While Australia continues to experience a catastrophic bushfire season, many conversations have been had (and continue to be had) about the relationship between fires and climate change, and how Prime Minister Scott Morrison has responded.
With lots of information out there, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So we put together five key facts (not opinions!) about this important issue.
Fact one: Climate change makes bushfires worse. It has led to hotter temperatures, extreme dryness and extreme bursts of intense weather conditions. One of the key elements that causes the earth to warm is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is an outspoken champion of the fossil fuel industry, once famously bringing a lump of coal into parliament.
Fact two: There has always been bushfires, but the current bushfire crisis is unprecedented. Note that “unprecedented” does not necessarily mean “bigger.” The never-seen-before conditions of the present fires relate to a number of factors including the geographic range and extent of the area burned, the dryness of the land and the air quality across the country. Here is a factcheck article from The Guardian that explores this issue in detail.
Fact three: The current bushfire scenarios have been accurately predicted by scientists, who for decades have warned that climate change would lead to fires increasing in length, frequency and danger in the new century. As Hugh Rimington, National Affairs editor for 10 Daily, recently wrote: “The predictions of the scientists are playing out exactly to the script.”
Fact four: While Australia experienced catastrophic bushfires, Scott Morrison went on a holiday to Hawaii. This is the same Scott Morrison who, 10 years ago, criticised former Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon for going out to dinner one night during the Black Saturday bushfires. He described Nixon’s decision to have a meal out at a restaurant as “a bad judgement call” about “a very serious issue.”
Fact five: Throughout 2019, Scott Morrison continually refused to meet a group of former fire chiefs and emergency leaders, including former New South Wales Fire and Rescue chief Greg Mullins. As reported by ABC News, this group of experts “tried for months to warn Prime Minister Scott Morrison that Australia needed more water-bombers to tackle bigger, faster and hotter bushfires.”
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The time is up for action on climate change. We need direct action action, real leadership and transition to a society with net zero emissions. Find a protest in a city near you.
Still some people won’t listen. I think some do not realise that humans have only been burning significant amounts of coal for about 2 centuries. A that time the human population was very much smaller than now.