25,000 dead koalas
As you stand before the twisted remains of a home recently gutted by monstrous flames, and the only clothes you possess are the ones you’re standing up in, it probably wouldn’t occur to you that the prime minister (Scott Morrison) might be speculating about the survival of his budget surplus. Prominent among heightened emotions might be shock, bewilderment, anger and grief. Almost certainly there will be ongoing fear. Looking further ahead than tomorrow may be challenging, but nonetheless, your children’s future is slap-bang in front of you.
What are you going to do about it? How are you going to decide as your country stands at a T junction? Same old, same old or responsible global leader?
It’s been 12 days since peak-horror in Australia’s profit-fuelled apocalypse. Temps have been all over the place in crazy Melbourne: cold enough to have heating on one day; mid-30s the next; and then cooling precious rain the following evening. In East Gippsland on Friday, as the maximum headed for the low 40s, there was a high fire danger. Fear and dread ramped up. But the longer-term outlook is a bit wetter and cooler. Sighs of relief all round, especially in Canberra, where there are few people and little going on, it being the key holiday season of the year – think July-August in the northern hemisphere. Federal pollies are due back on 20 January, not a moment too soon.
There are still active fires; smoke haze is variable. How quickly we have got used to checking air quality several times a day, especially if outdoor exercise is on the agenda. ‘Have you got the app?’ friends check anxiously, sharing the few remaining face masks they’ve been able to find in this city. This is where I live as I started to write.
I used to complain about tupperware skies in the UK – greyish-white overcast, formless from horizon to horizon. Bushfire smoke ‘lids’ are the real McCoy, however: oppressive, noiseless, disquieting.
Scott Morrison whistle-stopped a few badly affected towns. He was loudly and rudely heckled in Cobargo in New South Wales, and one of his cohort manhandled a pregnant young woman as she quietly pleaded for more generous allowances for volunteer firefighters. Her home had been destroyed and she looked shell-shocked; Morrison was awkward and walked away when he should have gone back to talk to her. It was not a good photo-op. A man lacking in empathy needs the assistance of co-operative subjects. Moving on, he attempted to shake the hand of a firefighter taking a break with a cuppa. The man whispered that he did not wish to shake hands, but Morrison grabbed one anyway. ‘I’m sure he’s just tired’, he said. 'No, no, he's lost a house,' the incident controller explained. On Kangaroo Island in South Australia, the PM expressed relief no one had died, but was soon corrected: two people had lost their lives in what is, even under normal circumstances, a tight-knit community.
From Kangaroo Island came the most appalling stat of the week: 25,000 koalas are believed to have perished, half the island’s population. Several days later, I can barely process such an overwhelmingly awful number. A koala was the subject of the week’s most heartbreaking image (right), among many contenders. Many survivors have badly burned paws. From Holland came the heartwarming story of quilters making cotton mittens for their injuries. Tears flowed again, nonetheless.
Are the deaths of 25,000 koalas – in one fire event – enough to turn a government?
Hot on the heels of army reservists mobilising so that Morrison appeared to be doing something, albeit a little after-the-event, the federal government’s diversionary tactics kicked off. Greater hazard-reduction burning could have reduced the extent of the disaster: discuss. This is something that, ideally, takes place before the bushfire season gets going, or during milder, tranquil periods later on in the spring. Trouble is, in recent times an extensive and enduring drought* combined with higher-than-usual ground and air temperatures, have made fuel-reduction burning much more risky; and less popular in bush communities. New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons – the man the prime minister’s office ‘forgot’ to inform about the deployment of troops in his state – set the record straight on hazard-reduction burns.
An offshoot of this debate was the old-hat blaming of Greens for opposing such burns (factcheck this conspiracy theory here, and, again from Commissioner Fitzsimmons, here.) Several regular nutters popped up, including former Labor leader but currently Pauline Hanson’s One Nation henchman in New South Wales, Mark Latham, who tweeted, ‘It's time to start de-listing [national parks] as a way of getting nature back under control.’ Dear gods! Just as we need conservation of the trees we’ve got left – to store carbon rather than release it; and to soothe our troubled souls – this idiot, and he is not alone on the right, wants to chop down more, and in areas where they are best protected. Here is some factchecking of the tired old tirade about bushfires and national parks.
Next up, my least favourite Australian newspaper deliberately and vastly inflated the number of arsonists responsible for the fires. Those refuting this particular fiction included Victoria Police.
Many disconcerting topics have been explored in the last few days by thinking media outlets. Was New Year’s Eve a tipping point? James Bradley in The Guardian described the complexity of life in ‘the new normal’. His piece included the brilliant but disturbing image of the crowded beach at Malua in New South Wales, by Alex Coppel. The firelight lends the feel of a 16th-century Dutch master. Van Badham, in the same publication, likened the spread of lies and conspiracies to the fire itself. Phillip Coorey, Political Editor at The Australian Financial Review, crystallised the inconsistencies of Morrison’s economic policy in the absence of climate mitigation policy and costs. Author Richard Flanagan didn’t hold back in The New York Times when he asked if Australia’s ‘leaders’ were sending the nation to its doom. And Jackie French in The Age asked what do we need from this moment on.
[A couple of days later…]
Without exception there has been praise, gratitude and awe at the efforts of volunteer firefighters. Another died in Victoria on Saturday night; each death more unacceptable, if that were possible, than the last. They are the most selfless people. It is now time, however, to develop complex disaster-response teams that do not depend on volunteers; nationally co-ordinated groups that can be quickly moved into a region affected by fire, flood or storm, equipped with highly trained personnel, mobile hospitals, rescue vehicles, equipment for road clearing and temporary bridge construction, mobile accommodation for evacuees, wildlife rescue and stock recovery teams, network hubs, power supply, fuel, water and food supplies, child carers, counsellors.
Remote communities must have satellite phones and other back-up systems as a matter of course. Reconstructed homes everywhere must be fire- and flood-proofed by means of stringent building codes and back-up utility supplies. Containment lines must be resilient; systems of burning flexible.
Most importantly, individuals must, in the absence of government example and leadership, process the fact that Australia is on the front line of climate change. We must put in place carbon-emissions reduction programmes, ourselves, not only the government, when it turns up. This means fewer children, pets, cars, international holidays, jet skis; less meat consumption, plastic, and accumulation of stuff generally. In ten years of living in Australia, in two state capitals, I have only ever seen three people using a dustpan and brush instead of a leaf blower. Many of those favourite gadgets have to go. You’ll manage, I promise. I’ll wager more days than not on this continent you can dry washing outside: it takes a bit more effort, that’s all. And don’t believe the nonsense about Australia’s low emissions: it is among the top ten nations in the world for per capita emissions: which number depends on which stats you use. The recent fires have created more emissions in a few weeks than 100 of the lowest-emitting nations do in a year.
If you’re angry or distraught, or just stunned, let you political representatives know, at all levels of government, that now is the time for climate mitigation policy. ‘Quiet Australians’ have to get noisy: your lives may depend upon it; and your children’s futures certainly do. Australia loves royal commissions, and Morrison has hinted at one. But they’re cumbersome things. They take months to set up; weeks to hear evidence, and still longer to report. Please don’t be quiet a moment longer.
And in case you don’t think it’s as bad as I do… read an article I opened this morning with my cup of tea. Then I went for a run. On the way back, through a nearby park, there is one of the most magnificent Moreton Bay figs you’ll ever see. I went to stand close to its massive trunk. Suddenly I was sobbing; deep-rising howls of grief for what this country has lost.
* The picture at the top of the page, taken last August, is Lake Pamamaroo, once one of the Menindee Lakes in far west New South Wales, now a desolate lake bed.
