Is now the right time to talk about this? Even beyond the crazed ramblings of Barnaby Joyce, there has been a lot said about the catastrophic bushfires that continue to ravage this country. Borrowing from the NRA’s playbook of deflecting responsibility from the tragedies of gun violence, climate deniers are already arguing that apportioning responsibility is largely irrelevant right now because we need to focus on what needs to be done now (which would be a better argument if SmoKo actually looked like showing any leadership or initiative instead of asking us to ignore the devastation and enjoy the cricket). And even though most of the same people making these arguments take approximately two minutes between hearing about a terrorist attack and tweeting something that attempts to link the tragedy to their xenophobic worldview, I still do take this question seriously. For this reason I took some time to start writing once the fires began. But ultimately if now isn’t the right time to talk about these fires when is?
Climate scientists have been warning us for nearly 20 years that the bushfires of the future will look like this. Numerous fire chiefs tried to speak with Scott Morrison this year about how unprepared the country was and they were ignored. It doesn’t seem that people want to list to warnings about dangers of the future, but perhaps once it’s all over, the nation will be ready to listen. Let’s consider recent history though. Last summer, my state (Tasmania) was ravaged by widespread bushfires burning in regions that were previously too wet to burn. Air quality in large parts of the state decreased due to the smoke for over a week and it was often graded as unhealthy. You might have thought that after an experience like this, we would have had a more serious public discussion about the increased threat of extreme bushfires due to climate change. But you’d have been wrong. Once the fires finally subsided the media lost interest and only a few months later the country elected an anti-science snake-oil salesman in a blue cap who actively campaigns against renewable energy. It seems that if we want to have a serious discussion about the danger of these fires we need to do it now, while they are fresh in our minds so that the Liberal Government and their complicit media allies can’t downplay it retrospectively and seek to distract us with scare campaigns (at least wealthy retirees still get their franking credits).
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