So, it’s not even summer yet, and already Sydney is ringed with flames as dozens of bush fires – many of them still out of control – burn through the scrubs and valleys. More than 200 homes have already been lost, and support appliances are coming in from South Australia, Queensland and even New Zealand. There are a dozen strike teams stationed in the Blue Mountains, ready to head into the flames to deal with anything that comes up. It is thought that Thursday is going to be the worst day – I heard the commissioner
And yet, somehow, we’ve managed to turn this into an argument about bashing various politicians. A lot of people – mostly Liberals – decried Adam Bandt’s comments, claiming that he was politicising a human tragedy and insisting that now was not the time to talk about the correlation between bushfires and climate change. Of course, plenty of people (including Peter Fitzsimons, but not, noticeable, any Labor MPs) have come out in support of Bandt, and the Liberals opened themselves up to the same criticism of politicisation when Tony Abbott appeared in Faulconbridge dressed in his RFS uniform – although apparently some of these photos are now being called fake. We’ll see. And of course, as is so often the way, social media has leapt to the attack (and, not surprisingly, attacking completely the wrong thing) with a page on Facebook having more 20 000 likes. The page – something about Fuck the Greenies, we need to backburn. Strangely, it has a bastardised Labor logo in the background. Where ignorance lives, evil thrives.
I think that, at times like this, it can be difficult to think clearly. Indeed, in the morass of politics at any level, clear thought is something that is highly prized, but less regularly demonstrated. Equally, I think we have to accept that almost every action we take – from the car we buy, to the restaurants we eat at, the schools we send our children too – are all ‘political’ acts. We are making decisions that have significant effects beyond our lives. Such is the price we pay for capitalism and democracy. A failure to understand that betrays either a wilful ignorance or is in and of itself a political act of denial. Thus, now is precisely the right time to talk about climate change and bushfires. Just about every climate scientist who is worth his salt (that is, peer-reviewed and not backed by coal industries) acknowledges that as global warming occurs, the chance of extreme events like the bushfires increases in regularity. If we don’t start talking about how we can tackle this now, when are we going to do so? The people who have lost their lives and their houses demand nothing less.