In response to the opprobrium heaped on The Australian for their constant climate change denialism now that climate change is blindingly obvious to all but halfwits, one or other of…
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Climatic changes may mean that by the middle of next century, every year would be a potential “Ash Wednesday” year of extreme bushfire danger, according to CSIRO scientists.
The risk would be greatest in south-eastern Australia, the nation’s most fertile and densely populated region, the scientists have told the national Greenhouse 87 conference.
It is the first time the possibility of such a dramatic increase in bushfire risk has been linked to the global warming many scientists will occur within the next 50 years.
[Sydney Morning Herald, December 4, 1987]
The philosopher Donna Haraway speaks of the imperative of “staying with the trouble”, of not shying away from reality but instead inhabiting the present in all its complexity, terror, hope and joy and recognising our kinship with those around us. Perhaps it is time we all learned to do that, time we learned to recognise our own hopes and fears in other people. Because that is what many of us glimpsed in the faces of the people on the beach in Mallacoota on New Year’s Eve. We saw ourselves, our shared future, the terror and pain of what is coming. And we could no longer look away.
Sometimes when I write these essays (or whatever they are), I find it difficult to not type with my fists as my rage is almost insuperable. This one hasn’t made…
Everyone knows that the main reason the fire seasons are getting longer is because of climate change, even the deniers. The 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review, which examined the scientific…
With the Coalition’s decade of denialism finally coming home to roost by way of the catastrophic fires mostly in New South Wales and Victoria, they are attempting to lay blame…
Barnaby Joyce (the Beetrooter) posted a video on Twitter, presumably taken on his phone and said: “Well, you probably wonder what politicians do on Christmas Eve well (sic) when it’s…
For the hapless energy minister [Angus Taylor] had managed in Madrid the one success of his ministerial career to date and that was to discredit our nation in the eyes of the world by being in cahoots with such colleagues as a nation led by medieval butchers, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, a nation led by a latter-day vivisector, exactly the sort of pariah states any democratic country feels proud to have as allies.
But here’s the most disturbing thing. Denialists – led by powerful politicians and business leaders – have won the day. By clouding the debate – by badgering and bullying credible scientists and those who respect them – they have prevented any meaningful action on slowing the rate of global warming. If it wasn’t so serious you could smile at the irony. Those people who hate change more than anything else, those people who deal with the horrifying prospect of global warming by pretending it doesn’t exist, have successfully prevented efforts to stop one of the greatest disruptions confronting humanity. Those people. They’ve certainly earned their place in the hell to come.
As I mentioned a few days ago, the Liberal Party in New South Wales now seems a bit confused about climate change, with the state Environment Minister, Matt Kean, clearly…