens' defense, but then go on to wonder: "I can only wonder why Australia (and the USA) have - and are blocking any international effort to limit CO2 emissions despite the fact that they will be disproportionately affected by the consequences."
In an oddly deranged way, I think American and Russian and Saudi, et al oil companies and coal companies are all racing to extract as much fossil fuel as they can before strict laws are enacted that will effectively "strand" millions and billions of dollars of potential revenue in the ground.
Do you really wonder about the essentially greedy nature of the human being?
I like many others are afraid any sober assessment of the ecological, planetary predicament we are in will come too late.
Here is a slogan for the current era, something we can chant in the streets and at the door step of Wall Street: Total Ecology! And with that a proscriptive demand that business and consumers and militaries do no harm to the planetary web of life.
We don't have time for half measures; let's go all in for a Green New Deal the world over. Start with a carbon tax, and a hundred other policy steps, and the market will start to adjust to the limitation.
13
@Oliver "A company has only one purpose: namely to earn money for its owners". So no moral/ethical duty to society? Well that about sums up the problem with the world, doesn't it?
14
@Oliver
"A company has only one purpose: namely to earn money for its owners."
We can't blame Siemens, as all capitalist countries are based on this insane logic.
But, sooner or later, the owners, the workers and generally all the population, will have to understand that you can't eat, drink or breathe money. Money can only buy what is left. Enjoy your GDP.
14
On the eve of Australia Day brand Australia goes up in flames. I no longer identify as an Australian when I travel the world. As the worlds largest exporter of coal and one of the world’s largest exporters of carbon pollution Australia has been prospering at the expense of people, biodiversity and the planet. Game over. The world has woken up to our hideous profiteering. Shameful.
57
@Maria Oh my I so wish this letter could be plastered on the window of every electorate office in the country !
In particular our prime minister's office, or "Scotty from marketing" as he is known.
7
The cost of this tragedy is hard to imagine and so awful, it boggles my mind. I feel so badly for the people of Australia and the pitiful loss of human life, beautiful animals and flora, fauna. Their prime minister is another example of a selfish, greedy politician who couldn’t give a darn about anyone but himself. Sound familiar?
3
New reports state that scientists in Australia found out that the animals (moles, marsupials, kangaroos, etc.) in the Australian wild were drinking from the water in the ground (by digging).
Australia has no seas. Most of the drinking-water supply comes from water obtained from underground, so the government was scared because they predicted that in the future, if the wild animal population continued to increase, they would leave barely any water for the humans.
So they sent some choppers into the Australian forest and savannah, and they shot down large animals. Thousands of animals were massacred and hunters were offered good money for killing any "large mammals" near water sources according to several Animals' Rights activists.
The government ruined the balance in the ecosystems. And they broke food-chains.
Now Australia is suffering from bushfires, dust storms, flash floods, increased funnel-spider activity, hail and acid rain.
Mother Nature is like Lizzo. If you harm her...
Lizzo: IMMA HIT YOU BACK IN A MINUTE
Proper forrest management is actually really easy.
climate change denier /noun/
1) A rich woman who boards a plane in LA, flies to D.C. so she can buy a new red coat made in China using coal burning factories to protest, then flies to NYC to appear on the View to argue with Meghan, then flies back to D.C. to protest some more, then flies back to LA.
2) An uber rich man who flies around the country in his private jet telling folks to turn down the heat and bike to work while his 24-bathroom mansion stays cozy and who never rode to work even though there are dedicated bike trails to-and-from his home.
3) An uber rich politician campaigning on climate change while flying his private helicopter over NYC because he is too good for the subway of the city of which he was once mayor. And then flies his private jet back and forth to his Barbados Island getaway twice a month.
4) A former vice-president who flies all around foretelling the world's doom while he could use this amazing creation called Skype and Portal and speak to crowds anywhere all from the safety of his mansion.
5) Commenters on the New York Times who love to scream about climate change deniers while perusing the travel section planning their next international getaway, then sit in traffic for 2 hours in SUVs trying to get to the airport to depart towing suitcases filled with goods made in China in factories burning coal.
8
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
The one’s who said fire were right.
3
White European Australia and White European Australians began as a penal colony for the British Empire.
While the Indigenous first "Australians" had survived and thrived in relative flourishing ecological harmony with the land and it's fauna and flora for 40,000 years.
This isn't murder. It is suicide by national self-immolation by and with the consent of the Australian people and their elected representatives.
It is written that you shall sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
'And God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water the fire next time.'
'
5
A sober analysis of the estimate of the terrible loss of wildlife can be heard on the BBCs More or Less podcast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08027c1 While I share the disgust and deep shame of novelist Richard Flannagan’s sentiments, his overwrought response helps spread inaccuracies - I choose to listen more carefully to Australian scientist Tim Flannery on these very important matters.
2
Oh for God's sake. My relatives have been in Australia since 1891. Every couple of decades the entire continent catches fire. The conflagrations appear to be world-ending. One was over 1,000 miles long. A crisis of Chicken Littles, apocalyptos, social scientists who hate modernity, and pickle-headed technocrats who thirst for power have decided this one means the world IS ending. What balderdash.
It is arson or poor bush management or wood houses or the El Niño. Please stop all you self proclaimed experts with nonsense reasons for this tragedy. It adds insult to injury to those pouring their hearts out for sanity and scientifically based approaches to these unprecedented events.
We hear the same nonsense in California and my heart goes out to Australia. Thank you to a great author for your words and intellect.
2
Australia isn't the only country committing ecocide; the USA, by allowing Monsanto to poison us and genetically modify our crops, is doing the same thing. Ironically, we can thank Obama for giving them the green light to do this. Underwater drilling, factory farms and gas frackers are also killing other species and poisoning our water. No one wants to state the obvious: too many humans, who need too many resources, are destroying the planet and massacring the animals (and, in many cases, each other). Even wind turbines, the fetishes of environmentalists, kill animals. With humans as the earth's vermin, other species just can't win.
2
Scott Morrison, needs to "stand strong" and sooth the Australian public right now. Scott Morrison should just say what Donald Trump told Americans: “What you're seeing and reading is not happening.” Or what Rudy said "The Truth is not Truth" To be a good totalitarian leader you need to create an alternative reality.
5
An excellent, heart-stopping article. The future is a word, and the word is Australia. People always say “In the future” or “Soon” or even try to attach some timeframe “In a decade”—it’s happening now. The future is now and it’s in flames
2
Do we believe the writing on the wall or the lies of political "leaders"?
2
I am outraged that we everyday citizens buy LED light bulbs, turn down the heat and air-conditioning and buy plug-in hybrids, while huge corporate fatcats and Murdoch propaganda steal the elections in America and Australia and wreak open warfare on the planet, causing massive damage that makes our personal sacrifices seem small and naive.
All of us are better than this.
Are American and Australian voters really this stupid? Do they buy the manipulations wholesale, or is it actually a half-knowing excuse to vote Right for darker reasons - racism, sexism, and hostility? I fear the latter. I don't think Trump is a cult and I don't think Australians believe they can't afford climate change. I think that the base supporting godawful governments is willingly colluding with Citizens United-style theft of elections to get their personal resentments salved.
We abandoned the working class in both countries, sending manufacturing (and environmental and labor oversight) to China. We abandoned the free press, knowingly letting propaganda outlets flourish while gutting funding for CPB, PBS and NPR.
Be very, very careful when you are told that we 'can't afford to manage climate change' or 'throttling Murdoch/Fox means throttling the First Amendment.' We are surrounded with lame excuses when our gut knows exactly what is the right thing to do.
We need to stop coal mining, insist America rejoins the Paris Accords, and de-credential Fox and Sinclair and Murdoch like, yesterday.
4
The title of this article is hyperbole. After three uninterrupted years of hyperbole from President Trump, it is no longer an effective rhetorical technique.
You'd think that having one eighth of Australia's forests (nearly the size of Nebraska) burn down over a few weeks would teach these drongo's a lesson. Their government is run by wombats!
The headline on the home page (with no reference to Australia) made me think the article would be about the wounds being inflicted on the U.S. Constitution by the Trumpzi Party.
1
Message to planet earth: When your house is on fire, you put it out. You don't form a committee to come up with a strategy.
when so much destruction to people and the planet is being done, one entertains the thought of the french revolution when heads were truely on pikes. when a number of the wrong people were no more, then things started to change for the better for the french people. just say'n.
“Coal,is the future of humanity”
Former Australian prime minister , tony abbot.
3
The Omnicide of Oz - the death of everything except the cockroach Morrison and his coal cabal. Laws don't exist to properly stop or punish those who are responsible for such atrocities at scale.
2
Another word we might use is “civicide.”. The destruction of civilization.
1
We are getting a preview of Trump getting a second term from watching Australia.
4
Add to “omnicide” the “Marsification” of the Earth. Until the citizens of Australia vote out the climate deniers just as we refuse to do here in the U.S. we will all reap the fiery whirlwinds of the climate catastrophe that is upon us.
2
It's sad to see the Aussie government having the same idiotic approach and policies as America.
I lived and worked there and traveled many times before I moved there. Lovely place and people. It is an utter shame what is happening down under.
1
How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Suicide? That headline’s more like it.
1
One name woefully missing from the pantheon of traitors of Down Under and the world is Rupert Murdoch. I prefer the term Gaia-cide. We are murdering our mother, nature itself.
3
How does one process this horror? Richard Flanagan's words chill me to the bone. So how would walking the ruins of Sarsfield affect me or any decent human?
My mind reels, my skin crawls just seeing the photo of Scott Morrison "touring" Sarsfield. I ask him, "Have you no decency sir?"
The devil lives and is the PM of Australia.
1
This excruciating article is very painful to read but very important. I hope this and other articles like it appear in Australia. From what I understand, even worse than your Prime Minister is the psychopathic Rupert Murdoch who is responsible for so many evils in your country and beyond. Yes, your Prime Minister should be serving a life sentence but the reason he's still in power must have a lot to do with right- wing propaganda perpetuated by Murdoch. Mental illness is at the root of all catastrophic human destruction of life on this planet. If humanity can't figure out a way to overcome this horrific propensity for self-annihilation, we will drag every single living thing down with us, and sooner than we think.
3
This is one of the saddest opinion columns I have ever read in any newspaper. And one of the most important.
2
sad truth is we just don't care. If it doesn't effect my 401 k , I really don't care. /s
1
As the author has also pointed out recently in NYT, Australia's opposition party is equally bought by the coal mining industry. And the country is 'stuck between a rock and a hard place'
2
Perhaps conservatives, and other climate change deniers, should stop considering the planet to be some magical truck-stop restroom that never needs cleaning or maintenance or repairs—even if used and abused by endless travelers every day.
Time to clean up our collective messes before we are all buried in our own filth.
2
Don’t worry, Rupert Murdock and Donald Trump will, you know, survive. As for the rest of us . . .
2
Republican heaven = Australia on fire (and/or India's unbreathable air).
2
Yesterday I saw a headline in the NYTimes that said "Faces of Life After the Holocaust." And my mind went straight to Australia. Was this article about Australia? I didn't know if the fires were over or not. Had photographers taken pictures of people in front of their burnt homes, the charred bodies of koalas, exhausted firefighters?
It was an article about elderly who had survived The Holocaust, the one in Europe 75 years ago.
But we face many holocausts such as Australia if we don't address this climate crisis with the urgency it requires. We can start with a Green New Deal.
2
How does a national adapt to its own murder, you ask? You needn't go halfway around the world to find a good place to ask that quesiton.
3
As in the Catholic Church there is a narrow, godforsaken clique wielding power in the Australian ruling political parties ('Liberal' and National). These are the men (mostly, if not all,) who have done the damage to the continent and its inhabitants, responsible especially the suffering of the animals ... Grrr
3
@Power
Pope Francis: “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world.”
“The principle of the maximisation of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very nature of the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is shown about whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment; as long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity or the increased pollution. In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved.”
2
Morrison appears to be a very faithful protege of the guy in the White House ( I cannot even utter his name!): in lying, denying climate change and blame everything else but the main cause....
3
While Rome burns, the Nero’s of the world fiddle. Music, anyone? Which tune would you like to hear?
3
Not a journalist but a novelist. How could I guess?
This is sensationalist and inaccurate claptrap.
Australia is the victim here, suffering because it highly volatile eucalyptus forests catch fire when the temperature and winds are changed due to the production of CO2 by the USA, China and India in the main.
Australia did not cause these fires and can do nothing to stop them. Only global action by those three countries and others will bring the level of greenhouse gas back down again.
This story was written to blame the liberal government of Australia - nothing more and nothing less. Offensive rubbish from someone who seems to know nothing of world weather and the effects of ocean temperatures on rainfall.
"It’s as if in the middle of the Blitz, Winston Churchill announced that rubble removal was more important than dealing with the Luftwaffe in fighting Hitler."
Yes, exactly, thank you for pointing this out.
As Hippocrates is credited with saying "For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure are most suitable.” We need bold and swift worldwide action on this climate catastrophe now.
2
50% of us are either so corrupt or moronic that we are literally paying for our own apocalypse. Honestly, at this point I half feel like we deserve what we get as a species.
6
Between this, Brexit and 45 it's impossible for me to decide which of our countries has the stupidest citizens.
I'm still leaning towards us, but it's getting awfully close.
5
@EK : Please remember that Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million. The problem isn't our citizens. The problem is the electoral college.
2
It is important to add that fires aren't the only problem Australia is facing. If sea levels rise anything like predicted, the Indian Ocean will invade Western Australia and the Red Center, as already happens occasionally, when the cyclones are extreme. Oh yes, the cyclones will get more extreme much more frequently... It's like the fire victim told Morrison. "You're an idiot, mate."
1
It's impossible not to think: Humans are Nature's greatest mistake.
And also: Nature, in its self-correcting wisdom, is killing off humans so that all the other life forms can once again live fully.
The continued inaction of every right-leaning or right-wing govt will create myriad economic problems that will further assault the already beleaguered 99% -- and the more frightened they are, the further rightward they'll lean, and a vicious cycle will worsen, and soon it will be hell on Earth everywhere.
Dear Australia: I feel for you, I fear for you, and I am desperately hoping that the idiots in charge see sense. The destruction to date is beyond heart-breaking.
1
I would say Australia deserves the government u have and now u reap what you showed, u ejected a hard core right wing government, an immigration policy that is cruel and now climate denial, as Australians u can only do one thing now, which is to cone out at election time in droves and kick out this government, if u don't, then shame on you and suffer the consequences.
as a nation of criminal immigrants, be more gracious of refugees coming to your country as u have lots of land and plenty to share, do not be selfish
Regarding Ecocide. I've seen the same thing happen in California over forty years, although not as rapidly as what's happening down under in the news.
Ecology is a measure of the number of living organisms in space and time then judging the health of that place by the functioning food chains/food webs. Producers plus consumers, and their relative amounts and relationships. People are no different than any other living organism in this respect.
I've heard your leaders giving excuses for the fossil fuel industries in the same manner which our leaders keep taking money from the same corporations and/or denying the problem all together.
Don't get stuck with the coal companies. Don't let them ruin your Great Barrier Reef any more than it is already is harmed, don't let them ruin places like the Murray Darling Basin, and don't get stuck with the bill for their greed.
If an economic downturn is what it takes, then bring it on. These same people have stolen my opportunities and handed them to complete morons so many times I've lost count. They'll kill us all to swell their bank accounts.
Many of us here in the US feel the same pain you feel but the capture of the govt by corporations and the fake news that keeps the rubes supporting the worst of the worst that have ever lived. You know who's their biggest denier, he's from your own country.
Money is worthless when there's nothing for eight billion people to eat.
1
Sad beyond words.
2
Get your facts right Flanagan, its raining here in Sydney as I write and the fires are all out......the fires in the 90s were worse and I am sick of people spreading disinformation just to further their own careers.
Omnicide is the right name for the crime - but the perpetrator is an old, old foe: greed and its partner stupidity.
Money is going to kill us all.
3
Huh! Conservatives must be in charge there! That's classic conservative "logic"!
People dying, animals wiped out, culture destroyed sounds like an eco-holocaust. If we don't beat this, we will not survive, period.
There's no nuance in this situation anymore and yet many remain duplicitous with mass murder.
3
Until progressives start calling out these murders and evil doers nothing will change. People think science and facts matter to these "leaders" they don't oh they know the facts but don't care about you or the land or the earth. Its greed and pure simple evil on a scale of Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot you think I'm going to far you're wrong and history if there is one will hold this to be true. When a 17 year old brave young women is the only voice truly calling out their lies and hate we are all guilty.
2
@Michael : You say this as if progressives aren't calling out the evil doers. Have you ever heard of Extinction Rebellion?
1
Why call this qan opinion when it is fact!!
Not Murder, but Suicide.
1
Sounds more like slow suicide.
National suicide, in times of global warming. It's hard to see the danger when your leader has his head in the sand.
1
I guess the plan to bail to Australia to get away from Trump and his legions of ignorant goons is a no-go.
2
I understand that they are, like the US, quite brainwashed by the Murdoch propaganda machine. I never thought people were as dumb as to believe that simplistic and easily debunked garbage, but apparently they are. Unfortunately it's quite a large percentage of people who are just not intelligent enough to know what is real and what is not. This is somewhat more astounding for Australia because they are going to be one of the first countries that burns, and all their cities are near the ocean. They will be one of the first to see the worst and even now they should clearly see what is coming.
This does not bode well for humans ability to wake from their brainwash stupor if places such as Australia deny the reality in front of their face. I can only say it is like a religion where reality is no where to be seen.
On the other hand, it might very well be places like Australia who could have a large population decline in the early stages of the worst affects that could save us all. You know, by dying in large numbers and reducing their collective carbon footprint. We can only hope.
Good luck Australia. Not that luck is going to help you. You like us are ruled by corporate morons.
Serfs all around the world will reproduce and strive to please their cruel overlords because they have been bred and educated to be serfs and they will never rise up. They would rather die, and they will, than upset their masters.
3
There's a word for this: Self Immolation.
1
our Prime Minister Scott Morrison is a total fool and his conservative government are useless.
1
Listen to your native people.
3
To quote Sitting Bull,
"The love of possessions is a disease in them (Americans). They take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own and fence the neighbors away.
If America had been twice the size it is, there still would not have been enough."
Replace America with Australia and there you have it: greed, individualism, racism, reactionary politics and refusal to tackle climate change and tragedy ensues.
4
Yes of course. British style capitalism... What do you think inspired Karl Marx? And the coal mines aren't even owned by Australians -- except possibly as "shareholder/investors" (people who don't believe in slavery but are willing to profit from the labor of the economically enslaved) --A recent scandal involves the Galilee Basin where the coal is mined by Adani an Indian company and used in India to produce electricity or Bagladesh.. and potentially plenty of pollution. But who care.?
No one wants to discuss population growth... rather sob stories about Americans not reproducing themselves.._ plenty of others are outdoing themselves.. but we can't say that because it's not PC. ( just proves one is a white racist).
And one is expected to applaud capitalism -- the ONLY great economic system..
Yes, it makes sense not to build in flood plains or fire prone areas.... so far as disappearing ways of life-- sentimentality doesn't cut it. There are plenty of people to feel sorry for. In some ways all of us have to make do. But it is too bad that such horrible MEN keep getting "elected" (who knows how elections are rigged?- electoral college and corked voting machines?). Yes, indeed the govment "leaders" are at least some of the problem.
1
Stupidity based upon ignorance is not a crime. Australia has erred but so have most human societies around the world.
This depressing article is not suitable for children nor adults.
The omni burning/killing may be the ultimate effect of “climate change.”
The definition of “catastrophe” is Australia post fire
I am forever grossed-out by the death of billions of animals
Australia is hell fire, and I feel
1
Dear Richard, the title of your opinion piece would be ludicrous - if it wasn't so true. Australian terrestrial ecosystems are currently state transitioning to grasslands. Repeated burning of Alpine Ash forests will mean they disappear; along with broad-toothed rats, New Holland mouse, long-nosed potoroos, the Great Barrier Reef and many other unique species that were once Australia's natural heritage. Oh yes - as soon as the resources are exhausted other 'creatures' will also disappear. Chevron, Rio Tinto, BHP and the rest. What remains will make 'Hell or High Water" look like a picnic. Jesus wept for Australia.
2
Australia was once described to me as a “large open pit mine with sheep and cows.” From an economic perspective, that is not far from the truth. About 2/3 of Australia’s exports are extracted from the earth. This model of an export driven extraction economy has given Australia three decades of uninterrupted growth and its people one of the highest living standards in the world. Replacing a high percentage of fossil fuel use with renewables may be possible domestically, but Australia will need to diversify its economy considerably if it is going to dramatically reduce the export of coal and other extracted materials.
Australia faces the classic “prisoner’s dilemma.” If it takes aggressive action to curtail its extraction driven export economy, it will suffer considerable short-term economic pain, but the benefits of significant mitigation of climate change will occur only if the largest contributors to global warming also take aggressive action. Unfortunately, the United States is led by someone who thinks that the government’s answer to climate change is either to pretend it doesn’t exist or to promote “beautiful, clean coal” as the solution. And while China seems to contemplating serious steps to kick its coal habit, India appears posed to replace China as a major market for Australian coal.
Consequently, we may not need to wait for the Judgment Day to find out if we will all burn in hell; we may end up burning in the hell we have created for ourselves on earth.
3
Every country should be required to count catastrophic fires whether "natural" as in Australia or intentional as in the Amazon and the carbon thus released in reporting its carbon balance to the world.
Methane whether released from poorly maintained wellheads or from loss of permafrost should also be counted.
Meaningful change can only follow after meaningful and complete accounting of all factors in the equation.
6
Trumpism prevails in Australia, in Brazil, it spreads, too. Wherever it prospers, nature pays the price first, and then the people.
The same types of personalities populate these parties. Not very smart, self-interested to the extreme, backwards looking.
We're only a bit behind Australia. A summer very soon will be similar in the American West.
13
It is true that we have locked in devastation. The Great Barrier Reef will die. If a Great Extinction doesn't occur, it will be mighty big all the same. And fires worse, much worse will happen. That is if we stopped emitting carbon tomorrow. But of course, we won't. More likely, we will reach a stage where many will feel humans should not continue, that we have forfeited our place here. It is clear we do not grasp the gravity of our own evil deeds.
It is not just climate breaching tipping points. Look at Trump. Is it far fetched that Russia, America and Facebook allied may one day raze Europe and China and lord it over the rest of us with DNA analysing nano robots inside every living thing? We had the chance to harness thorium for energy but we chose uranium. Why? Because it yields plutonium as a by product, and that can kill millions at a time.
Still not convinced that evil is not basic to our DNA?
Our last evil act may be to refuse to die. The first sentient Great Extinction. Where the oligarchs live in caves eating artificial food and breathing manufactured air and stymie evolution with our boundless malevolent blundering.
6
Not only does Australia contribute hugely to global warming though coal, but the fires that are now burning add to that country's emissions and will be shared around the world.
8
If humans would limit the amount of bombs that are exploded onto the earth, decrease the amount of flying around the world they engage in and have fewer offspring, walk around instead of driving, we could do more for the earth than just grumbling about climate change for the last 45 years.
Clean up the soil, clean the oceans and the air, we will be better off in the long run.
Take a nice long walk instead of riding your vehicle; buy an old fashioned shopping cart with wheels for your groceries and stuff, prevent obesity too.
2
You can still drive, just drive an electric car. You can still use electricity; generate it from solar, wind, hydro, geothermal or nuclear.
I know, we have an electric car.
1
Yes, Australia should stop mining coal. But it is important to realize that global warming is a global problem. Higher temperatures are a result not just of the actions of Australians, but of people around the world.
And a certain amount of warming is already baked into the cake. The IPCC estimates that temperatures will rise by 3.7 to 4.8 degrees C by 2100. We should try to hit the low end of that range if possible. It may be unrealistic to shoot for much less than that. We waited too long.
There was a warning in 1798 by Thomas Malthus, who described consequence of too much population growth. The population of Planet Earth then was under a billion.
When Paul Ehrlich wrote the Population Bomb in 1968, world population stood at 3.5 billion.
Nothing was done. His warning was ignored as though he was a crackpot.
A more detailed warning occurred in 1972. The Club of Rome sponsored a book, "the Limits of Growth," which described various scenarios if population continued to grow.
One was running out of food, another fights over resources, yet another degradation of the environment, all causing death rates to rise to limit population to the earth's carrying capacity.
World population is now 7.8 billion.
We now know that global warming will decrease the carrying capacity of the earth. That means we confront a die-off unless we control population growth using birth control.
Australia has done badly on pollution, but at least its population density is low.
7
@Blaise Descartes
Yes, world overpopulation is the obvious cause of global warming, although most people refuse to recognize the obvious. It is not sufficient to stop population growth; we need to reduce world population to the level of about a century ago, when it was 2 billion.
Natural population growth in developed countries is already negative. The problem is that in parts of Africa and South Asia, the population is set to triple by the end of the century. These are precisely poor regions where global warming will be decreasing the agricultural productivity, creating billions of refugees by the end of the century.
What is needed is a long-term international program to provide free high-school education for girls in developing countries. This will reduce child marriage and fertility, and enable better adaptation of the refugees.
Malthus was right; technology just delayed the inevitable by a couple of centuries.
2
Australia always has had ferocious brushfires. And this is largely due to the fact that Australia is a country where all its major cities are on the coast because inland is, in Summer, it is very hot, dry and prone to brushfires.
A quick look at the history of brushfires shows, for example, that dating back to 1851, in the state of Victoria alone, 12 million acres were burnt and a million sheep and 12 people killed. In the 1938-1939 brushfire season fires occurred for the whole summer, and ash fell as far away as New Zealand. It was calculated that three-quarters of the State of Victoria was directly or indirectly affected by the disaster, while other Australian states were also badly hit by fires and extreme heat. In 1974, 290 million acres burned which is equivalent to the combined total area of France, Spain, and Portugal.
Brush fires are endemic to Australia. Global warming will undoubtedly make the situation worse but it has not created it. The recent impact seen, as in the California fires, is due the increasing population growth and its dispersal further into areas formerly not developed.
2
@GerardM
I am 61, I have seen great fires before, but when you read unprecedented in the media, they ain't lying.
You see that we lost 20 or 30 million acres. And well over a billion animals. That we lost 33 people and 2500 homes (to date) is because Australians are very, very aware of fire danger. We have a taxpayer funded public broadcaster with nationwide local broadcasts via TV, radio and internet that instantly switches to 24/7 emergency broadcasting. There are untold thousands fighting these fires. If this happened in any other country, where population densities are typically 20-50 times higher, the toll would be gob smacking.
Business As Usual? Nah.
3
@Paul Smallwood
And yet, it's not unprecedented. Consider this:
In the Ash Wednesday fires of February 1983 in Victoria, 520,000 acres were burnt, 2,080 houses destroyed, more than 27,000 stock lost and 47 people lost their lives. Property-damage was over $200m and more than 16,000 fire fighters, 1,000 police and 500 defense personnel fought the fires in Victoria. In South Australia, 510,000 acres were burnt, 383 houses were destroyed, 28 people were killed and property-related damage was also more than $200m.
And as I posted earlier, in 1974 290 million acres burned which undoubtedly killed animals in the millions if not billions.
You've lived through this before, what is different is the nature of the TV coverage and that from social media which gives it a dimension never before possible.
@GerardM No, the difference is that these fires burn much hotter and travel much faster. You don't need to quote the stats, I am well aware of them. Since I was a boy, we now have a new, highest fire danger level. We are now exceeding double its base level. We have two new high temperature color codes. I used to experience a 105F day once every 3 years. That has flipped, 3 per year, and now more. Just a few days ago, it hit 120F in the outer west of Sydney - the hottest part of the planet that day, smashing heat records. Before this year, the record average maximum temperature for ALL Australia was 105F, set in 2013. We had a day recently of 106F, followed the very next day by 108F. You think that sounds unpleasant? Try smoke at 10+ times hazardous levels, blood red suns; you don't see glare any more, just images of the sun on every car as you drive.
Yes, I live here. I understand very well what is going down.
3
It seems that if one tries to speak optimistically about the future, one is automatically labeled as being a person that denies that there is a problem.
I certainly agree that there is a problem, but I am not sure the future will be entirely catastrophic. The climate changes that are coming may be less than what has happened already. Some suggest that the future changes will be more dramatic than what has happened already. These are complicated systems, and nobody knows exactly how they work. The future changes could end up being less dramatic. As temperatures increase, the effects could start to level off. One should not be certain the relationships will be linear from the point of the x and y graph origins.
Areas at sea level, or only slightly above sea level, will have to either be walled in, as the Dutch already do, or abandoned. Houses and other structures will have to be built to withstand greater force winds.
In any case, just about everyone that is alive today will be dead in a 100 years. Let’s hope they all go peacefully, and of natural causes. But if the future is a less populated planet, that will be a good thing, and perhaps what is really needed, more than anything else.
But humans are resourceful creatures. Stronger structures at higher sea levels can be made.
Humanity may very well survive a lot longer than some folks are guessing.
We are not talking about radiation in the air we breath. We are talking about a bit more heat, and higher sea levels, etc.
1
@David Martin Your point of view makes everything sound manageable but I think you forgot to add in the increasing acidification and heating of the oceans and the floods and droughts that can affect the food supply. No food, no people.
1
The sad truth is that for every nation that has successfully rebuilt itself after total annihilation, there are dozens whose existence only history can testify to. Indeed, I think the world is on the precipice of either moving towards a new and more empathetic society or falling into the abyss of its own mistakes.
What happened to Europe is a great example. The leadership in France, Germany and England set in motion the events that would lead to WWII. The result was utter devastation and the loss of some 50 million lives. True, they resurrected themselves to become strong, thriving democracies but that probably wouldn't have been possible without the help of the U.S. whose homeland was relatively unscathed by the war.
That savior isn't going to be available this time. Climate change is going to cost every country in the world trillions of dollars and untold misery. I don't see any saviors on the horizon. It is up to ourselves, today.
6
Jack Hartman,
When people left Europe for the Americas, it was mainly due to overpopulation and the extinction of the forest as well as the pollution of the seas and decrease in the population of fish in the oceans; birth control is the one thing that humans can all do to decrease the pollution of the earth.
It seems that Australia will not change direction as regards climate change even after this crisis.
We can assume this is the majority reaction of humanity to climate change.
It is no good just blaming Murdoch and big corporations. It's human nature that is driving the crisis.
This does not bode well for the future existence of life on Earth.
8
human beings are all selfish and hypocrites, when france wanted to imcrease fossil fuel tax to abide by Paris declaration, this gave rise to the yellow vest movement, so climate change is alright and fine as.long as the individual is not affected, if the climate change activists really believe it, then stop flying, stop using cars, stop all their fossil fuel driven and subsidized activities and behaviours, then I will believe them.
I believe in climate change but don't see a way forward unless everyone is willing to sacrifice right down to the individual. so humanity will end soon as we know it as behaviours will not change unless the threat becomes a clear and present danger
It would be refreshing to read a realistic column. If Australia "gets too hot and dry for human habitation," then people will have to move. Your desire to eliminate coal plants, even if realized, won't have any meaningful impact on Australia's prospects for the next 50 years.
1
@No
So you're saying don't bother?
1
They can see the end of fossil fuel coming and want to get what they can out of the ground, sell it and burn it while it's still a viable asset. In a not too distant future coal will be worthless. Of course it's wrong and it has to be stopped but the very thing that threatens coal use, climate change, is fuelling this rush globally. An odd consequence indeed. Technology needs to move quickly and kill it's value as soon as possible. While reserves of oil, gas and coal are still viable governments will not voluntarily give up their natural wealth and make the change.
15
Adaptation vs. Mitigation is an important debate about climate change that needs to be had. Its a shame that adaptation only gets brought up in the context of a bad faith argument by the only people that don't care.
4
Isn’t omnicide the logical conclusion to capitalism which places value on money above all else?
41
We are learning that democracy may not be up to the challenge of preventing a global catastrophe that, if unchecked, could lead to the extinction of the human species. It is the ultimate tragedy of the commons. There is an old saying that capitalists would sell the rope to hang them. It is no joke.
27
@Mister Ed
Democracy is up to the challenge. Oligarchy, which is what we've got, is not. Capitalism has grabbed control of both Australian and American election systems through Citizens United here and the coal lobby there. What corporate and dark money fail to do, Putin steps in and does the rest.
Capitalism unchecked will lead to our extinction. Democracy, if we can protect it, could save us.
Though seeing the extent to which the Goldplated Oligarch Party in the USA is fully under the control of these dark money interests makes me fear it's too late and we'll never regain control of, by and for the people.
8
"How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Murder?". when i saw the title, i thought it was referring to the Trump impeachment trial or to the Trump presidency. the title would be appropriate in either case.
25
Currently in Hobart Tasmania. The new Premier of Tasmania is evironmentally enlightened and has put himself in charge of this key portfolio. Good for him. Overall many Australians that I have talked do not seem overly concerned about global warming and are very sanguine about the future of this beautiful and welcoming country.
7
@Milton Lewis We will see. Naming oneself climate change minister does not in itself mean he will take real action.
Margaret Macmillan cites the following exchange at the Paris Peace Conference on 29th January, 1919:
President of USA: "Am I to understand that if the whole civilised world asks Australia to agree ..., Australia is prepared still to defy the appeal of the whole civilised world?"
Australian Prime Minister: "That's about the size of it, ... "
Australian Prime Minister Billy HUGHES, was, informing US President WILSON that Australia would not back down over it's demands to annex German possessions in New Guinea and the Pacific as a trophy after the First World War.
Now is not the first time our leaders betrayed the better angels of our nature. The United Kingdom using the power it then had over Australia's foreign policy, took that matter out of Australia's hands. I expect much the same will happen with climate change, Australia will come under overwhelming pressure to change, pressure from within and from without.
It's not true that the country is being murdered. The country is being changed and we must change with it. We are doing that too slowly.
Australia will stop mining and selling coal, when people stop buying our coal. That day is coming, but it is not coming fast enough.
When the change comes, it will come with the three words, that no leader, progressive or conservative has so far said. It will be long, complicated and expensive.
17
@Patrick QUILL
Tackling climate change is not as expensive or complicated as the path we are on now.
29
You could retitle this article by changing Australia to the USA and changing a few politicians' names and it would be just as accurate.
So, how to break the dependence on fossil (fuels)?
If we realize we can have the same standard of living if we substitute solar for fossil then we can begin to make the transition. (Fossil denies this emphatically and warns us of increased costs and decreased standards - all untrue).
We must also realize we will commit ecocide, including our own extinction as a species, if we continue on our present course. (Fossil labels this as an extremist position and therefore please ignore it - again all untrue)
We can add a Carbon disposal fee to our own fossil. Make it revenue neutral.
We can force other countries to move to solar by adding tariffs to imports based on their Carbon content.
Why would the super-rich want in? Without change, at some point, our society will collapse, probably along the lines of the French revolution.
23
Last week I did some arithmetic, after reading that 25,000,000 acres had burned. That is roughly 39,000 square miles.
Australia and the US have similar areas, so it's not the whole country, but it's not 1 million acres either. And if you are paying attention it's getting hotter, while alternating between drought and flooding. None of this is normal.
It is time to stop blaming victims and worried people who have been paying attention for this. It is a problem for all of humanity, and those least able to survive are in general the first to suffer.
A general mobilization to work together to solve problems is absolutely necessary. We don't need more stuff and more distraction, more entertainment and more pollution. We need to acknowledge our common humanity and care for our lovely earth before we self-eject as its apex predator.
This is not a team sport; it's all of us. While despair and apathy are laziness in disguise, it seems daunting. However, the demise of civilization and loss of lives and livelihoods should be treated as non-starters. This is no time to relax and enjoy the show!
The youngsters, of whom Greta Thunberg is only one, are trying to get us to pay attention. It's way past time to get active.
Blaming victims is wrong. Climate injustice is wrong. We must wake up.
27
Do read and save Richard Flanagan's article. It is a powerful argument, with plentiful data about how we are subsidizing our own destruction.
14
@Susan Anderson I live in Canberra (for those that don't know, Australia's capital city). In a week we've had in the city a major fire (which closed the airport), a massive hailstorm that caused crazy damage, and a dust storm. And tonight the smoke from the coastal fires is back . Of course, it all happened when the politicians were still on their summer holidays, so of no concern to them... This is not normal! I'm sick of smelling smoke and feeling it in the back of my throat. I'm sick of seeing footage of burned wildlife and habitat (today there are stories that lyre birds may be the next species that we've endangered). I miss our famously blue sky! And yet, there is a large percentage of the population who think that climate change is a hoax. I honestly don't know what to do. I feel helpless and hopeless. Our reality is that both major parties are in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry. I used to think I was one of the lucky ones who got to live here. After this summer (which is only half way through), I'm not so sure...
16
People also set the fires, committing arson. How do we prevent that? There weren't just victims here, there were perpetrators. Of course, all of the perps were humans, and most of the victims were animals.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia owns four of the major Australian newspapers, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, Herald and The Courier Mail, and in every one of them he relentlessly plays down the effects of climate change and promotes those people and industries that are likely to support his radical right wing agenda.
Lets face it, only in a dysfunctional world could a man like Murdoch be allowed to accrue so much power and exert so much influence over the governments of three countries.
55
Maybe Murdoch’s right? Ever thought of that? He’s only wrong because he doesn’t bow to the Twitter sphere’s view of the world and all that travel in her.
Mr. Flanagan's article is timely but there is no leadership on this question in Australia. A new description 'climate refugee' has been coined since the hellish conditions started. Will it be karma that we do become climate refugees due to the pig-headedness of one man who is triumphant about 'stopping the boats' - i.e. stopping and imprisoning refugees who came by boat to Australia? So - which country is going to take us?
20
@Anton
Actually, there are already millions, if not hundreds of millions, of climate refugees already. It may be new to you in Australia, but it is not new to Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America and North America.
But it is an apt description of the loss of home and livelihood that the coming and increasing extremes of climate are causing, which will get worse at speed in the coming years.
19
I learned that the Sahara Desert was a fertile area thousands of years ago, cannot fix that.
England was attached to Europe about 11 thousand years ago.
It is the pollution of our air, water and soil that concerns me more than trying to blame wild fires solely on climate change; also, overpopulated is just as damaging to climate as many other contributors to changing climate.
2
@JRS The fact that we've just had our hottest year ever (and one of the driest), with large sections of the country effected by drought is related to climate change. Our rain forest has burned. Because it was tinder dry (thanks to higher temperatures and low rain fall).
3
Australia is both a victim and a perpetrator - a victim, particularly of the big carbon emitting countries such as China, USA and India. But also a perpetrator for the reasons outlined by Flanagan. We need to protest strongly on the global stage, but can only do so if we are a model of carbon emission reduction and the use of renewables.
14
Australians voted into power a party that promised to ignore climate change and expand coal mining. They are getting exactly what they voted for. In a democracy, you get the government that you deserve.
46
@A Cynic: If the same thing happens next year they will get it. Maybe it will take 3 years I a row.
The catastrophic bushfires of our Spring and Summer have jolted Australians and I think many in rest of the world.
Australians have the capacity to rapidly adapt and rise to the Occassion. Whilst we are reasonably conservative by nature, it is culturally a young country, and versatile.
We are one of the quickest up takers of new technologies. And by and large we are not chained to old dogmas.
The Morrison government won the last election because of good campaigning and organisation , coupled with an opposition led by a character with significant limitations and worrying performance, and capabilities.
It wasn’t so much the government won, it was more that the opposition lost an eminently winnable election.
The electorate considered many issues, and it was by not means a referendum on climate change.
The young - in Australia, United States, and elsewhere are slowly realising that the future is largely theirs, and are becoming more politically aware and involved.
11
How are all the animals supposed to adapt? Millions of them have been massacred by humans.
1
Anyone who quotes John Hewson about conservative politics isn’t objective! Poor old Hewson hasn’t had a good thing to say about his own political party since he lost the unlosable election nearly 30 yeas ago. Give it a rest.
I respect the right of everyone to become progressively more hysterical and point fingers about climate change. The prospects are bleak. But ludicrous suggestions about clubbing together Pacific Island nations into a geopolitical power dynamic are naive at best. And blaming any Australian government for not “doing enough” is deluded. I love the comments which say the is changing governments. I suspect those commentators would say the same regardless of the circumstances, including Mr Flanagan.
The more advanced thinking and writing on this vital topic confronts some realities. Practical realities. Diplomatic, scientific, economic and social realities.
Now that would be a useful opinion to read.
2
@Martin Scott I think Hewson was the Prime Minister Australia needed to have but we weren't actually good enough.
1
Even if Mr. Morrison reversed course, Rupert Murdoch, who engineered Mr. Morrison’s ascent, would destroy him. Murdoch media has convinced many Australians that the fires are the work of environmentalist provocateurs and firefighters looking for a payday.
Meaningful climate change policy is a non-starter until Murdoch’s influence wanes.
35
@Sennheiser516
"
Meaningful climate change policy is a non-starter until Murdoch’s influence wanes...."
Or until three of his four papers burn to the ground.
With any luck he'll sell WSJ to pay for the cleanup.
1
It's sobering to see how long communities & nations can deny for so long the relevance of a mounting disaster when clear evidence of this trend exists, but
(a) the full impact of that disaster is not imminent, &
(b) these communities or nations derive a current benefit from the status quo.
Australia is only the most obvious current example of this shortcoming. Most countries exhibit this shortcoming to some extent.
The task for communities, societies & Governments is not to decide whether to accept that human activity, particularly emissions of CO2 & methane through fossil fuel extraction & use, dangerously accelerate the pace of climate change on a global scale. This is a scientific question & the answer is clearly that it does.
The true task is for community, society & Government leaders to work in concert to devise, obtain public approval for & implement
(a) a domestic transition in time & with the minimum of disruption & hardship to a sustainable domestic environment coupled with a prosperous, equitable & stable economy, &
(b) cooperation internationally to promote an analogous global transition.
In the absence of such plausible transition plans, anxiety, fear & greed will remain strong impediments to effective action to address climate change creatively at the domestic & international levels.
10
Coal, petroleum and natural gas - fossil fuels all - are literally and figuratively dinosaurs. They need to become as nearly extinct as possible. Our civilization has powered itself for some one and a half centuries. Their time has passed. Yet during their lifespan, the atmospheric carbon released was enough to begin the planet's thermostat to reach unstoppable levels.
And now we must make the transition to something else that won't make the situation any worse. That means that ALL industrialized countries need to participate. No one should be exempt. Australia is more than the canary in the coal mine. It's the entire mine and all the miners.
10
I tried to change to solar, but I don't think my roof can hold the thousand pounds of panels they said I would need. I couldn't afford a good roofer, because so much of my income is taken in taxes. I then tried to get geothermal; not only would it cost more than my yearly income, I was told that they would have to dig a 500 foot hole on my property. Not having much property, I could just see my house falling into a sinkhole.
3
@Stephanie Wood You really need some better advice and contractors. The hole for geothermal is in fact 2 holes, each 6 inches in diameter. It is an excellent long-term investment, PARTICULARLY in NJ with the high electrical rates. I have friend in Ohio who have used geothermal heating and cooling for 30 years and, even with their relatively low electrical or oil/gas prices, have paid for their system 2 or 3 times over by now. For Australia not to use photo-voltaic is incredible foolish and short sighted. It would be a terrific investment in their future with all of their sunshine. Less so in Montclair, NJ.
2
Kudos to both Richard Flanagan and the New York Times for this important piece on the tragic events taking place in Australia and events that will continue to take place through out our summer.
Those outside of Australia must wonder how Australian PM, Scott Morrison was voted into Government. The answer is as sinister as it is simple:
Millions of dollars in negative attack advertising were thrown at Australian Labor Party leader Bill Shorten by the Coal Mining Interests. Combine that with the toxic and venomous anti Australian Labor Party propaganda of Rupert Murdoch's News Corps that owns the majority of Australia's print media and most of their rural media, and the answer becomes clearer. Rupert Murdoch's Media is something that the USA, Britain and Australia have in common and its no accident that our countries leaders are pretty much of the same inept and malfeasant substance.
Australia burns and the world must learn the importance of independent media free from corporate interests and material constraints to fulfil its role as the Fourth Estate, Guardians of Veritas and Protectors of Democracy. We are at Climate Crises and nothing points that out as tragically and dramatically as Australia on fire. We must not only learn but act.
40
@Alph Williams Um, no, the answer as to why Scotty from Marketing was elected is simple - dumb, old, white Queenslanders are still allowed to vote. The sooner we kick them out of the Commonwealth the better.
1
Since Australia's coal exports do not count as Australian emissions, even if they cut their domestic emissions to zero this would have no effect on their contribution to global warming.
As long as the fossil fuel industry is running the country, it's clear that Australian elites have no interest in cutting other countries' emissions either. They still need somebody to buy and burn their coal.
Their solution should obviously be to export the coal as quickly as possible and reinvest the profits in resettling the Australian (and in an act of altruism, the Tuvalu) population in Siberia.
8
AUSTRALIA'S Inhabitants need to take radical action to convert immediately to sustainable energy, if they want any chance of surviving on their island continent. The US and EU need to put a Marshall Plan in place for Australia and any other country so threatened by the destruction of habit and the possibility of remaining in their country. That means massive efforts to generate energy sustainably using solar and wind energy, storing hydrogen in caverns to generate electricity when there are decreases in generation by other means. Short of that, Australia may well be the first continent abandoned, made uninhabitable due to failing to respond adequately to global climate change.
8
I find it so disingenuous when someone describes what we are looking at in terms of extreme weather events as a glimpse into our future if we can’t keep warming below a certain threshold.
This isn’t the future. This is now- these events are happening now. These types of disasters are the new normal. This is the planet we live on now and we can’t fix it by stopping the emissions of carbon dioxide- we can just make it less bad.
We need to talk about this as a current crisis instead of referring to disasters as a warning from the future. Doing so is not only honest, it is likely to help people understand why calls for taking immediate action are gaining in strength and number.
30
And San Francisco is having another human disaster: gentrification and mass homelessness. Destroying the economy and rigging it for a small number of people does terrible damage, too.
They do what we did in 2016. In 2019 Australia elected a government that denies climate change as vehemently as our government does. They prefer not to know about the impact of coal so they elect governments that promise to open more coal mines. Sound familiar?
35
"Maybe the universe just doesn’t do long-term, sustainable versions of civilizations like ours. Maybe it’s not something that’s ever worked out, even across all the planets orbiting all the stars throughout all of space and time. Maybe every technological civilization like ours has been just a flash in the pan, lighting up the cosmos with its brilliance for a few centuries, or even a few millennia, before fading back to darkness."
Adam Frank, "Light of the Stars", on Fermi's Paradox.
17
When I speak to friends in Sydney, Canberra or on the Gold Coast in Queensland nobody seems much alarmed. It’s elsewhere they say. Scary.
8
@CitizenTM not sure which friends you are speaking to, I live in Canberra and this is very much on my mind all the time. It's an immediate problem here with smoke and fires impacting day to day life. I was evacuated from work twice last week, the first time for a destructive hail storm and then later in the week due to high winds and bush fires cutting off the airport. Not sure how long the rest of the world is behind Australia but I am sure you will catch up soon. The fossil fuel lobby is just as much in control everywhere else as they are here.
35
Thanks for the reality check. To show how far smoke can spread, I'm near New York City, and fires in Canada, hundreds of miles away, once made our air very foggy and sooty; it smelled like the fires were in the next town.
1
@CitizenTM Well, I'm in Adelaide, and out fires barely even rated a mention overseas. Oh, except for Kangaroo Island. All those pictures of koalas seem to make you all so sad...
Australia is the size of the US. Imagine Florida is on fire, and you ring your friend in Seattle. Nope, nothing happening here.
Duh.
This horror is so awful I am not sure if it is galvanizing or paralyzing.
I think we desperately need a positive vision for what the future could be if we fully embrace changing our ways of living.
So many times I have been anxious about having to tackle a large seemingly unpleasant task. I procrastinate. I agonize. I try my very best to pretend the task doesn't exist. Eventually something makes me just do it. And it turns out to be not nearly as bad as I'd feared. In fact, the denial period was far and away the worst part.
People respond to scary things with denial. I think writers, filmmakers, and artists need to create an understandable and reasonably appealing representation of what day to day life might look like in a post fossil fuel world.
Help people see the possibilities for a good future we can all work toward.
16
The lack of alarm by their gov't and our own is just beyond the pale. These fires effected half the country. Scientists are saying that Australia will become uninhabitable in the future. And their leader is pushing more coal?? Our leader is pushing more coal along with more oil pipelines and fracking. I call it homocide. And eventually the people who keep pushing us in this unsustainable path need to be held to account in one way or another. They are literally playing Russian Roulette with our lives.
25
Interesting that scientists suggest that Australia will become uninhabitable in the future. Have a think about the history of the country. Millenia went by with very few humans able to survive here, with only a small strip of fertile land around the edges. The inhabitants lived off the sea and off animals and fruits - there was no domestication of the fertile land.
Then 250 years ago, Europeans arrived and found land that had never been cultivated and other goodies like iron ore, coal, uranium etc and started to extract it and sell to others. Now we have 25M people and not enough local resources to support them.
The climate and natural phenomena have been extreme for millions of years - bush fires are common, flooding is common in some areas as is snow and blizzards. Extreme heat is not a new issue either. Humans have certainly changed things although stopping the extraction of coal will not stop nature from burning - for many plants it is a natural cycle in their life and is a way to regenerate with the heat popping seeds and the ash to feed them.
I would suggest that perhaps Australia should never have been inhabited at all, it is simply not suited to humans - there are more ways to die here than any other country! That would partly explain why the first people to arrive did not increase their population very much, it was simply too hard to survive.
5
@Stephen W
Australia was civilized over 60,000 years ago and First Nation Australians were practicing aquaculture, agriculture and forest management continuously up to the time of European invasion. Australian authors like Bill Gammage, Henry Reynolds, Bruce Pascoe and numerous others detail the sophistication of first nation civilisation that was spread right across the continent not just by the coast. Australia needs to confront the truth of its past and embrace the knowledge of traditional land management. And we need to immediately accelerate the mitigation of our carbon emissions, whatever the economic consequences.
17
@Peter Rowed - there were far fewer First Nation people (maybe a million), they were willing to move to 'greener pastures', and they were more evenly distributed across the landscape than the today's highly urbanised 25 million inhabitants.
Australia is the most urbanised country in the developed world, only NYC and LA have larger populations than Sydney and Melbourne.
4
The concerns are justified and the risk of many more catastrophic events is high. But the hyperbole is unnecessary. Omnicide?? I don't think so. The landscape will regenerate. It will not be the same, at least not in the near future, but it will regenerate.
Remember when Yellowstone burned? People said the park was destroyed. But a few decades later, Yellowstone is vibrant and healthy.
I am not suggesting climate change is not the most serious environmental risk we face. I am suggesting the apocalyptic language is unnecessary and not constructive.
5
@woodyrd, I'm afraid large sections may not "regenerate". The state of NSW alone has lost 0.5 billion species of animals. The ferocity of these fires has been unprecedented and has caused destruction of the forest floors, extended into wetlands and destroyed local ecosystems, unlikely to recover. Affected waterways are now polluted with dead fish. Yellowstone fires burned @0.8M acres, destroying @300 mammals. Collectively NSW & Victoria have lost 24.7 Million acres. Sorry, but no comparison. We weep for our loss, for a lack of leadership and for our future.
26
@woodyrd
Yes, fire plays a natural, even productive, part in many environments.
However, fires of the extent & intensity that we currently too often see in Australia & elsewhere is not such a benign factor.
6
@woodyrd
In addition to woodyd's letter, you can add in the effects of invasive plant species colonising the burned areas, and feral cats and foxes making a literal killing of threatened animal species when hunting these areas as well.
You will read many feel good letters and opinion pieces about resilience and heroism.
You may read articles about these fires being unprecedented, and letters quoting only the number of human lives lost to argue that it is business as usual.
As of January 24, 19 MILLION ACRES have burned in Australia during the 2019/2020 fire season. (excluding northern tropical savanah)
Our federal government did almost NOTHING during the first several MONTHS of these fires, until community outrage brought about a response.
Looking on the bright side and leaving nature to fix it for us just won't cut it this time.
Apocalyptic language is neccesary, as that is our reality.
6
What a great article. one would be very hard pressed to read such a well written piece in the standard Australian papers.
i think we all need to wake up and listen to the experts and also vote out the current Federal Government at the next election.
45
@Anton Ditto for the USA.
We actually do see this type of writing in Australian papers - overly dramatic and full of factual errors. One example is the statement about the “black Notre Dames” - the Aboriginal people did not build structural monuments out of wood. Their sacred places are rock paintings and stone carvings. Most of the land that burned did not have rock paintings because it was forest land. The “physical expression of Indigenous Australians’ spiritual connection to the land” has not been severed. This is simply not true.
Later on in the piece there is a whinge about the Government’s “pitiful” emissions reduction. If countries are not allowed to buy credits to meet their emissions targets then it should be illegal for other countries to sell those credits, however all we hear are complaints about “manipulating the figures”, yet Governments the world over have been given this method to use. There also appears to be double counting going on. Some media reports suggest that Australia is a high emitter because it sells its coal for others to burn and therefore is responsible for that burn. Given that theory, Westinghouse should be paying for the electricity my fridge uses.
There is a too much hysteria about the end of the world right now. Nature has a habit of dealing with overpopulation of any plant or animal. We shouldn’t be scared of that - the world wasn’t designed to house 10 billion humans.
Over the course of history, many tyrranical leaders were held strictly accountable for genocides over which they presided, meeting their ultimate demise as punishment for such unspeakable acts. So when are we going to start holding our leaders, who deny climate change and thereby foster our very own extinction and that of every other living thing on the planet, to account for their crimes against humanity? There is no difference between leaders like Scott Morrison and Donald Trump than those who planned and conducted genocides. They are both doing precisely the same. It is time they are held accountable.
70
@Rich D
We are trying but the money, fossil fuel money, negates the effort.
17
@Susan Bernard-Like other corporate welfare recipients, oil and gas in the U.S. receive outsized support from the government. We can change this if enough of use stop putting them in our portfolios and press for investment in renewables.
2
What a tragic situation in Australia, and they are not helped by a Prime Minister who is described as supporting the coal industry, in spite of all the facts about the risks associated with burning coal.
With half of the entire populationof Australia adversely affected by the fires, preceded by severe drought and unhealthy high temperatures, action is needed now if the country is ever to recover at all. Sadly, that is unlikely with a right leaning PM.
The thought of the billions of birds and animals perishing in the wild fires brings anguish to so many, as well. Should we see our own future in the catastrophic events in Australia? It's something to keep in mind when it's time to vote in the elections later this year.
27
I would like to see the research done to state that half of Australia’s population has been adversely affected by the bush fires. It is sensationalistic reporting like this that is misleading and fraudulent. Granted that nearly 2,000 homes were lost, however the vast majority of land that was affected by the fires were national parks, farmland and forest. Only a small amount of land could be described as urban. If you also define the number of buildings in Australia, you will see that 2,000 represents a minuscule number or percentage affected.
1
'Adversely affected' does not mean directly burnt by fires. Sydney and Melbourne have experienced the highest number of days of the poorest air quality possible since records began. Don't forget we are not just breathing burnt trees but substances released by buildings such as asbestos.
13
@Stephen W If you're living in Sydney you would have been directly effected by the fires. Breathing smoke for weeks on end means that YOU have been effected. Canberra had the worst air quality in the world for a week or two. My house didn't burn, but being unable to leave the house for weeks because the air quality was so bad does count.
2
I think it is quite clear by now we as a race will not address climate change in any meaningful way and the end is already written. The only chance we had was if the U.S. took a leadership role and we all know that is not happening. And given the current occupant of the WH, we cannot point fingers at anyone else. Sure, Australia is a disaster, but just one of many, us included. So, sorry future generations, but lets go out partying anyway. Hopefully the planet will recover and continue on its merry way without us.
22
@Jeffrey Tierney
The planet is in no danger from us at all.
Humanity will be gone soon. Unfortunately we will be taking many, many species with us.
Those that are left will simply evolve and diversify to fill the gaps we leave behind.
Just as they did after the five previous great extinctions.
23
@EK What if you're wrong?
You are too optimistic. Humans are the cockroaches of the planet and can survive anything. Soon, after we've destroyed every other species, we'll start eating each other. We're metaphorically doing that already anyway.
Australias climate policy is tied directly to the USA. If trump says 'jump', we say 'how high'. We have to tow the line no matter how perverse the outcomes, as tarrifs have become trumps preferred disciplinary action for insolence.
Australia is the leader in renewables technology advancement. We have commenced a project to provide solar power to all of Singapore. To suggest our government is responsible for a pending apocalypse shows a huge misunderstanding in politics, energy production and global economics. It would be great if we could just tear it all down, but the transition away from fossil fuels won't happen overnight. In the meantime, buy a tesla, put solar on your roof, limit single use packaging and don't vote trump.
29
@Pete Australia's love of coal predates the election of Donald Trump in 2016 by a century or more. There was brief lull between 2007 and 2013, but it's been back to the all systems coal regime ever since then.
1
Wow, does Trump really run Australia? Then how did you guys manage to get national health and caregivers' allowances?
1
@Phil Daniels this article is discussing the present, not the past.
When people have suffered enough they will demand government to make the necessary changes and these politicians will do that as they love to be in power. At this time people haven’t suffered enough to force the change. Only china is mandating a complete change in energy and transportation to be mostly clean renewables and they know they will dominate the world economically and politically for then next hundred years because of it. That’s why Tesla opened its factory there as it’s getting good government support. That’s why China dominates the high speed clean energy train industry when 10 years ago their trains were worse than Amtrak. Even USA or Australia make some new tech its China that applies, buys, steals, or uses the tech to create this new economy. China does this while the rest of the world is busy making a mess of their respective counties. Perhaps after their economies collapse people in Australians and USA will change their political system so that all its citizens can enjoy a good life instead of just the few richer people. Not saying that we need to adopt China’s system, but if one looks at their system there are many good parts that should be adopted in western countries.
12
@Stephen Gergely
China is a communist dictatorship and is in a position to dictate energy policy. Please explain why their greenhouse gas emissions will increase every year between 2016 and 2030, the Paris accord timetable, and that during that time frame they will, alone, add more CO2 to the atmosphere than mankind has added since the inception of the industrial revolution. That does not include the increase in India's greenhouse gas emissions nor does it include the coal fired plants China is building in Vietnam, Kenya and the rest of the third world.
China does not have to take the will of its people into consideration in its energy policy. By your standards, it represents leadership that they are increasing greenhouse gas emissions while the Western democracies are reducing theirs.
What exactly do you want to copy from the Chinese? Increased CO2 production?
The only thing they have going for them is good propaganda that has convinced those oblivious to facts that they are leaders in environmental policy.
10
@ebmem
Okay. Last time I checked the US wasn't Communist. (I'll keep mum about the dictatorship part, since that's a big tenuous at the moment). So what's the US's excuse for not only doing nothing - but for going in the opposite direction?
28
The Electoral College, a form of 200 year old tyrrany that, sadly, was not abolished along with slavery. The majority of American voters did not vote for Trump.
"If Mr. Morrison’s government genuinely believed the science, it would immediately put a price on carbon, declare a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects and transfer the fossil fuel subsidies to the renewables industries."
This is a common misconception. Conservative politicians, unlike the constituents they mislead, do believe the science. Privately. The fossil fuel companies most responsible for global warming pioneered the science, understood the facts, and then buried them. Mitch McConnell and his ilk know the science isn't "fake."
They know what they're doing to their people, too. They just don't care. Such people should not hold positions of power, and should never be allowed to decide the fates of others.
I don't know why corrupt leaders and their shortsighted corporate backers are so intent on playing chicken with climate catastrophe and their people's lives. Are they counting on the apathy of the governed to keep them in power? Nothing dispels apathy like finding your house on fire.
41
My bet is that the voters in the bush areas that suffered the most were, and still are, rock solid supporters of Scott Morrison. We live in a political era where “attitude” trumps events, even catastrophic events. My bet is Australian rural voters are the same as American rural voters — climate “change” is a myth perpetrated by “elites.” Coal is good, and efforts on behalf of clean air and clean water “hurt” the economy. Besides the land is “mine” and mine alone. I think Morrison understands his rural base as well as Trump does,
31
@William Colgan Sadly true.
The popular American discourse of "resilience" is itself part of the problem. There can be no resilience in the face of climate change. It's too late to be resilient. A much more radical response is required involving re-engineering society and terminating industrial culture and financial capitalism.
New York City is itself a symptom of the problem.
20
A lot of justifications and whataboutery for continuing a version of the status quo going on. The trajectory by all major greenhouse emitting countries is crystal clear along with the already demonstrated consequences. It's quite simple - do you want a habitable planet or not?
32
Most likely in near future, many democratic countries would need to examine the system of government that has been in place for so many decades. With elected leaders beholden to big money lobbies which got them elected in the first place, elections are becoming mere formalities. May be term limits need to be shortened and also, important decisions require people's vote. The trust is no longer there.
15
Instead of entering multiple responses to some of the comments in this chain, I'll combine my remarks and so...
1. Jailing people for actions not currently defined by law as crimes is a practice banned not only in the United States Constitution, but in the laws of every free nation. Do those of you advocating such a course really want to live in countries in which you could be jailed for an act that was legal at the time you committed that act?
2. As measured by market value, the ten largest companies in the world are Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Facebook Alibaba, Tencent, J.P. Morgan, Johnson & Johnson, and Visa. There is not a fossil fuel company among them. Of the 100 largest companies in world, only five (Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Petro-China, and Sinopec) fossil fuel outfits. So the stock markets' prosperity is not based on energy companies.
3. Rupert Murdoch's ownership of sixty per cent of Australia's newspaper represents not a structural failure of the capitalist system, but a failure of Australian governments to regulate that system. Laws in many other western nations prevent a such a concentration of power and Australia could also pass such laws.
18
@Quiet Waiting
We did have laws prohibiting media concentration. These were watered down when the conservative government was elected. I'd go further actually and say declare Murdoch's papers subversive and rescind his licence to print newspapers. A brave politician goes against Murdoch in this country.
54
@Quiet Waiting
Great letter.
I'm interested in other readers with good memories providing tips on civil actions similar to those brought against big tobacco (?) in the past.
3
@Quiet Waiting The problem isn't just fossil fuels. Humanity is blowing past various planetary boundaries (google). Climate change is the symptom of a deeper problem.
11
The article in Sydney newspaper that is linked to in this one
spoke of a bank takeover of carbon extraction industries...assuming private investment funds dry up
(though Siemens' hardly seems to be). But what that
actually entailed was not made clear.
If Australia's central bank "bought out" coal mining
companies what would that actually mean, given who
actually runs the government.
@bl I thought it was the Reserve Bank's (akin to Federal Reserve) underwriting coal fired power stations as these are rapidly becoming stranded assets.
1
The Canadian government bought a leaking pipeline, when Kinder Morgan’s shareholders couldn’t stomach the risk any longer. Four billion dollars in with an estimated eleven million more tax dollars coming to expand the bitumen pipeline. Talk about paying for our own execution.
4
@bl
In principle this seems to mean that the citizens
(and voters) become the shareholders since a formerly
privately owned capital good is now owned by the state.
It then becomes a national political matter how to use or not use such capital.
At that point it would then appear that political action
and organization can be a more effective tool to use in implementing a policy of mothballing or decisive reduction of co2 emissions since private interests
defending their investment are not in play.
What do polls now tell us about how Australians want to proceed with their ongoing suicidal pact with coal?
When is their next election? I maintain that those climate-change deniers who profit from it should be tried for crimes against humanity and, if convicted, stripped of their wealth and imprisoned for life.
23
Why didn't we do that to Bush Jr., Cheney and Rumsfeld?
1
The problem is much deeper than politics that comes and goes
It is the Aussie lifestyle
Below are the per person emission of CO2, per year in metric tons
Australia 16.9
US 16.24
UK 5.8
France 5.5
Sweden 4.19
They need to learn to live like Europeans
28
@Woof - The Aussie problem wasn't just created by them. Prior to China becoming the leader in the production of C02 gas, the US was the leader in the production of C02 gas. At least until recently we were the world's biggest polluter. I don't know what is going to happen. And here in Los Angeles, we are almost entering back into drought conditions following a decent year of rain.
12
@Woof
Australia is a very different place from Europe.
It is large - with a spread out population - most on opposite coasts. I wonder how much of that footprint is from transportation. Nonetheless, contrasting the current population's lifestyle with the indigenous population before the European's arrived is telling. I expect the Aboriginal population of Australia had one of the least impacts on their surroundings in the 18th century when Europeans arrived.
13
I’m just back from a month spent in Australia. Lovely country. Lovely people. But I was astonished by the fuel inefficiency of the vehicles I rented and the lack of solar panels on houses in cities like Perth which have all year round sunshine. The problem is largely cheap fossil fuel. Australia has adopted the American economic model of spread out habitation. It’s not sustainable. I could not get over the constant smell of smoke in the countryside wherever I went. It’s an arid country. And they are still tree felling. I think they are in denial about the scale of what they are facing. The climate is only likely to become more extreme. Their media is abject. Simply awful. So is their Government. I also read some of Murdock’s newspapers. They are propaganda rags. Australia has enjoyed a very long economic boom it may be coming to an end.
4
Apocalyptic fires, floods, drought and millions of desperate people on the move worldwide. Here the Trump administration is rolling back provisions of the Clean Water Act to allow industrial waste and agricultural runoff into our rivers and streams. Why aren’t we descending on Washington and our state legislatures by the millions demanding sane policies on climate protections? Oh I forgot. We’re marching to protect fetuses and assault rifles. Priorities.
160
@Ruthanne - Well Ruthanne, Americans don't believe that man has polluted the environment to such an extent as to cause this extreme global warming. So, what can you do? Remember how George W. Bush ran as the "compassionate conservative" that was going to address global warming. In the end he did nothing, and that was perfectly acceptable to a majority of Americans.
I would highly recommend the book, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells.
17
@Steve Being those people put our lives at risk, something drastic has to be done to stop them if we do not get a full blue house, senate and executive branch this November. Their delusions and greed are killing people and ecosystems.
3
A coal expansion policy anywhere on the globe at this point is based on antediluvian ideas of unlimited Earth resource consumption for human comfort and convenience. The Earth is fighting back. Morrison's policy makes a few people richer for the limited time they live on this Earth while billions of others, the poorest among us, who already share too much of the burden of suffering, taking the hardest hit. The US is most culpable given that our consumption far exceeds that of other developed nations with little to no sign of any changes in personal habits. It's not just corporations that need to be called to account. Shame on us.
34
This literally is the way the world will end. Not with a bang but with denial about what's in front of one's face and misdirected worry about "the Economy."
100
I wouldn't call the economic meltdown and homeless crisis in San Francisco a misdirected worry. That is really a denial of what's in front of your face.
Australians, take a page from California's book. Solar and wind are huge job creators (and, as with fossil fuels, some of the jobs require a college degree, but a lot don't - they're good jobs, with good pay and a real career path).
Go solar, build wind, & electrify everything (definitely including cars). Do all of that simultaneously. It's what all of us have to do. And GET INVOLVED in politics! Vote, register others to vote, volunteer & donate to the right candidates. We need to make up for others who aren't awake to the danger yet.
63
@Carol We have no choice but to be involved in politics, seeing as voting (at every level, local council up to federal) is mandated by law in Australia.
5
@Carol
Australians are leaders in solar & tidal energy.
It's also the case that the coal is also a major component of their economy.
Actually, they're quite similar in their economy & attitudes to many regions of Canada & the USA in these matters.
It's just that North American regional environments in many cases to date aren't as fragile & susceptible to the scale of disaster that is currently seen in Australia.
1
Great writing in a just and desperate cause. It reminds me of the brilliant rhetoric of Representative Adam Schiff in arguing for the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump. That we humans have such voices pleading our case is reason to celebrate who we are as a species. I fear however, that the ignorance and hatred surrounding such beacons may simply be too deep. Omnicide. Throw language and meaning onto the list of what's being murdered. I'm scared for my kids. I'm scared for me.
48
This sounds like here in the US except it’s much worse. Imagine that, the whole continent, uninhabitable. Where once was a very diverse ecosystem, now is ashes. We think that the fires in Paradise were horrific, they were nothing compared to this. Here we have a leader just like Ausrtalia’s, in in the thrall of the coal industry and in total denial of climate change. It’s sad, very sad, and to some degree preventable. It’s lock and load time again, where’s my other foot?
20
We are not so different here. Americans continue to build houses with lumber, so when a forest fire occurs, as in Paradise, the 20 tons of dry fuel in each house makes the fires much more deadly than they would have been otherwise.
8
@Mike Roddy It isn't about the wood used in houses, it's about burning carbon. A couple of weeks ago on PBS Science Friday, Ira Flatow asked fire scientist Dr. Crystal Kolden if Australia was, "the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world."
Her answer was, "It is!"
18
@Mike Roddy the fires in Australia (& Redding, last year) were so hot that nothing was left of CARS. Even the aluminum in the wheels melted. So unless you're proposing everything in every house be made of stone, I think the problem is climate change caused by burning fossil fuels.
18
@Carol and Robert,
Land use emissions in the US, as reported to IPCC, are about 400 million tons of CO2 per year, no small number, and that doesn't even include the 150 million tons of CO2 emissions from our wood that is imported from Canada.
We rank #47 in the world in house fire safety, some kind of Little House on the Prairie habit. Most other countries in the world have wised up, and build with masonry or concrete. They laugh at us (trust me, I've visited over 55 countries).
Our houses last 60 years, on average. In other countries, they are built to last for centuries. It's all about the churn- disposable diapers, plastic, cars, and houses.
8
Very fine but gloomy article. Is the general population intelligent enough to appreciate what is happening to their environment and what it means for the future of their country and their progeny? Judging from this article and others I have read on this subject I would question whether the gravity of the problem will be recognized in time to take corrective action and whether that action will be effective when it is taken. A very depressing situation.
24
@Howard I'm not sure Howard but perhaps answer me this: is the general population of the United States intelligent enough to not vote in a narcissistic president?
@Howard Follow the money. Seems to be a principle even in the Apocalypse.
I'm certainly a believer in climate change but be aware that the strong El Nino added to the dryness and enhanced the fires. it's weakening now and that may help their situation as well as ending our "no winter" winter here.
1
@Robert You are incorrect. Australia is not currently being affected by a "strong El Nino".
Here is a quote from the Australian Bureau of Meterology on 1/21/2020. "Both the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) are neutral, and likely to remain so at least until the end of the southern hemisphere autumn."
And from climate.gov in August 2019, "The El Niño of 2019 is officially done. Near-average conditions in the tropical Pacific indicate that we have returned to ENSO-neutral conditions "
8
@Robert I think you mean the Indian ocean dipole, which has added to our climate problems for the past (year ?).
Thankfully this has now weakened, and we have had much needed rain over much, but not all, of our drought stricken and fire ravaged areas.
Now we have silt and ash flowing into our waterways, causing algal blooms, and suffocating our fish, crustaceans and platypuses.....
4
Richard Flanagan is a novelist, not a scientist.
Climate change has a role in the disaster affecting Australia but there are many other contributing factors (including sadly, the deliberate lighting of fires by arsonists and a failure of adequate management of plant and bush fuel). One of the major problems is that Australia contributes approximately 1.4% to global warming so blowing up our economy will not make any difference. Climate change must be responded to globally.
Richards's inflammatory rhetoric adds nothing to any discussion in Australia or elsewhere about fires and how to prevent and manage them.
5
@Jill Reddan Australia's direct contribution is 1.4% but indirectly with all the coal it sells?
25
@RamS exactly. It's the cold that's being dug out of the ground exported to China and India this doing the damage. and that's down to Australia.
13
@Jill Reddan
Maybe, just maybe, novelists, seers, elders, poets and people who think deeply about this land and its peoples have got something meaningful to say, not at the expense of science but out of its integration of thought and practice.
29
Scott Morrison's call for resilience mirrors what the climate change deniers. principally the GOP, are saying here as well. The threat of climate change is either considered not real or it's already too late to do anything except show good old resilience because that's what Americans do, especially when they are able to cash their FEMA checks. Renewable energy is derided as unimportant despite the fact that it employs over 3 million people in the US (far more than fossil fuel industries) in equally good paying jobs and the idea of transitioning to a clean energy future is considered a fantasy but not clean coal. Resilience is constantly being touted as the solution because it's proponents don't really believe they will have to do it or that Uncle Sam will be forced to bail them out by the fossil fuel loving electorate. Australia, in short, is a preview of our own energy future.
22
New Yorkers. When you read this article and you feel how climate change is destroying the world, let it motivate you to do what you can here in our city.
Compost your food scraps (reduces methane, important contributor to greenhouse effect), avail yourself of our excellent residential recycling program (underutilized, take a tour of SMRF in Sunset Park), stop buying single use plastic (petroleum industry driver), get solar panels on the roof of your apartment building (saves money). We can do more right here to stop climate change.
11
@NYC MD and make sure your next car is electric. Not just a hybrid; electric. I have a 70 mile round trip commute, and my 2017 Nissan Leaf is a great car for it; in stop & go traffic, the battery life actually goes up. Cheaper to own, easy to charge, almost zero maintenance costs, and way more fun to drive than a gas car. I'm never going back to gas.
12
All the New Yorkers who've moved to Montclair drive SUVs, have multiple children, and you should see all the school buses and traffic. All of it is unnecessary. People who have children are the number one problem in industrialized nations.
1
@Carol I wonder if the world can mine enough of the elements needed for batteries to convert the world to electric cars?
Australians, in their recent election, collectively decided that they couldn't afford to take action on climate change.
Couldn't afford it.
To be sure, the CO2 in the atmosphere currently will set the course for our climate changes for the next 50 years. Yet Australia, and the rest of the world, must face the music: we must act now to provide for a habitable planet in the future. We must find a way to afford it.
36
@Lake Monster Americans in their recent election decided to elect an idiot as a president stop go figure.
2
@Lake Monster
Of course they can afford it. Climate change action is much cheaper than this raging alternative.
Seriously, now. Can people really be this thick? Do they actually buy such flimsy manipulation, or are they half-knowingly accepting this ridiculous excuse so that they can vote the way they want for their actual reasons: sexism, racism and the other goals of the right wing?
I am on the verge of advocating a return to absolute monarchy. Prince Charles would do a lot better than the current leaders of Australia and America.
Crazy times.
@Lake Monster Australia is toast. They'll limp along for a while but they'll get what they didn't pay for. In time, so will we.
What happens when what is going on in CA an dthe west coast of the US becomes the norm in other places?
Take a look at the back issue of Scientific American. They had a spread on what they came up with regarding environment, heat, fire and all that you talked about in this article.
The intelligence community in many countries, many business and insurance companies are on the same page as SCIAM but tRump and like minded deniers are toast to their prophets (sic).
11
Your question is doubly valid for the US. Its government is in climate change denial. Trump blames the governor of CA for wildfires when the US owns about 85% of the forests in CA. The Senate is about to make Trump a king. How many ways can I count the ways to commit suicide, United States?
67
We are now beyond the point at which we (as citizens of the world) need to begin to demand that politicians who continue to make climate change worse through denial or environmental rollbacks be tried as committing crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, too many people seem to have accepted their role as consumers, instead of citizens. The rights and responsibilities of consumers are very different than those of citizens.
22
@Todd Johnson
You advocate jailing people for acts that were not defined in law as criminal offenses at the time that those acts were committed. Please remember that you and I live in a nation that banned such retroactive action (ex post facto) laws in its Constitution.
It's not just the government, every human who owns a car, or a house, or gives birth to a child, is part of the problem. Politicians aren't driving your SUV, or your school bus, or turning on your central air, or tossing your plastic baby diapers into a landfill.
@Quiet Waiting Shall we wait silently on legal procedures, as our world dies around us due to the actions of these terracides? This is the future of our world we are talking about.
Fire is a natural part of Australia's ecology.
The Aborigines knew how to limit its damage with controlled burns. That appears to have been forgotten. Plantations of non-native pine trees with flammable resinous sap makes it worse.
4
@Jonathan Katz
Eucalyptus forests that are natural in much of Australia make for explosive & fast moving vast fires if temperatures are high enough & long enough & drought conditions have dried the forests sufficiently.
2
@Jonathan Katz
Not like this mate.
@Jonathan Katz Not like this.
1
I've long wondered how America's climate deniers would react when the true horror of climate change was actually upon us. Surely they would change their tune, and embrace desperate measures to try to get a hold on the situation. But now we know that very likely wouldn't be the case. Like their counterparts in Australia, they will simply let their country, and its citizens, be incinerated. Quite amazing.
89
This is pure hyperbole.
Most of Australia is untouched by the fires.
The mining companies don't receive subsidies. It's just the way the tax system applies to any business in Australia. Cigarette and booze companies get the same treatment.
Much of Australia is already uninhabitable.
32 people died in the fires. 1200 Australians died on the roads last year and 40,000 required hospital treatment, yet we don't ban cars.
Feral cats every 2 weeks, kill as many animals, mostly native, that the fires have killed.
GDP is hardly affected by the fires, likely 0.3% and will be recovered over time. Mining as a whole in Australia is 8% of GDP, with minimal alternatives to replace it.
Renewable investment has been significant, there are minimal restrictions on any investment, so the likes of John Hewson can invest whatever he wants. What he wants though is direct taxpayer subsidies and grants to underwrite those investments.
9
@Paul
Most of Australia is untouched? Greater than one million acres has been scorched. More square miles than the state of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. That is a very large area. The uninhabitable areas do not burn because there is nothing to burn. The areas that have burned are habitable areas.
105
@Paul
Not sure what reality you live in. 24.7 million acres have been destroyed in NSW & Victoria alone, and they are still ablaze. Sydney University estimates @0.5 billion animals killed. This level is not killed by feral cats. The intensity of these fires have killed eco-stems and our ability to regenerate and recover. Our tourist industry brand is severely damaged, and so is at least 3.2% GDP.
5
@Paul "Feral cats every 2 weeks, kill as many animals, mostly native, that the fires have killed." This kind of misinformation disqualifies you from being taken seriously along with any further refutation.
2
It's important to remember the physics involved here.
Releasing CO2 into the air affects the entire globe for a period of centuries. Nothing that Australia can do alone will have a significant effect on climate change. Nothing the world does today to reduce emissions will have a significant effect for decades. The next 50 years of climate change have already been determined by our past actions.
So the fires in Australia, caused in part by climate change, would have happened no matter what the Australian government did over the last 20 years, and climate change and fires will continue irrespective of what the Australian government does. To the extent that the world acts together, we can have a significant effect on climate change, but our actions today will only change the trajectory of warming significantly 40-50 years from now.
Is there a moral obligation to make changes now to benefit our children? Yes, but don't claim that Australia needs to act on a carbon tax to fight the forest fires. Those fires will happen no matter what Australia, or the rest of the world, does today. Claiming that today's actions on greenhouse gas emissions will have a direct effect on today's crisis, or at any time other than decades from now, is a lie unsupported by science. Australia's politicians have a crisis they need to deal with. Kicking them while they're down will only encourage them to spitefully ignore us when the crisis moderates and they have time to consider the future.
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@Tom Meadowcroft " Those fires will happen no matter what Australia, or the rest of the world, does today. " So this is supposed to be a justification for not only doing what got us here to begin with but in the case of Australian coal, increasing it. Which is of course insanity.
29
Living in the bush, preparing to evacuate (twice), breathing toxic smoke, haunted by the screams of burning animals I want to do more than 'kick' lazy, incompetent and obfuscating Australian politicians. I'd like to see them driven from office; and enjoy a spell in the slammer (as opposed to lolling about on Waikiki or mugging for the media with one of the few remaining Koalas). They deserve nothing but contempt.
@Tom Meadowcroft
And what do propose to do? Nothing? Something has to be done or things will keep getting worse!
1
It would take an extremely insensitive person to not feel empathy for the citizens, and animals, of Australia. The animals can't vote, but the humans can, and they continue to support politicians who deny climate change even when confronted with a nationwide firestorm. I think of the 1982 film, The Road Warrior, and its futuristic apocalyptic view of an Australian wasteland. Guess what..??..it's here.
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The AU government and community need to look at this realistically, they do have natural water supply, simply keep it from running into the sea! Capture it and deliver it (without evaporation) to where it is needed!
@Nobody
The major water artery in Australia, the Murray-Darling river system, has failed to reach the sea for many years now. It has already been captured.
It's always been a dry country. They're going to have to change their forest management practices.
And they should help the world to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but that only helps solve the problems of 50 years from now. Australians, and everyone else, will have to deal with the effects of climate change today irrespective of how we act to reduce emissions.
6
@Nobody I've heard it said that more water flows down the Danube than all the surface water in Australia.
Living on the East Coast of Australia beside the Richmond River here it's about 150m wide and fairly deep, nothing like the Rhine or even much smaller rivers in Europe, but 125km up river past Kyogle you can step over it without getting your feet wet. Most of our rivers on the East Coast are tidal. Inland the rivers rely on rainfall and we haven't had a great deal of that over the last few years.
When I was growing up in the 1950s the existential threat to life on our planet was what was referred to simply as “the bomb.” I will never forget a night in late 1957 or 1958 when I was in junior high school and stayed up into the early morning hours reading Nevil Shute’s apocalyptic novel set in Melbourne, Australia, entitled “On the Beach.” We still live in a world with nuclear weapons and their potential for wreaking cataclysm, have added to that horror the equally terrifying results of climate chaos, and once again see and read about nightmares occurring in Australia.
27
I think about that book often recently and the movie. Existential dread and being a grandparent makes it more painful.
2
@Allen
Wait. Viruses have some potential too.
Mankind is very good at self-destruction.
@Allen
Partly true. But, in fact, climate change/global warming is more dangerous than all the rest of the threats combined, because it is inevitable, and because of the ignorance that prefers to panic about terr'ists and epidemics and ignore the boiling pot we're in.
1
Murdoch properties in the US (Fox "News") and Australia (The Australian) are sources of misinformation on climate that have contributed to both countries' completely inadequate response to the crisis. Murdoch is, in effect, a terrorist causing enormous damage on multiple continents, for personal profit.
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@Rich
The question is how do we, the people who suffer as a result of this enormously powerful propaganda machine (News Corporation), fight back? How can we publicise the damage that Murdoch media outlets are doing to the people of the US, UK and Australia every day? How can we expose the relentless barrage of misinformation, and in many instances complete lies, that News Corp spews out every day? I do not know the answer but I do know that Murdoch's hold on the future of our planet is becoming stronger every day.
21
@Rich It's vital that while moving forward we 're honest with ourselves about what is doable. A $3 a gallon tax on gasoline? Not doable, not passable. Even if a Democrat is elected President it would be impossible to get this through Congress. The majority of U.S. voters will never go for this. Period. Gas in France is about $6 a gallon. Imagine the reaction to $6 a gallon gas. All this in an attempt to lower the temperature of the planet by 2 degrees over the next 100 years to see if it will alter the weather. This, even as every bit of evidence has concluded that China’s international coal plant construction alone makes that absurd goal a total impossibility. Fund some real public transportation? Won't work. People will still use their cars. The majority of U.S. voters will not pay more for energy. Period. Every poll backs this up. The overall reality in that climate change legislation is hard to pass even in good times. It's a real killer in an economic downturn. Are we willing to vote against our own self-interests & approve higher taxes on fossil fuels? Are we willing to make the necessary sacrifices? Absolutely not. It's never going to happen. We all know that. When a government tries to enact a green tax to support carbon reduction when income inequality is increasing, people will react to their immediate situations without considering the future. That's the inconvenient truth. Technology can help. But for the short term, we will have to adapt. There's no alternative.
4
@Rich
Murdoch has taken conservative news and created a global propaganda force that has stopped any progress in Anglo speaking Australia, UK and USA.
14
At first glance, reading the headline, and before reading the body of the article, I thought the nation being murdered was the United States. Too much impeachment reality. My bad.
After reading the article, I can say this: the world in 2020 is facing a serious existential threat:
People who deny climate change.
Australia is living through what they will do to your life.
Will we allow them?
75
A democratically elected government, folks -- and apparently without any Russian interference.
11
Perhaps you need to read other related articles. Even some recent ones from this paper. The Chinese and Indian coal lobbies have a great deal of effect on Australian elections.
4
@December Yes, democracy is very bad.
I'm in Australia at the moment and I'm just completely stunned by some of the things I hear. Most of the people I meet, acknowledge that there might be some kind of global warming, but immediately after they say that, they say, well it's the greenies fault, they won't let us do hazard-reduction burns and they're starting the fires. One government minister I heard on the radio, when asked about the phenomenal loss of wildlife, kept talking about feral cats...it was like listening to Kellyanne Conway spinning. Feral cats do not kill cows. The other argument is that Australia doesn't add that much to global warming. Hello, it's 'Global'...people don't eat the coal you sell them, they burn it, so yes your contribution is what you use, plus every bit of coal you sell. Last week Mr. Flanagan (in these beautifully written pieces) compared this to Russia's Chernobyl. I have been to Chernobyl, and before I got to that last paragraph, it was all I could think about. On the bus to Chernobyl, we watched the interview with Gorbachev, where he said Chernobyl was the end of the Soviet Union. He wondered why, as the leader of the nation, he had to find out from Sweden there was a nuclear meltdown in his country. Had it not been contained, Europe would have to have been evacuated. Imagine that?
Mr. Morrison, this is your Chernobyl. These fires are literally the canary in YOUR coal mine. It should be a wake up call for the world. It's GLOBAL people, not regional.
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I have heard the same thing, which is so incredibly disheartening. I spend time in both California and Sydney and at one stage both were burning - it was like the whole world was on fire. The sooner fossil fuels don’t line the pockets of the few and single use plastics are massively taxed, the better.
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@thewriterstuff
The presence of a carbon tax in Australia for the last decade would have had negligible effect on today's fires. Only the world acting together can have an effect, and the effect of today's reductions will take 50 years to be significant. So in practice, the crisis of today's fires and the issue of global climate change are independent. We should act on climate change, but doing so will only affect the climate 50 years from now.
"Greenies stopping preventive burns", on the other hand, have a direct effect on the next fire season. Their actions directly lead to death and destruction.
We need to stop climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
We need to deal with the effects of climate change, which will continue for at least the next century, and will be unaffected by today's actions on emissions for many decades.
Climate change reduction and mitigation of the effects of climate change are two very different issues. One is a long term global project. The other is an ongoing crisis for governments to manage, which will affect different regions in different ways for the next century.
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@Tom Meadowcroft I never said anything about a carbon tax. Opening new coal mines, even with a tax, is not going to change what IS happening. You live in NJ, go take a whiff of the air in Elizabeth and tell me it's lovely. I don't know what you are trying to say here, do nothing, because the effects won't be felt for 50 years...I just don't know. I will never come back here and I would never recommend this...I've just come from diving on a bleached reef, it's scalding hot, and the smoke is unbearable. This is high season here for the south, many businesses will go under because this is their time to make money. Scott Morrison is very short sighted if he doesn't think that there will be a rejection of his policies here.
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It’s time to get the fossil fuel companies off welfare, and to help their employees make the transition to useful and productive work.
The buyers of Australian coal will soon find other energy sources. The naysayers need to study the history of human innovation, and some basic economics.
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@Global Charm The only other energy source they'll find, for a good time being, is lower quality (dirtier) coal. Holding back their development and polluting the planet further. That might be inconvenient but it's true.
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@Simon Coal pollutes. Ignoring the costs of pollution is not as easy as it once was. Even the Chinese understand the cost of dirty air, and are no longer willing to pay it. When the externalities of coal consumption are brought home to the polluters and their customers, the market finds cheaper and cleaner alternatives.
6
Just look up Simon, it’s up there all day long.
2
Our political leaders will continue to do nothing until we stop voting for them when all they offer is meaningless platitudes. The majority of Australians may think this is a massively important issue but keep voting for the LNP (Labor are hardly showering themselves in glory either but they seem to at least take less obvious glee in making things worse for voters).
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@James Tapscott
I agree with you but would hardly call Trump's outrageous lies about global warming "meaningless platitudes." Trump has proven in a thousand ways he has no concern for the welfare of our environment, seeing regulations to protect the land, air and water as impediments to ruthless businesses which pollute the world.
There has not been enough pushback in the U.S. against the "climate change deniers" who are regularly given time and respectful attention in our media. I'm constantly shocked to see Danielle Pletka, a climate change denier from the American Enterprise Institute peddling these lies on "Meet The Press"! People need to demand that the media stop propping up these liars and their dangerous "alternative facts." This is inexcusable.
Australia, once admired, is now in cinders. And off my bucket list. I cherish natural Australia, but am amazed that its people have allowed and continue to allow the killing of their nation, their land, their amazing culture and wildlife, and their future. All for a few Australian dollars.
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@Fred Talbott Slight correction (from a former fellow Virginian). The only people profiting are the mining industry and the politicians, you know, 'quiet Australians' like Gina Rinehart and ScoMo. Their ilk claimed this beautiful land in 1770 and the First Fleet returned in 1787 as a penal colony run by the Navy. Eventually, they nearly killed of the Indigenous Australians; those who lived were dispossessed of everything (think what whites did to our own Native Americans, but worse). Make no mistake, once Brit realised the positives of clearing out their prisons and the money that could eventually be made, they cleared forests, over-fished, killed off bird populations...it has not changed in all this time. They could care less about the land.
Since everyone here is required to go into the voting booth, the same thing happens here that happens in the US...campaigns lie, people are easily fooled into voting against their best interests...out of fear...and candidates capture that all-too-common fear many CIS whites have against anyone different. I know it's hard to believe people continually fall for this (thanks to Murdoch's media), but they do and the last election here last year proved that the majority of voters would like to continue burying their heads in the sand while this beautiful land burns.
I'm hopeful that there is finally some pushback and I hope it will be enough to sway the next election here.
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@Fred Talbott
Oh my stars, do we not have the same looming situation right here in the good ol' U.S. of A?
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@dressmaker yes, we do have the same problem here. Amazing people would actually vote for a climate denying, fossil fuel pushing, swindler seeing flood after flood and the western fires. Cognitive dissonance? A death wish? I really can't understand the shortsighted stupidity that envelopes us at this crucial time.
4
Controlled burns to help reduce the threat of wild fires. Good idea let's produce more air pollution.
Nothing wrong with good clean coal, beautiful sweet clean coal.
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@Don Turner The problem with controlled burns is that the window of opportunity to conduct them has narrowed to the point where it is now impossible to do so safely. Many former and current fire chiefs have expressed this statement more and more forcefully, and their expert opinion has consistently been ignored or dismissed by PM Scott Morrison, to his shame and our country's tragic consequences.
As to your comment about 'good clean coal, beautiful sweet coal' I so hope that is some kind of tasteless joke. The mining and burning of coal and other fossil fuels such as gas, is recognised as the major contributing factor to the situation Australia is in. Globally the world must wean itself of coal - but there are close and extremely unhealthy political links between Australia's coal industry and its governments - Liberal or Labor, both are equally culpable - and as others have mentioned, the media, largely dominated by the Murdoch Press, is far from impartial.
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@Don Turner "Clean coal" is sort of like "safe rapist" or "healthy murder."
1
Human overpopulation is the cause of anthropogenic global warming. It's a world-wide problem. Reducing Australian coal mining (not that it should not happen) won't do anything for Australia.
14
@MKR reducing coal emissions will not do anything? Are you kidding?
1
That’s why global pacts, such as the Paris accords, are important.
Why don't the progressive nations of the world band together and use economic sanctions against the world's great polluters like America, Australia, and China?
If the people of those nations won't elect responsible government than hold their feet said fire via economic sanctions. That's the only thing that will make them listen.
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@Halsy
Which progressive nations are those? Europe talks a good game, but the US, and by some measures China, have made more progress in reducing their emissions than Europe. Sanctions would hurt Europe at least as much as they would hurt their targets. Germany, which is counter-productively shutting down zero-carbon nuclear reactors while substituting fossil fuels, relies heavily on exports and international trade.
5
@Halsy On what factual basis do you lump Australia in with China and America as one of 'the world's great polluters'? Abject nonsense. We are at 1.07% of total global emissions. Environmental legislation is a lot stronger here than most places, and we are a leading investor in renewables which is growing at a rate 10 times faster than the world average.. nearly 3 times faster than the next country, Germany. 2 out of 13 million Australian homes are fitted with rooftop solar, which again makes us a global leader.
All that said, to shift completely away from fossil fuels through the short-medium term just isn't possible, certainly not without nuclear.
1
@Simon
We export more than 1% of the world's fossil fuels.
Our government has successfully knee capped global agreements on reducing carbon emissions worldwide.
Solar and wind generation can come on steam faster, cheaper and more scale able than nuclear, with no nuclear waste to deal with.
15
The names of historic betrayers of the people keeps getting longer as the far Right increases its power grab. Imagine how Trump and Mitch MCconnell's name will go down in history, along with Bolsonaro and Morrison, and tfway to many others.
Still, at the rate they are going, history may also be a thing of the past as the people of the world scramble for resources and start killing each other in the process.
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Remember for how long the names of Lenin and Stalin were held in high regard in the USSR, before it itself collapsed. History is written by power.
1
Not only do we have a conservative government beholden to the fossil fuel industry, we have a conservative government contemptuous of academia, open debate, and for whom right does not matter.
Worse than that, we have 50.5% of the population, comprising three disparate, almost non-overlapping groups (the wealthy, the religious, and the white gullible) who harbor intense dislike of the progressives, the environmentalists, and the atheists, and who will NEVER vote for any individual or party these latter support.
Therefore, here in Australia, despite the heat and fires, we are doomed to a cold religio-conservative, anti-scientific, business-uber-alles government forever. And that means nothing's gonna happen vis-à-vis global warming if we have any say in it.
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@A. F. G. Maclagan
Your description of the population base sounds like the U.S. - and we've never been more polarized than during the past three years.
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@A. F. G. Maclagan Very well stated. In my 10 years here (I am from the US), I can hardly recognise it as the country I came to in those exciting, hopeful days.
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@M Kirby
Yes it is very depressing.
Australia has recently slid down a few steps on the corruption scale as well.
US: Citizens United + Fox.
AUS: Fossil fuel donors + Murdoch.
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The only small problem is what to do with the 7.7 billion people dependent on the fossil fuel energy that has enabled their conception and kept them alive since they were born. We all won’t fit in Iceland while we go cold turkey and retrofit the world to what?
8
@John Doe -There isn't any reason to keep making the cars bigger and bigger. There is nothing wrong with being more energy efficient. Better building codes wouldn't hurt either. We could do framing with steel rather than forest products. Birth control wouldn't hurt either.
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But Steve, that’s what American consumers want. We can’t infringe on our liberties here, you know. I don’t know how much fossil fuel energy it takes to mine, refine, smelt and form a steel stud but a tree takes sunlight and does all that for free. But I hate termites so I’m with you.
3
@John Doe There are many solutions, it's just that taking action has been fought wordwide, for at least twenty years, by the fossil fuels industry, and others who benefit financially under the current system.
5
No Richard, Australia's central bank - the RBA - did not say it may have to step in and buy coal mines or other "stranded assets" as you assert. The Bank for International Settlements (a Swiss-based international institution, not an Australian one, that few people had heard of until last week) wrote a speculative report about ultimate potential outcomes that suggested that central banks generally may at some point in the future be required to step in and acquire so-called stranded assets to avoid financial collapse (in part because they may be uninsurable).
Hyperventilating over such reports and the number of proposed coal mine developments or extensions, which are primarily for the purpose of export (not domestic power generation) and in large part of metallurgical (steel-making, for which there is no commercial substitute) coal is the sort of hyperbole that undermines your case.
Coal is a legally traded commodity, that the rest of the world continues to demand and continues to purchase. I agree there is no reason any Australian domestic power should be generated by it today (I note there are NO realistic private sector plans to build any new coal-fired power plants in Australia - only a half-arsed suggestion proposal by a couple of fringe right-wing MPs) - but to decide unilaterally to stop supplying our 2nd most valuable export commodity (after iron ore) to world markets is a spite-your-nose solution that would do nothing to reduce world coal consumption.
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@John Climate change is global. Exporting coal increases temperature in Australia, Countries dependent on fossil fuels should work to ratchet up the use of non-fossil fuels (including safe nuclear) while decreasing the export of fossil fuels. Decrease the subsidy for the coal industry and shift resources renewal energy sources.
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@Morris Waxler 'Ratcheting up the use of non-fossil fuels' sounds great, but perhaps you don't acknowledge the economic and technical challenges here.
By the way, it is the awful 'conservatives' and Mr Morrison's party in general, who are more supportive of nuclear power. Much of the left in Australia however will never allow it, despite it being the ONLY way we could meaningfully reduce emissions through the medium term.
This paper loves trying to portray centre-right parties elsewhere as being a step away from Trump and the republicans (just like with the UK and Boris), full of anti-science, anti-fact religious conservatives.... it fits into the preconceived worldview of most readers here. Never mind there is plenty of that to go around when it's politically convenient.
Fossil fuel is always brought up, but none of these articles (and it's no different in the left media in Australia), bring up the inconvenient truth that what really drives this nation's economy is endless mass immigration. It all but assures we will not reach our 2030 targets. Pointing this out doesn't suit the politically correct NY Times narrative on immigration of course.
We export a lot of coal to China, but we also import a lot of their people. Studies have shown that Chinese immigrants (in Sydney at least) have significantly carbon footprints than native Australians..
3
@Simon
To whom are you referring when you say "native Australians"? Just curious.
Australia has a similar problem to the US. Voters are fooled by self serving corporate insiders representing themselves as public servants, which they are NOT.
Trump's reelection depends heavily upon a rising stock market so his fed appointee prints massive amounts money which devalues the existing purchasing power of the US $, helps bank profit thru $3.9 trillion of repurchase agreements (Repos), and keeps interest rates low so corporations can borrow cheap dollars and buy back their own shares raising stock prices.
These are short term gambits to keep the merry-go-round spinning while destroying the long term success of the country.
Like in AU, any reasonable person would believe 99% of all scientists about Climate Change, but to keep their reelection coffers full, Trump & Morrison will actively harm the global environment.
Jail time is too good for these people.
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@Wanda
At least half of what is in your note is not true.
The fed chairman is independent and confirmed by the Senate. The fed has held inflation below target for the past 10 years; they are not "printing massive amount of money", and the US dollar has been rising in value, not falling. The treasury keeps the Repo market liquid by participating in overnight trades to prevent systemic liquidity problems that could lead to instability; they have done so for many decades; the fed makes money on those transactions, not the banks.
None of this has anything to do with climate change, but if you want to write a convincing polemic, try to get your facts straight, or you'll sound like a conspiracy theorist.
9
Tom, you seem to be an expert on the economy. Please explain the significance of our trillion dollar debt even if it keeps increasing?Will We ever have to pay it back? What if interest rates explode?
1
@Wanda Is a “decarbonized” future possible? No. Not if you look at the facts. Last month the NYT reported that Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, set the price of its IPO at a level that would raise $25.6 billion, a sum that is expected to make it the world’s biggest I.P.O. Do you think for a billionth of a second that the Saudi's, the Nigerians or anyone else in OPEC is going to stop drilling for oil? It's NEVER going to happen in our lifetime. NEVER. Every ounce ...& I mean every ounce is coming out of the ground into our cars & factories. Oil is the source of Saudi Arabia's power. The kingdom relies on oil revenue to pay for its massive domestic & military spending. Just to break even, the Saudis needs a pump as much oil as possible. Huge production cuts would force Saudis to drain their shrinking pile of cash, borrow money or scale back dividends paid by Aramco. According to CNN oil output from non-OPEC countries is expected to surge too, by a record 2.3 million barrels per day in 2020. That would easily top the previous record of 1.96 million sets in 1978. The US shale oil revolution is a big contributor to the coming gush of oil. US production is expected to climb by 1.1 million barrels per day in 2020. Norway & Brazil are also expected to add 1 million barrels per day next year. In the next ten years, we will be drowning in an ocean of oil. That's our reality. There's absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. Nothing.
2
The only difference between Australia and nearly everywhere else is time, and not much at that.
Runaway climate disruption is accelerating.
The evidence is overwhelming we’ve opened Pandora’s Box with respect to climate change by ignoring what scientists have been warning us about for decades.
I feel sorry for the rest of the biosphere we’ll destroy on our way out.
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The church of climate change has been telling us "THE END IS NEAR" for decades. I know it's your guiding faith but bad things did happen in this world before the combustion engine. I was just in Australia and the prevailing belief is that fires are a natural part of the world--nature making way for the new and vigorous growth of tomorrow. The problem is that the government has restricted this natural cycle far too long for reasons mostly related to tourism. They're paying the piper now. The world is incredibly self-healing. Twenty-five hundred years ago the smartest people thought the eclipses were the end of the world. Relax and enjoy your short life!
8
@Dan Nelson There is no Church of Climate Change. There are just facts:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. i.e the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the hotter the planet gets. This fact has been known since the 1800s!
2. In 1950, CO2 concentration levels were around 300 ppm. Now they are approaching 415 ppm. That's an increase by more than 30% in just 70 years -
a blink of an eye on the geological time scale.
3. According to the National Weather Assessment and the IPCC (representing thousands of scientists' views), the only explanation for this increase is human activity. This in accordance with multiple lines of evidence.
4. Climate change is already wreaking havoc across the globe from the Mid-West (flooding) to the Middle East (drought, resulting in social unrest and war).
5. At approximately 1000 ppm, CO2 begins to impair human brain comprehension functions. We could approach these levels if the Arctic permafrost releases more CO2.
6. If no action is taken to reduce emissions, by the end of this century, the Deep South will experience temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit
from one-third to two-thirds of the year and the tropics will become uninhabitable causing a massive migration of people towards the poles.
7. Switching to renewable energy will NOT change the current lifestyle of the average American. They can have all the modern conveniences that
they currently enjoy.
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@Dan Nelson Sure, fires have always been a factor in Australia's climate, but never to the extent they are now. Plus we are experiencing fires in rain forest regions that have NEVER experienced them before, and are not adapted to cope with them. When fire burns these forests they are lost forever. They will not regenerate. They are gone - and so are the ecosystems they supported.
So, no, this is not the time to relax, sorry. It's the time to make a lot of noise and demand some action from our incompetent and criminally irresponsible government before this country is reduced to an arid and uninhabitable desert.
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@Dan Nelson with a gas mask on a raft in the ocean while the land burns. I hope you like fish and dying of scurvy. What a nice way to relax Dan.
A long column on the environmental consequences of bad policy and politics in Australia without a mention of Rupert Murdoch, who controls 60% of the media in that country?
I'm not sure freedom of press and democracy are completely compatible in the video age. How do we protect our freedoms when geniuses of propaganda can promote environmental suicide with such power?
Is what is happening now in our own country the definition of a healthy democracy?
Perhaps it is time to boycott the sponsors that provide the propagandists their money. There is news and there is propaganda, you can tilt the news but you can't create it out of whole cloth.
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@alan haigh I just viewed a snippet of the impeachment coverage on Fox.
I expected the bias.
However what I was shocked by, was the techniques of playing discordant "fox" music while Adam Schiff was speaking, as well as Mike Hannity continuing to talk on his half of the split screen.
Creepy. Fox viewers might think they are familiar with whatever is covered on the show, but they sure haven't managed to process anything.
9
@alan haigh
We need to expropriate Murdoch's businesses, all of them, all over the world. Let him live in the burned part of Australia in his old age.
Yes, I'm dreaming of justice. What I expect is the end of human civilization within this century as global heating (as it has up to now) exceeds predictions and established positive feedback.
11
@Thomas Zaslavsky Er Murdoch is an American citizen. He was quite ok when he lived in Oz! Well, maybe not. As to his media influence in Australia - quite small and waning. Far more left of centre papers, social media and even the National Broadcasters (ABC and SBS) are definitely left of centre. "The Australian' is of course right of centre, but the only Murdoch media of any influence.
My Australian friends, who in other areas of their life are tough as nails and utterly realistic, quake with terror at the thought of rising up against their government on this issue.
I can't understand it. The Aussies are exceptional people who built an exceptional nation in peace and war. But when it comes to the very existence of their country, they are trembling and silent.
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@S.R. Simon
I have friends in suburban Sydney and I've visited Australia three times. My friends are highly educated and world travelers, yet I discovered - much to my shock (and dismay) - that they're hovering in the rightward political stance on this issue.
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@S.R. Simon
The elected government seems to have regained control of the news cycle.
We have daily announcements of a new assistance package. (The fine print on these packages comes out later)
Variations of the " It's the greenies" and "we're only one percent of emissions" arguments are still proliferating on social media, and are overwhelmingly preferenced in Murdoch press articles and letters.
Our Prime Minister is not meeting the public in front of cameras anymore.
With so many fire fighter deaths now, I think people are reticent to protest in the face of human grief.
12
@Guy
Revulsion at the lies that are literally destroying your country should trump reticence due to grief. What has become of Australian's legendary, never-give-up, fighting spirit? Simpering, pulullating, dribbling -- this is NOT the Australia the world has come to love and admire.
3
At some point, Australians may decide to reckon with the PM of Fossil Fuels, to, you know, survive. I just hope and pray it's not to late in coming.
The fossil fuel industry wields far too much power almost everywhere in the world, in the US, Mexico, and beyond. What will it take to rein it in? A complete change in leadership in nearly every industrialized nation, I think, and there's nearly no chance of that in our lifetimes.
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@Sancarloscharlie
Today's fires would be the same if a Labour government was in charge, with a big carbon tax in place.
Changes we make today in emissions will take 50 years to have an effect. Today's fires were caused by the actions of our grandparents.
Yes, we should act, for the sake of our grandkids. Don't pretend that better policies will have a short or even medium term impact on the effect of climate change. Tall tales like that only convince the voting public to ignore technocrats and vote for populists.
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