Commenter The Mighty Trowel, who lives in Australia, sent me a guest post on the Australia fires:
I’m mostly a lurker these days; but this seemed an apt time to stick my head above the parapet. I’m an American, but I’ve lived in Australia for the last 8 years.
I’m sure by now you’ve seen coverage of the bushfire crisis we’re currently enduring Down Under. Photographs of red skies, tall flames, native fauna fleeing and burnt out houses have gone global. It’s on the cover of all our papers too – also on all our minds, especially those of us (like me) that live in the southeast in fire-prone areas. I asked Adam if I could write this guest post because I wanted an excuse to talk through this ongoing crisis to an audience I didn’t have to constantly reassure about my own safety (yes, I’m safe), but I also notice that some of the local context is (surprise) missing in the international coverage.
This has been the most destructive bushfire season in Australian history. So far (and we’re only halfway through fire season!) nearly 6 million hectares have burnt, at least 1300 homes have burnt down and nearly 20 people have died (including three firefighters – more on that in a minute) with nearly 20 more unaccounted for. Out of control fires have been burning in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) since September, in South Australia, West Australia and Tasmania since November. Most of these fires started with lightning strikes, but there have been a few cases of arson and others where backburning (controlled burns to use up fuel and protect inhabited areas) has escaped containment. These fires have devastated communities, killing tens of thousands of sheep and cattle, but they’ve also ripped through natural habitats and populations of native fauna. Current estimates suggest that at least (AT LEAST) 30% of NSW koalas have been killed by the fires.
To give a sense of the scale of the disaster, here’s a map published by the Insurance Council of Australia with highlighting areas of ‘insurance catastrophes’:
The insurance catastrophe declared postcodes across Australia right now. #nswfires #vicfires pic.twitter.com/3REJVazjHt
— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) January 1, 2020
With a disaster of this scale, it’s unsurprising that the firefighting crews are thin on the ground. But there’s context here that also needs stating: while there are a number of professional, paid units (though the right wing New South Wales government keeps cutting their budgets and reducing their numbers), much of the work protecting communities, clearing roads and building containment lines is being done by volunteers like the CFS and RFS. Volunteers are the ones dying as they drive through dangerous fire grounds. Many have reported that their own houses have burnt while they helped neighbours protect theirs. The work they are doing is literally saving lives, but they’ve been doing this life-threatening, high stress job for months with no pay, few resources and little support beyond thoughts and prayers from our ‘leaders’ (in recent days, faced with the scale of the crisis and the backlash from the Australian public) the PM has promised some compensation to some volunteer firies and required the civil service to give all volunteers a month paid leave to fight fires.
State and federal environmental departments, academics and fire chiefs had all warned that this year had the potential for a monstrous fire season. Local fire departments and volunteer organisations (the country fire authority in Victoria, the rural fire service in NSW, the country fire service in South Australia) spent as much of the winter as possible backburning, but the winter was short and dry – dangerous conditions for controlled burns. We’re in the midst of an incredibly severe drought and major climatic patterns have contributed to a particularly hot, dry winter and spring. This means that not only are plants dried out and dying (more fuel for fires to burn) but the air and soil are thoroughly dehydrated too which allows fire to spread faster.
I highly recommend reading this piece by the brilliant Prof Nerilie Abram for the scientific and climatic context. As she writes:
The angry summer playing out in Australia right now was predictable. The scientific evidence is well known for how anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term climate change and altering climate variability in ways that increase our fire risk. The role of climate change in the unprecedented fires gripping Australia is also well understood by our emergency services. Sadly, though, this summer has occurred against a backdrop in which the Australian government has argued, on the world stage, to scale back our greenhouse-gas-emissions-reduction targets. Our leaders are literally fiddling while the country burns.
Because that’s the thing… we knew this was coming, but the pollies have buried their heads in the sand in a way that reminds me ominously of Bush and co post Katrina. Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison (who once showed up to parliament with an ornamental lump of coal) has been absent from the conversation (literally in the case of the week he spent cavorting in Hawaii while western Sydney and the Blue Mountains burned).
(Mural by artist Scottie Marsh)
The NSW emergency services minister is currently refusing to return from Paris where he’s holidaying with family. No state of national emergency has been declared even though 5 states are facing unprecedented emergencies and the Australian Defense Forces are (after considerable delay) having to rescue people from beaches in fire-affected communities that now have no water, electricity, telephone services or road access. For the record, Labour (our centre left party and chief opposition) have been pretty awful – they’re also cosying up to coal extraction companies and the current party leader is inarticulate at best)
I’ve been asking myself for days why the PM and others are so reluctant to lift a finger. Consensus among friends and colleagues is that it would mean acknowledging climate change is a real and destructive force that must be reckoned with. Conspiracies floating around the internet suggest that the PM wants the fire to clear land so he can sell it for profit to cronies and overseas consortia. I think it’s simpler than any of these:
No one is holding these politicians to account for their inaction and their abdication of leadership, so they’re not bothering to lead.
More than that, a clear campaign of misinformation is being conducted by the Murdoch press and through anonymous facebook and twitter accounts that bushfires are normal for Australia and that the fires are all set by arsonists or are the fault of “greenies” who prevent backburning (despite only holding power in the Australian Capitol Territory (ACT) which is currently not on fire—though it is swamped in toxic smoke).
Climate change just seems to be too large for politicians with their notoriously short attention spans and transactional philosophies to get their heads around. The political class is so far out of their depth that they’re drowning in public and don’t even realise it. I genuinely don’t know what happens next.
If there’s an upside to these fires it’s that their enormity might be the one thing that can unite communities that have been set against each other on the basis of race, immigration, class, etc. for generations. We just have to live through them first.
Anyhow, here’s a magpie singing like a fire engine.
When the birds start singing fire engine sounds… ?
Credit: Gregory Andrews, Newcastle. pic.twitter.com/g11BMry1HC— Isobel Roe (@isobelroe) January 1, 2020
Donations can be made to:
Red Cross bushfire disaster relieve and recovery fund: https://www.redcross.org.au/campaigns/disaster-relief-and-recovery-new-years-eve?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialorganic&utm_campaign=201913_drr_disaster-relief-and-recovery_don_transient_bushfires_none
Rural Fire Service: https://quickweb.westpac.com.au/OnlinePaymentServlet?cd_community=NSWRFS&cd_currency=AUD&cd_supplier_business=DONATIONS&action=EnterDetails
Country Fire Authority: https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/supporting-cfa
South Australian Country Fire Service: https://cfsfoundation.org.au/donate
Community support org Givit, active nationally: http://www.givit.org.au/donate-funds
Emergency Management Victoria community relief fund: https://www.emv.vic.gov.au/news/community-relief-fund-launched-to-support-fire-affected-communities
Some affected community members have launched GoFundMe’s for their towns – this is one the Australian Broadcasting Corporation posted, so I assume it’s legit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xycjem-cudgewa-has-burnt?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet
Adam L Silverman
The Mighty Trowel should be along to comment and answer questions. Please remember that it is currently 8:05 AM on Friday in Canberra, so she may not have had her coffee yet.
TheMightyTrowel
Hi all! I’m around for the next hour or so. As an addendum, currently leading the Aus media headlines is a video and associated coverage of people in one heavily bushfire affected community berating the PM.
Baud
Thanks, MT. I’ve been to Australia once. It’s a beautiful country. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this.
Even Trump sometimes is forces to pretend to cancel a golf outing when a disaster strikes. Jeez.
Pete Downunder
As another ex pat American living in Australia I must heartily agree with Mighty Trowel. The politicians are only interested in exporting coal. They PM and his pretty much right wing party are despicable and Labor only slightly better. Sadly the Greens have be riven with internal issues and only now are starting to get their act together. Where I live we have Green state member of parliament and he’s excellent.
TheMightyTrowel
@Pete Downunder: I’m in the ACT region so I get a first-hand look at the benefits of a green-Lab governing coalition, sadly i’m on teh NSW side of the border :(
Brachiator
This is insane. It’s as though some people would rather die or see their country destroyed than deal with reality. But reality will ultimately bite them in the ass.
Emerald
Rupert Murdoch and his contemptible spawn have a lot to answer for.
Number one position in the tumbrels, I think.
prostratedragon
Thanks for this post, TMT, it will make a good companion to a piece I saw earlier today (Guardian?) somewhere about the continuing coal problem in Australia.
Addendum: It was in The Daily Beast
Ruckus
The end of the post is basically the political issue in many parts of the world, conservatives are selfish as fuck and as stupid. Their belief system, such as it is, is that money is the only thing that is truly important. Next is them having the vast majority of it. Absolutely nothing else is on their radar.
TheMightyTrowel
@Ruckus: I guess the frustrating thing for me is that it’s genuinely the whole of the dominant political class here – Labor and the LNP. Labor talks about sustainability and climate change, but they’re just as in bed with the coal mines as the rest. What’s been fascinating to me is watching otherwise quite evil companies (banks, major mining conglomerates) come out against fossil fuel extraction in ways the pollies just won’t. When BHP is your progressive hero…
Mary G
Wow, I did not know how indifferent the Australian government has been to this horror. That is appalling. Thank you for giving us this context.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
Here’s their song…It’s Money that I Love
Martin
I’ll add an observation about US politics – particularly liberal politics. It doesn’t apply to specific individuals, but I think it applies pretty broadly.
We are very motivated to the right words being said, as though the words will solve the problems, and not on the actions. Climate change is the mother of all collective action problems. We can rail on Exxon all we want, Exxon exists because we keep buying their products. We can talk all we want about what should be done, but this is one of those things that we all need to individually do, in order to solve the problem. There’s no getting around that. The average American emits 10x as much CO2 as we can afford to emit. For all my praise of California, we’re still emitting 5x what we can afford. It’s less bad, but it’s still bad. Australia is 8x. China is 4x.
We can talk about taking cars off the road, but what about YOUR car. We can talk about less fossil fuels, but what about YOUR natural gas use, or YOUR electricity use. What are you doing to change that?
This is not like other debates where we need those people over there to own fewer guns, everyone personally needs to step up on this, and in a big way. Last year I got our electricity down to near zero emissions and our transportation cut in half. This year I plan on cutting transportation in half again, but food and retail/services are now our biggest two categories to fix. Our plan is to cut them in half as well, and to cut our natural gas use in half. If we’re successful with all of that, we’ll still be at least 2x our target.
Say one thing about conservatives, they don’t care, and their actions reflect that. We say we care, but too many of us aren’t backing that up with sufficient action.
Betty Cracker
Mind-boggling. I honestly don’t know if humans are capable of taking the necessary action to save ourselves. Someone in the last thread mentioned successful global action to stop the ozone hole, and it’s true that back then, even reactionary leaders like Reagan and Thatcher worked together to phase out CFCs. But that was child’s play in comparison to what will be necessary to deal with climate change, and I do not know if we as a species are up to the challenge.
Kelly
Climate change is too large for most people to get their head around. “Too Large” seems to have been a hurdle most environmental issues must cross. The oceans are too large for us to catch all the fish. The forests are to large for us to cut all the old growth. The river is too large for our effluents to pollute.
satby
Truth. Easy to spout the right rhetoric, hard to actually act on it.
@TheMightyTrowel: thank you for posting links where we can send donations. It’s about all we can do to support you all in the short term while we all fight for sanity in our governments longer term.
PJ
@Martin: being mindful of how our individual actions affect the environment is a good thing, but individual actions are not going to lessen climate change in any appreciable way – that requires collective action on a massive scale, which means that people who are awake to reality and care about the future have to control our politics. But there’s at least a third of our country that would just as soon see everything burn, and the wealthiest people don’t see this as much of a problem for themselves – if they did, Bloomberg and Steyermark would be spending a $100 million each on Senate races instead of their own vanity campaigns.
feebog
We are headed to Sydney on the 19th for a three week vacation. Most of that will be on a cruise up and down the coast and then around New Zeeland. I hope there is still something left to see by then. And fellow Californians, we have already experienced a taste of this in Santa Rosa and Paradise. But it could be even worse next summer and fall.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@PJ: Individual action can add up to collective action, however to really make change widespread you need political action.
A Ghost To Most
Are the fairy penguins safe? Granted, that area is dune-ish, but not that far from Mallacotta. The penguins are a sight to behold, when they rise out of the surf.
TheMightyTrowel
@A Ghost To Most: I haven’t heard of any impacts on their population and i believe their main colony on that end of the victoria coastline is an offshore island.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Thank you, TMT, for the perspective and the donation links.
Butter Emails
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
The entire system is set up to utilize fossil fuels and a significant fraction of the people don’t have the resources to live comfortably in this system, let alone be first adapters in a low carbon/ carbon neutral lifestyles.
You want people to make the correct decisions on a personal level, you need to provide the proper incentives, opportunities and subsidies.
DaveInOz
It’s been awful since September. We had a holiday up in Queensland in August, driving from Cairns to Brisbane. Two weeks later, bushfires were ravaging places we’d visited or passed through.
I sent a text to a colleague yesterday who I know usually holidays with his family near Bateman’s Bay in NSW. He’s responded this morning to let me know that they were evacuated out to Canberra last night. Scary times.
germy
mad citizen
I have a question for The Mighty Trowel or whoever wants to answer. (Of course some of americans are concerned, etc. and love Australia). Sitting here reflecting and after recently watching Season Three of the Crown–Australia is part of the British Commonwealth, yes? Just now looking at the BBC site, the top story is about a ship, the HMAS Choules rescuing people. But HMAS stands for Her Majesty’s Australian Ship. What is mother England doing about this crises?
I hate to make the comparison, but it would be like a hurricane hit Puerto Rico, right?
Also re-reading the post, I realize TMT is an American, not Australian, so I’m not pointing any fingers your way.
dm
Australia and New Zealand have been sending fire crews to help with the California wildfires (and vice-versa). This used to work well, since fires used to be a summer seasonal thing, and the summer happens at different times in the northern and souther hemispheres.
But now fire season is year round.
TheMightyTrowel
@mad citizen: It’s commonwealth not colony and a sovereign nation. We still have a governor general who acts as the Queen’s rep in Canberra (though has only a few and very ceremonial roles) but we self-govern – same deal as Canada. Also, frankly, I think the Brits have their own crisis to deal with at the moment.
realbtl
Interestingly enough a fellow native Californian and I were having lunch today. Between us we spent 95 years growing up in SoCal and both agreed a similar fire from the coastal range to the ocean was possible today. That would get peoples attention. That’s why we’ve both been in Montana the last 20 years.
TheMightyTrowel
@dm: yeah this is one of the big issues this year – the early fire season (typically fire season is ‘supposed’ to start in Oct) in Australia overlapped with the Northern Hemisphere season so the international fire crews were already tied up and then needed time for rest. We have had a number of firies from Canada and the US join the firefighting efforts in the last month.
trollhattan
Than you for this excellent post, MightyTrowel. The mynah vid is unexpectedly devastating–nature is telling us what we do not wish to hear.
IIUC Australia is the top coal exporter by a factor of two ahead of Indonesia. Nearly 40% of the global total and too on-the-nose, evidently, for anybody to question continuing as such. I have no idea how to remedy that, but surely somebody needs to speak up and damn the pushback.
Sending fervent hopes for some kind of relief from this devastation. California understands.
trollhattan
@realbtl:
No need to imagine it, it’s already occurred (map).
Martin
@PJ: But a lot of collective action derives from individual action – particularly in a market environment.
You steer your dollars toward the right solutions, and away from the wrong ones, and public policy as well as what dollars corporations chase will change.
And as you interact with those changes locally, how you interpret policy and what you throw your weight behind changes.
Climate change doesn’t require everyone act in unison, but it does require everyone to act.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Butter Emails: I agree. Here’s my personal example…I rent, so I just can’t put solar panels on my roof, my landlord has to do that and would need incentives(I pay for electricity and gas so there’s no financial incentive there for the landlord) and I have to street park so there’s no place to charge my car. When I got my Prius, I thought about a Leaf, but like a plug-in hybrid, there’s no place to plug it in.
slightly_peeved
@mad citizen: I’m Australian, and will answer.
The British Commonwealth is a loose confederation of countries, and any legal effect the UK could exert on Australia was ended through the Australia Act 1986. The head of state – the Governor General – is technically appointed by the Queen, but it’s a formality by this stage. The Commonwealth of Australia’s been a near-independent nation since federation.
The UK aren’t really experts on the whole fighting bushfires thing, so most of the boots-on-ground assistance is from American and Canadian volunteers who are experienced in such. There’s a long history of Australians going over to help during California’s fire season and vice versa, through the problems with season overlap have been discussed upthread.
Historically the relationship of the Australia (and NZ) to the UK is the reverse – we help them when they are in trouble more than the other way around. The Puerto Rico comparison is inapt.
Kent
I don’t really know anything about Australian politics but I’m curious if this crisis is going to shift anything down there. Katrina was one of the factors that brought down Bush and finally ushered in unified Dem control over government in 2008. This disaster seems about 10x larger in a much smaller country.
Cheryl Rofer
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Ah, the Woolsey fire
ETA: I should note that the town with all the red around in trollhattan’s map is my hometown.
Matt McIrvin
In the US, the state hit hardest by brushfires is usually California, and Trump’s attitude is literally “ha ha, suck it, California.” I mean, he does not even pretend to regard them with anything other than malice. I’m sure that if it got to the scale of the Australian catastrophe he would welcome it as hastening the depopulation of his least favorite state.
TheMightyTrowel
@slightly_peeved: to add, a direct line can be drawn between the ideals of British colonialism and the destructive extraction economy of present day Australia (that includes extraction of labor and military support).
Jack Canuck
Expat Canadian permanently in Australia (Melbourne) here, and I just wanted to say thanks to The Mighty Trowel for the overview for the overseas folk. Though there hasn’t been much direct impact in Melbourne yet (aside from the city being blanketed by smoke from the NSW fires a week or two ago), it’s heartbreaking to watch what’s happening in the east of Victoria and other states. And absolutely infuriating to see the two major parties (Labor and Liberals, along with the Lib coalition partner that Nationals) absolutely refusing to engage with the larger issues. Morrison going on about how Australians have dealt with drought and fires and war and other crises in the past, and we should do that again. Yeah, you know how we dealt with them? By NOT ignoring the actual problems and trying to deal with them! The Greens have the right attitude on this, but as mentioned they have a lot of internal problems politically. I’m not generally an optimistic person, but I’m clinging to the sight of those affected by the fires – to generalise, likely conservative politically – pushing back at the pollies and refusing to be fobbed off by the usual crap responses.
In terms of why they’re not leading, I think part of why they’re not being held accountable by the electorate can be found in the way that climate change (or rather, refusing to accept the evidence) has become a right-wing shibboleth. Accepting reality? That would mean the lefties were right! Can’t have that! And that can be found in both the party leadership and the voters. Another aspect, however, was pointed out by economist John Quiggin on his blog (johnquiggin.com): the Libs have been spouting off about their five billion dollar surplus. But that will arguably be more than consumed by the cost of the fires (though they’ll probably talk up the ‘economic boost’ from construction etc!), and certainly would disappear if they actually started to address Australia’s contribution to climate change and dependence on fossil fuels both domestically and for foreign export. That goes against the narrative that the Right is the good economic steward for the country, and we can’t have that either.
And so it goes, until/unless this crisis actually has political consequences. And it might. It’s big enough and hitting enough people, and enough land, that it could be a tipping point. If I’m feeling optimistic.
TheMightyTrowel
@Matt McIrvin: one of the conspiracy theories floating around twitter (no substantiation, but venal enough to be at least a little accurate) is that the PM is hesitating to act because if he makes this a federal problem then the Minister for Home Affairs, the odious Peter Dutton, takes over managing it. Dutton is his primary challenger for head of party/PM and he might not want to give him a platform of authority because it could weaken his own standing. The context here is that our political parties have a tradition of back-stabbing their leaders mid-term and installing new, unelected PMs from within the ranks – hunt up #libspill on twitter to see this chatter.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Interesting. Some basic limitations. I hadn’t really thought about this as obstacles to some people being able to have electric vehicles.
TheMightyTrowel
@Jack Canuck:
One can only hope. But my god the cost (human not $) of this.
chopper
@PJ:
the only individual action that will really make a difference is voting in people en masse who will use the power of the government to do something big. i mean hey, cutting your electricity and water use etc is helpful but you’re right, this isn’t something we’re going to individually conserve our way out of.
Jack Canuck
@TheMightyTrowel: I know, it’s enough to make me want to curl up in a ball and just not think about it. So awful, what’s happening (or being done to) the land, the wildlife, the plants, the people. I’m probably just trying to comfort myself by saying “this will make people wake up”, to be honest. Because to think otherwise is to give up.
Dread
I would guess that we continue to do nothing until it is FAR too late. Civilization as we know it collapses within 50 years and is replaced by fascist corporate states that keep the ball rolling until fresh water and food run scarce, at which point, we revert to local fiefs and city states, and throughout the entire process, millions of people die every year.
Maybe humanity pulls through in the long run. But we probably go extinct. The world adjusts to our absence and life rebounds as it always has with new species filling in the niches of those that went extinct.
Maybe self-awareness evolves again in some other species. Eventually every trace of mankind fades away except for a couple of lonely little space probes drifting through the galaxy.
Dan B
The video from the Tasman glacier reminded me of Seattle in 2017 and 2018. Our smoke was reddish grey and it came from fires hundreds if miles away in Oregon and in B.C. It was especially frightening to me because we have very dry summers which are getting drier. Big conifers are dying from dry summers. We have very dense forests that could burn as severely as Australias. And there are limited evacuation routes since we’re surrounded by water. Australia provides a horrible preview.
The SE US has a similar potential and a prediction of more frequent droughts.
TheMightyTrowel
@Dread: Sure. We can be smugly nihilistic (appropriate user name, buddy); but this sort of attitude is one that means we shrug at harm done around us – to people, to communities, to the environment. I’m not comfortable being smug about people dying, losing their homes, the breakdown of trust and community. Maybe the structural problems will prove insurmountable, but that doesn’t mean we should assume de facto that they are. I’m not going to shrug my way through the apocalypse.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dread: At least you choose an appropriate nym.
Mike J
@feebog: If you’d been there on Boxing Day you could have had a cruise to Hobart. No fatalities this year.
chopper
@Dan B:
never mind the fact that huge swaths of forest in the NW east to the rockies are being killed by beetles. it’s just a matter of time before a seriously dry year turns all that dead wood into kindling.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TheMightyTrowel:
(Shakes fist at TheMightTrowel for beating me to the comment.)
Thanks for the informative post, the kid was there two years ago and I’ve looked though her pics(and did the post processing on them). It’s pretty country.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@chopper: The beetles even killed the George Harrison Memorial Tree in Griffith Park here in LA.
Dread
@TheMightyTrowel: Not being smug. I genuinely think and believe that most of humanity will be dead within 100-200 years because of rich fuckwads and our inability to do what will be necessary to save ourselves and our civilization.
Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, if only because that’s what good people do. They try, even in the face of insurmountable odds. Try to elect the right people, try to minimize your personal impact on the planet, try to teach others even when it seems (and probably is) hopeless.
If we have to go down, we should go down fighting.
VFX Lurker
I drive a Prius, but I live in an apartment. I want my next car to be a plug-in hybrid — it’s an electric car as long as you can keep the battery charged, but the gas tank is there as backup.
A bike or bus would be even better emissions-wise, but I have to sort some things out before I can make that work.
Kamala.Harris.2020
I’m having trouble making sense of the numbers here.
This is being portrayed as an unbelievably catastrophic fire.
From numbers I’ve seen about 2K structures have been destroyed and 20-30 people killed (so far).
In the Paradise fire in California 18K structures were destroyed and 80 people were killed.
Is it that California had such poor emergency management that it couldn’t get people evacuated properly? Or just that CA was more densely populated?
JPL
@TheMightyTrowel: Thank you so much for the post and please continue to update us. The story is finally being reported here and the local Atlanta news just covered it.
TheMightyTrowel
@Kamala.Harris.2020: more densely populated – Australia as a whole has a population of only about 25 million, of whom something like 75% live in 5 urban centres (Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane
ETA: For comparison, CA has a population of about 40 million and is 423,970 km² while Australia is 7.692 million km²
?BillinGlendaleCA
@VFX Lurker: I try to use public transportation when I can, my trip to downtown LA Monday evening was on Metro, but I had to drive to the station.
slightly_peeved
@TheMightyTrowel:
You could probably substitute ‘present day’ with ‘the last 200 years’ :). Since the First Fleet, Australia’s always been about digging stuff up (coal, copper, gold, opals) or growing stuff (wheat, wool, beef, Hemsworths) and shipping it overseas.
Another Scott
It’s hard to think of a higher level of political malpractice.
:-(
Thanks for the post. Here’s hoping that the rains come earlier than expected.
Best wishes,
Scott.
low-tech cyclist
(Superseded)
eclare
@Brachiator: I own my house, but it is surrounded by trees, so shade, so no solar. And although I have a driveway, no external plug, so no way to charge. Older houses have limitations.
low-tech cyclist
It looks like Australia gets to be the canary in global warming’s coal mine.
Wish it weren’t so.
TheMightyTrowel
@slightly_peeved: Well yes. As an archaeologist, i have a hard time looking at any phenomenon without also thinking about it’s long term historical context. I also read a lot of work by First Nations scholars who emphasise this extractive ideology as a defining feature of British colonialism in Australia and also point towards alternatives. Happy to rec books and twitter follows if you (or anyone else) is interested.
Elizabelle
@TheMightyTrowel: Thank you for that.
We have to turn this around, as much as we can. We don’t want to be the generation that let the koalas die.
I’ve actually seen a lot of coverage of the Aussie fires, but that’s because I subscribe to libtard papers.
And climate change/environmentalism is a big draw for younger voters. We have to have that blue wave this year, and all future years. Our lives, and the sea creatures and animals’ lives, depend on it.
Despair kills.
TheMightyTrowel
Also on this note: my procrastination blocker is about to block BJ for the rest of the work day so future comments will be sporadic and from my phone. Thanks for the conversation everyone!
Dan B
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I used to read a climate change blog but stopped several years ago because it was very depressing. The solutions are available but the political challenges to implementation at scale are huge. I’ve worked with a minority run environmental organization and the issues are similar to yours since so many of them are renters and don’t even own cars. Many environmental orgs are completely uninformed about these issues which leaves good policy vulnerable to being defeated by simple messaging: It will cost you money!!! If the policy benefits people with money to spare and provides no benefit to the poor it is likely to falter. If it benefits the poor it raises the hackles of the right wing.
We did the full solar PV, ductless heat pump, electric car, etc. 9 years ago but haven’t managed to convince any of our friends to do the same, even the ones who could easily afford it.
JPL
OT Williamson laid off her campaign staff. Raise you hand if you didn’t know or care she had a campaign staff.
debbie
I was shocked to read that the PM took his holiday while the fires were raging. I don’t understand that sort of mindset in a leader. I don’t know what the equivalent is in Australia’s system, but that bastard should be kicked to the curb ASAP.
I googled for images of Australian forests. I didn’t realize the growth was as dense as California’s, though I can’t tell if they’re populated similarly, ie, Paradise, etc. Regardless, I’m hoping for a miracle.
Kent
@low-tech cyclist: Totally off-topic but I’m just realizing that Canada at 38 million is 50% larger than Australia by population. I don’t know why but I always kind of felt that Australia was larger. Maybe it just looms larger in our imagination.
Butter Emails
@low-tech cyclist:
I wish we’d actually learn a lesson from the canary, but I suspect the canary is going to die and everyone is still going to stay in the mine.
trollhattan
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Paradise, CA is situated atop a ridge with just a few small roads in and out. The fire blew up from a nearby river gorge propelled by high winds (60-80 mph IIRC) and hit the town in a very short time. The population skewed old and I believe most of the victims were elderly. Homes were mostly older, not built with fire in mind and most of the lots were wooded, adding to the peril.
Can it happen again? Yes.
mary s
@Martin: Sure, there’s plenty of talk and not enough action among liberals in California (where I also live) and elsewhere. I’m all for people doing their bit individually. I bike or walk or take Muni to and from work (and most other places), I try not to waste water or food, always bring my own bags to the grocery store, and am dutiful about composting. And so on. However, I have the luxury of living in a place that makes it relatively easy for me to do a lot of these other virtuous things.
More generally, I’m mostly in agreement with Elizabeth Warren’s comments in response to a question about plastic straws: “The fossil fuel industry wants to keep us arguing about light bulbs and cheeseburgers while 70% of pollution comes from just three industries. We need to focus on creating big, structural change to tackle this climate crisis and the Washington corruption head-on.” I’m also with Vox’s Dave Roberts, who says that one of the best ways to address climate change on a larger scale (which is what we need to do) is to elect Democrats.
@PJ:
debbie
@slightly_peeved:
They were about that kind of exploitation only after having dumped their human detritus on the land.
Kent
Took me a couple of hours and a few hundred dollars to install a car charging station on the outside wall of my older house so my daughter can plug in her Nissan Leaf. You can find about 100 different models of car charging stations on Amazon and a bazillion youtube videos on installing them.
debbie
@trollhattan:
And I was horrified to read, even after the fire, that the town’s leaders still didn’t want to widen any of the roads to help with the next evacuation.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: Her magic rocks will propel her to victory. Oops, they ran out of magic.
Alright, who’s next?
Dan B
@Kamala.Harris.2020: The Paradise fire would have burned fewer structures had it gone to the north or south of town. There’s a good documentary that shows it went straight at Paradise. The winds were intense which made stopping the inferno impossible. I recall that it took only 20 -30 minutes to cover all of Paradise. The Doc is harrowing to watch.
slightly_peeved
@low-tech cyclist:
While some of the fires here are in well-populated areas (the Adelaide Hills, parts of SE Victoria) a lot of the NSW fires appear to be in less populated areas.
A minor factor may be that unlike the US, which (to grossly oversimplify) has hurricanes on the east and south coast, cyclones in the middle, and wildfires on the west coast, Australia has bushfires on the west coast, on the south coast, and on the east coast. So lots of people know (or are) volunteer firefighters, and the knowledge of how to prepare for and react to bushfires is greater.
FelonyGovt
Thank you for this post. My daughter lived in Melbourne for 2 years and I’ve remained interested in Australia, but coverage of this disaster has been spotty in the US.
Here in California, we have had concerned Governors (Brown, now Newsom) who have been a calming and comforting presence during our horrendous fires, even though Orange Shitgibbon has been dismissive and nasty. I hope there are local officials in Australia who more concerned and helpful than the national leadership seems to be.
TheMightyTrowel
Quick, bad update: the Victoria premier just announced that 28 people are unaccounted for in his state at the present moment.
Martin
In California, landlords must allow renters to install a vehicle charger (with a few limitations). The renter owns the charger and can take it when they leave, but the renter needs to pay for the installation. It can be an exterior installation.
HOAs are prohibited from restricting charger installations.
Aleta
Thanks @TheMightyTrowel: @Jack Canuck: and other commenters in the area. And thanks so much for the links. It would be great if you have time to write or send links again for John, Cheryl, Adam, Betty, etc. to post as FP. The immediacy of this tragedy, and words from people who are there, have a strength that is different from projections and future implications re climate change.
Just my opinion: I hope for awhile the blog could continue some focus on Australia, NZ and the specifics there, right now. Even just posts of a collection of links (incl. global modeling re that region, polar influences /interaction, local biology and water, writing by locals).
JPL
@FelonyGovt: I was waiting to see if trump called to share his expertise in fighting fires.
TominNC
This kills me to read. Australia is a special place.
The isotherms in the figure are striking. Wow.
eclare
@Kent: Does it lock so people can’t steal the electricity? That would be an issue where I live. Also, wiring-wise, my house is pretty fragile, I still have knob and tube. Would I need to upgrade?
debbie
@JPL:
Oh, he did. Remember the sweeping? //
chopper
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
killed by beetles? ironic.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@chopper: Yeah, they replanted a different kind of tree in it’s place.
slightly_peeved
@debbie:
The people who sent the boats may have been, though making sure Australia wasn’t a French colony was probably part of the reasoning as well. I’m sure some of the people who chose to go on the boats (John Macarthur, in the Second Fleet, comes to mind) were thinking in terms of profit.
Dan B
@eclare: There are a number of different types of chargers for different speeds. Level 1 is standard household and can plug into any outlet. It takes 10 hours to charge to approx 120 miles range. Level 2 is like a drier outlet and charges twice as fast. The difference is you need a good “fuse” box with up to date circuit breakers. The outlet should come directly from the breaker box on newly installed conduit.
Knob and tube is a separate issue, as in get it replaced asap. (Speaking of fires…)
Kent
No, but the plug is unique to electric cars so someone would have to pull a Tesla or Leaf up my driveway and park there to steal electricity. I live in the upscale suburbs. No one steals electricity. But they do have smart-phone enabled charging stations will all kinds of security features if that were an issue. Like this: https://www.amazon.com/JuiceBox-Electric-Vehicle-Charging-Station/dp/B00UB9R4KO/
As for installation. I put mine on the outside of my garage wall. The main breaker box for the house is on the other side of the wall inside the garage so it was a trivial exercise to drill a hole in the garage wall and install another 220 volt 50 amp circuit using extra space in the circuit box for someone with a modicum of understanding of electricity. But my house is not as old as yours. I have regular modern circuits not knob and tube and fuses and that sort of thing.
Barney
Unit conversion – 6 million hectares is 14.8 million acres. Or 60,000 square km – roughly the size of the whole of West Virginia. For comparison, the total burned in wildfires for the USA has reached 10 million acres in the worst years. And Australia has another 2 months of the season to go.
Dan B
@eclare: You can place the outlet in a box. Put a lock on the box. Our outlet is in the garage and the cord goes under the door. The plug only fits into our charger and won’t fit anything else so the power can’t be stolen.
Kent
For those Australians here. I’m curious about the landscape that is burning and how natural it is versus human-modified to make it more fire-prone.
Here in the US we have nearly a century of constant fire suppression in the west which has lead to enormous buildups of brush and undergrowth in the forests that has lead to less frequent but massively catastrophic fires. Fires were always natural to the landscape in much of the western US and the pre-modern landscape was much more open as a result. In other words, much of the blame for 21st century catastrophic fires is due to 20th century fire suppression and the subsequent buildup of fuel.
Have land practices in Australia lead to the same sort of thing? Or is bush landscape in its native form that is burning in a manner that used to not ever happen?
eclare
@Kent: Thanks for the info! My circuit box is nowhere near my driveway, and it’s in my house, which is stucco and brick. But I’m sure someone will have figured this out by the time I need a new car. I had no idea there were so many chargers available!
eclare
@Dan B: Oh I am aware my house is a house of cards with wiring!
trollhattan
@Barney:
Thanks. Pet peeve: most US news reports I hear simply replace hectares with acres and call it a day, sans conversion. They love saying millyun, so it’s all good.
WaterGirl
@eclare: When my house was being repaired after my huge tree fell on it, the electricians found horrifying wiring in the wall where the kitchen and the bathroom meet.
So there were extra repair costs, but I did wonder if the tree falling my have been a blessing that saved me from a house fire. There are some things we can never know.
Dan B
@Kent: Not an Australian but much of the “bush” is Eucalyptus and other plants similar to California’s chapparal. These are plants adapted to extended drought. They contain oils and resins that are highly flammable. And there are regular fires. The Blue Mountains get the name from the bluish haze from all the volatile oils in the air. There are regular discussions in California about eliminating Eucalyptus because they create fire hazards.
eclare
@WaterGirl: I just tell myself, it’s been here since 1924, it’s just one person here, so hopefully not too big a drag. I do need to get an electrician out to fix something, maybe I’ll ask him/her to look at my setup to see if anything dire sticks out. Yeah, with the tree, you never know!
Viva BrisVegas
The next Australian Federal election will probably be in the middle of 2022. By that time the embers of these fires will have cooled, the lost houses rebuilt and those killed, buried.
By then people will have forgotten all about the fires, unless someone reminds them, and then it will be a quizzical expression and “I remember those, they were bad at the time weren’t they.” Then off they’ll go to vote for the government and their promised tax cuts.
The Labor opposition is caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock being the movement of previously working class electorates from Labor to Liberal (Tory) on the back of culture wars and climate denialism. The hard place being the growth of inner city activism expressed in the Greens Party, eating away at their left flank.
At the moment Labor is trying to straddle those competing constituencies, and failing miserably by alienating both. It can’t win without coal mining electorates and it can’t win inner city seats without Green preferences. Where it goes from here I don’t know.
The short of it is, I don’t think that there will ever be political consequences for the government in climate denialism.
chris
Thanks for this, Mighty Trowel. It’s yet another reminder that no current system of government is ready, willing or able to deal with the climate crisis. Individual and small group action is important but IMO massive government action is the only way to avoid the onrushing disaster. No, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Dan B
@eclare: We have a Level 1 that we plug into the car every other night. Level 2 would be nice but the bid was $500. Between dinner, sleep, and breakfast we’ve got 10 -12 hours to charge. We hang the plug on the electric meters right on the front of the house. It would only be of interest to Leaf owners and there are free level 3 chargers (1/2 hour to 80%) a couple miles away.
WaterGirl
@Viva BrisVegas:
Maybe I’m not cynical enough, but I don’t think anyone forgets when their country and their community is going up in flames.
I am not there, but I am guessing these fires are such that most of us cannot even imagine the horror.
Martin
@Kent: Getting ones that lock is pretty easy. You can either mount it in a keybox or you can get one that takes a code. There’s a few chargers out there that are designed for either consumer or commercial use, so they have a variant with a keypad on it, that kind of thing.
Butter Emails
@Viva BrisVegas:
What about the fires of the 2020 – 2021 season and those that would current be burning. They gonna forget those as well?
eclare
@Dan B: Thanks for the info!
Viva BrisVegas
Many, but not all, of these fires have been started in virgin forest in National Parks by lightning strikes. Most of these areas are mountainous and inaccessible to vehicles and far from any habitation.
These fires occur every season, but usually they burn themselves out or are put out by rain. Fire fighters generally left them alone because they were too difficult to get to and didn’t threaten property.
Not this season. The country is in one of the worst droughts in recorded history. Fires that start do not go out. Rain doesn’t come. So entire national parks are burning, not just portions, and those fires are overflowing into inhabited areas.
The fuel for these fires is not just on the ground it’s in the crowns of the trees.
Origuy
@eclare: When I replaced my breaker panel, the electrician found that sparking in the panel had caused small wiring fires. The wiring was not up to code, let alone the fact that the panel opened into a bathroom. They completely replaced the panel and reversed the direction so that it opened into a hallway. Because of the fires, my homeowners insurance paid for the whole thing, including replacing and painting the drywall in the bathroom. A good electrician should be able to write up the insurance claim if you have a decent policy. This is in California, so your state may vary.
Matt McIrvin
@Jack Canuck: Over on LGM there are a couple of commenters who argue in many comment threads that climate change basically makes every political issue hopeless in the medium to long term, because “climate change will turn us into monsters”. The argument is that as the equatorial regions of the Earth become uninhabitable, there will be a massive flow of climate refugees to the global north, and the response will be the usual racist fears, xenophobia and fascism, even from self-identified liberals. And that will make everything even worse in a self-sustaining feedback loop. So there’s almost no point in even trying to do anything; we’re just doomed.
I think Erik Loomis basically believes this too–he thinks capitalism has to be eliminated to fix this, and there’s just no way that’s going to happen, so it’s all hopeless.
Another Scott
@Viva BrisVegas:
I assume that the US will be seeing much more of things like The Great Dismal Swamp fires:
It’s nothing like what Australia (and the western US) has gone through recently, but it shows that the eastern US is in danger as well.
Cheers,
Scott.
Patricia Kayden
eclare
@Origuy: Your panel was in your bathroom? Wowsa! Thanks for the insurance info. Just so happens a relative is an electrician!
Matt McIrvin
(What do I, personally, think? I don’t know, but this is part of the reason I bang so hard on the drum of welcoming refugees and other immigrants to the US. I think that how we handle this has a major bearing on how we handle the climate crisis in the long term because it’s going to create huge numbers of displaced people, both internally and externally. And a lot of them are going to be brown or black. I think it’s a really hopeful sign that everyone left of center of the US political spectrum seems to be evolving in the direction of LESS xenophobia, surprisingly rapidly and partly as a reaction to Trump.)
rikyrah
thank you for this post.
I have been weepy, looking at the coverage.
eclare
@Matt McIrvin: Agree 100%, drought was one reason for the war in Syria. Yemen is going to run out of water, even if SA stops bombing there, the future is bleak.
Feathers
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
The documentary on the Paradise fire others have referred to was on Frontline. At least for WGBH, available to watch on the PBS website as one of the 10 most streamed episodes from 2019. Highly recommended. Basically one of those situations where 10 things went wrong at the same time, if only 9 had gone wrong things would have been very different.
@debbie:
Daughter of a highway planner. Part of the problem is that building more road brings more houses and all the advantage of having more road to evacuate on would be lost. Another is that widening a long and remote road is very, very expensive and probably not cost effective in terms of what else that money could buy in terms of fire safety. Chokepoints become the problem, you can spend massively on a road and still not have it be available as an escape route. You could build a new school on the edge of town with a massive stone/pavement fire break surrounding it as a town refuge for far less than the cost of the road expansion.
Also – PG&E is the source of much of the problem. Replacing them with an agency committed to fire safety would be much better as well.
Matt McIrvin
@Kamala.Harris.2020: Australia has about as much land area as the contiguous US, and about 2/3 the population of California.
Laura Too
@TheMightyTrowel: Thank you for this. My sister is in Bendigo and we just got back from there in the beginning of December. We saw a bit of the fires as we were flying out and it is devastating. I read the paper from Bendigo at least once a week, have for the 8 years she’s lived there and really there hasn’t been anything like this. Reading about Black Saturday now, as she said that is what happened in there area. 173 people dead in such a short time. It is all so sad. Not really a beliver but I take comfort in the verse: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.” Let’s hope we will all listen to Greta.
SectionH
The Mighty Trowel: Thanks for your post. I alternate between almost sick reading the news from Downunder, and trying to focus on things I can do something about. So esp. thanks for the donation suggestions.
A good friend in Melbourne is from East Gippsland. Mr S and I wanted a scenic route back to Sydney one time, so we went coastal at first – through Bairnsdale (our friend would, and did, say, “through is better” but he’s a such city boi at heart). We stayed in Lakes Entrance, which is just beautiful, and in Cann River – and drove the Cann Highway to Canberra. Is that road, um, actually paved now? (It was a long time ago… ;-> ) It’s just horrible to think of places like that burning.
Mj_Oregon
For fairly unbiased news coverage of the bush fires try ABC News Australia live on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/ht6tu4Gc3ag
Ladyraxterinok
@Dread: My son agrees re widespread dictatorships within 50yrs. Very depressing! He thinks it’s the only way society will be even minimally able to deal with the crisis caused by dwindling resources–eg esp land and water—
Matt McIrvin
@Ladyraxterinok: Why does he think dictatorships are better at dealing with resource crises? More often they create resource crises.
Ken_L
This Australian thanks you for the post. But let me be clear about who in this country is to blame for the lack of action on climate change over the last 20 years. It’s not ‘the politicians’, or the loathsome Liberal/Country Party, or the media.
It’s the majority of my fellow Australians, who pay lip service to the idea of combating global warming and squeal like stuck pigs at any suggestion it should cost them money, or require any change to their lifestyles.
GrueBleen
@TheMightyTrowel:
An Australian based Aussie here.
Thanks for the analysis and particularly the pointer to the scientific analysis from Prof Nerilie Abram, TMT. Vox also published a useful and comprehensive analysis:
Australia’s hellish heat wave and wildfires, explained
https://www.vox.com/2019/12/30/21039298/40-celsius-australia-fires-2019-heatwave-climate-change
One thing that, strangely, nobody mentions however, is the effect of the Earth’s elliptical orbit: perihelion makes southern hemisphere summers hotter and aphelion makes southern hemisphere winters cooler than for the northern hemisphere. It’s not a big deal compared to the Indian Ocean Dipole or the Southern Annular Mode, but it does help explain perhaps why Australia is perennially hot and dry.
GrueBleen
@Ken_L:
Quite right, mate: our political leaders must always slavishly follow the lowest common denominator, mustn’t they.