- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2178
Photo: bertknot – flickr.com (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Australia is breaking records, but not the sort to be proud of. Some parts of Australia recorded their highest temperatures ever this January. South Australia’s Andamooka reached 50 degrees. Hopetoun and Walpeup in Victoria set records of 48.9 degrees. The south east of Australia is facing the worst heatwave since the Black Summer of 2019-2020 when 21 per cent of the continent was burned.
With all this heat there has come more bushfires, first in Victoria, then in neighbouring states. 3,000 hectares has been burnt recently and fires in Victoria’s Otways have destroyed properties. Victorian farmers have lost at least $30 million in livestock and more in terms of farmland that can’t be used for a long time.
Some of our recent bushfires have been so severe that they make their own weather, making distinctive cloud patterns and causing storms that make the firefighter’s jobs even more dangerous.
Experts who study atmosphere and bushfires say that fire-generated thunderstorms were practically unheard of a few decades ago, but seem to be becoming more common.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Professors Rachael Helene Nolan and Trent Penman don’t beat about the bush. They point out in a recent article that climate change is making ‘megafires’ both more likely and less predictable. While it’s true that Australia has always had fires, climate change is making the really severe fires come far more frequently. The gaps between ‘high severity’ fires are getting smaller.
While it’s sometimes hard to make a simple connection, the overall picture is clear. According to World Weather Attribution, the heatwave experienced by the south east of Australia in January this year was five times more likely to happen now due to global heating.
There’s more bad news. This year, there has been a “weak” La Niña weather pattern. La Niña lowers temperatures slightly, in contrast to El Nino, which raises them. This year La Niña wasn’t enough to make a difference. There will be more El Ninos.
ACTION, THE WRONG KIND
The Albanese government says it’s committed to trying to keep global temperature rises to below 1.5 degrees. Environmental journalist Adam Morton calls their approach “blatantly hypocritical.” Albanese has been supporting new gas and coal fields at breakneck speed. One of the latest approvals is in the Otway basin. That’s very close to where the bushfires are burning. Australia has been ranked at the top of a list of places where metallurgical coal mining is planned to expand.
Albanese and his environment ministers use a version of the “drug dealer’s defence’, usually paraphrased as “if I didn’t sell this stuff, someone else would.” In Albanese’s version, Australia is somehow not responsible for what other countries do with the coal and gas they buy from corporations like Woodside.
QUEENSLAND
It’s not only Labor governments of course. On 6 February, the Queensland government gave the go-ahead to a coal mine expansion at the Ensham mine, near Emerald in Central Queensland in the face of a decision by the Queensland Land Court to recommend against approval. Ensham is dirty even by coal mine standards.
Ellen Roberts, National Coordinator for Lock the Gate, said that the Minister’s unprecedented decision to approve the Ensham mine will lead to more climate disasters for Queenslanders.
“In approving this climate-polluting mine the LNP government has sold out the Queenslanders who are dealing with the financial impacts of climate change such as intense flooding, which is only set to get worse as climate change worsens.
“By 2030, coal mines are on track to become the biggest source of Queensland’s emissions, with this decision today it seems the LNP government is determined to give multinational mining companies a free pass when it comes to reducing their emissions.”
The mine is also situated on some of Queensland’s best cropping land, putting Queensland’s food and water security at risk. 28 coal expansions are currently tabled in Queensland, and if they are all approved would see an estimated 10,614 hectares of wildlife habitat cleared and use a combined 3.7 trillion litres of water.
KIMBERLEY
On 20 January the West Australian Environmental Protection Authority recommended approval of the first fracking project in the state since Labor lifted a moratorium of the practice in 2019. This project would involve 20 initial frack wells in the heart of a National Heritage listed river catchment.
PROPAGANDA
The fossil fuel industry has not been pivoting from its harmful products. Rather it’s been trying hard to make sure extraction and profit isn’t slowed down by any public outrage or by government regulation. In the last financial year, an astroturf organisation called ‘Australians for Prosperity’ was funded for the most part by Coal Australia. According to their disclosures to the Australian Electoral Commission, $3.68 million of a total $3.89 million given to Australians for Prosperity came from Coal Australia. The group spent more than $400,000 on online ads attacking the Greens, independents and Labor.
The effort to minimise the role of climate change in our heatwaves and bushfires, and the role of Australia’s fossil fuel habit in climate change has also been helped out by a media silence. According to one measure, the term ‘climate change’ was mentioned much less often in reporting of the fires than in previous bushfires.
REAL ACTION NEEDED
There’s a saying that “facts don’t care about your feelings.” The facts of climate change don’t care if the Australian media isn’t mentioning climate change as much as it should be when it reports on bushfires. The atmosphere doesn’t care if Labor’s ‘drug dealer’ argument – “we just sell coal and gas” is ‘working’ with the electorate or not.
We need real action.
There’s some hope out there. China’s coal consumption peaked recently and should start declining. China is making solar power very cheap and is electrifying its economy at a rapid rate. There is good news elsewhere too. South Korea has announced that it will join the ‘Powering Past Coal Alliance,’ a group of countries that has signed up to phase out coal-fired power by 2040. South Korea is Australia’s fourth largest-market for coal.
None of these promising developments elsewhere stopped the recent catastrophic heatwaves and the bushfires they made more likely. Australia needs to take more action. The Albanese government must stop approving fossil fuel developments and get serious about getting this country off fossil fuel use and exports.
The Communist Party of Australia supports a just transition for workers in fossil fuel industries. We know that this country could be a prosperous renewables-rich power.
Making that change won’t be easy, and a lot of action will be required. The alternative won’t be easy either. Just ask the people who lost properties in the last fires, and the people who got through a 50 degree day.
