Australias government, long allied with the coal industry, has been labelled “an increasingly regressive force” on climate change by watchdogs. Will the record bushfires ravaging the country since autumn mark a turning point?
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Thousands of families seeking refuge on beaches. Over a billion animals killed. Clouds of smoke choking the countrys biggest cities. These apocalyptic scenes have captured the scale and severity of the wildfires raging in Australia since September.
“Were in the middle of a war situation,” David Bowman, director of the Fire Centre Research Hub at the University of Tasmania, told TIME magazine this week.
“I've seen bushfires before, but this was like an atomic bomb,” echoed Andrew Constance, Transport Minister of New South Wales, in the Sydney Morning Herald. His comments came as authorities urged nearly a quarter-million people to evacuate their homes in neighbouring Victoria state, ahead of a renewed heatwave that caused two major fires to merge into a “megablaze” on Friday.
Australians are used to fire season, but the current environmental catastrophe is unprecedented, said David Camroux, an Australian-born senior research fellow at the Centre for International Research (CERI) at Pariss Sciences Po.
“Contrary to the usual patterns, the fires have not been contained within a single state but stretch from New South Wales to Victoria and Queensland,” he told FRANCE 24. “They could last for a long time, because the rains are not expected until March or April.”
Even those out of reach of the flames are not immune to the dangers of the fires, with millions facing hazardous air pollution in and around Australias major cities. In Canberra, the capital, levels of PM 2.5 particulate matter peaked on New Years Day at more than 200 times the World Health Organizations safe recommended value.
“Weve never seen anything like this,” said Camroux.
Sack ScoMo
For many Australians, the governments response to the fires has exemplified its wider failures in responding to the threats posed by climate change.
“Prime Minister Scott Morrison has multiplied errors in managing this national crisis,” said Camroux.
As early as last April, chief firefighters had warned of the possibility of crisis-level bushfires, but didnt receive any response from the government. For weeks, as damage from the fires spread, the conservative prime minister and longtime coal industry advocate refused to acknowledge any connection between climate change and the fires, before finally doing so in mid-December.
“All this has sparked Australians outrage,” said Camroux. Catalysing their anger is the Hawaii beach vacation Morrison took with his family in mid-December, even as two firefighters were killed battling the flames.
Morrison cut the trip short and apologised, before scheduling a visit to the affected areas in early January. But he hasnt avoided further blunders. During a visit this week to Kangaroo Island, a wildlife hub and popular tourist destination off Australias south coast, Morrison erroneously told reporters: “Thankfully, weve had no loss of life.” He was quickly corrected, prompting an awkward exchange.
Still, Morrisons message was upbeat.
“Australia is open, Australia is still a wonderful place to come and bring your family and enjoy your holidays,” he said after meeting local tourism operators and farmers.
“Even here on Kangaroo Island, where a third of the island has obviously been decimated, two-thirds of it is open and ready for business,” he said. “Its important to keep the local economies vibrant at these times.”
Over the last week, Morrison has called up 3,000 military reservists to help fight the fires and pledged a record A$2 billion (€1.2 billion) in recovery funds.
For Camroux and many Australian residents, the measures are “too little, too late” and illustrate Morrisons “lack of leadership”. At least one environmental group has gone further, characterising the governments response to the fires as “criminal negligence” in a call to action published on Wednesday.
The group, Uni Students for Climate Justice, is among the organisers of the Sack ScoMo protests that drew thousands into the streets Friday across at least ten Australian cities, demanding the prime ministers resignation and urgent action on climate change.
One of the worlds biggest polluters per capita
Morrisons government is hardly the first in Australia to prioritise fossil fuel revenue over climate action.
“Since 1996 successive conservative Australian governments have successfully fought to subvert international agreements on climate change in defence of the countrys fossil fuel industries,” wrote Booker Prize-winning novelist Richard Flanagan last week in a New York Times opinion article entitled “Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide”.
Ketan Joshi, an Australian energy and climate science writer, argued on the Guardian news site that mainstream Australian media has been complicit in “pioneering the denial of climate disaster”.
“Rightwing media outlets in Australia have responded to the current bushfires by either refusing to give the story its due prominence or by spreading falsehoods,” Joshi wrote. Moreover, he cited a study by university researchers affiliated with the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism that found that “climate scepticism gets substantial favourable exposure in mainstream Australian media”.
This tendency towards climate scepticism goes hand in hand with the countrys heavy economic dependence on fossil fuels – and, in turn, its position as one of the worlds top emitters of greenhouse gases. With just 25 million residents, or 0.3 percent of the worlds population, it is responsible for 1.2 percent of global CO2 emissions. According to the Global Carbon Project, this makes Australia the worlds eleventh-highest CO2 emitter per capita as of 2018, just ahead of the United States.
The 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, created by the rights observatory Germanwatch, ranks Australia 56th out of 61 countries evaluated. The index cites the Morrison governments record as “an increasingly regressive force” in international climate negotiations, its approval of a major new coal mine and its withdrawal from the United Nations Green Climate Fund.
Surge in public concern
Australians concern about climate change is rapidly growing, however, as the Read More – Source
