Climate debate heats up in Aussie cauldron
Raging wildfires in Australia are forcing many to rethink their stance on climate change. But there’s little time left to reduce emissions, writes Tim Flannery.
THIS SUMMER, life in Australia resembles a compulsory and very unpleasant game of Russian roulette. A pool of hot air more than 1600 kilometres wide has formed across the inland. It covers much of the continent, and has proved astonishingly persistent. Periodically, low pressure systems spill the heat towards the coast, where most Australians live. At Christmas it was Perth. Then the heat struck Adelaide, followed by Tasmania, Victoria, and southern New South Wales and Canberra. Over this weekend, it’s southern Queensland and northern New South Wales that look set to face the gun. And with every heatwave, the incidences of bushfires and heat-related deaths and injuries spike.
Australians are used to hot summers. They normally love them. But the conditions prevailing now are something new. Temperature records are being broken everywhere. At Leonora, in the Western Australian interior, it reached 49 degrees Celsius this week – just one record among many. The nation’s overall temperature record was set on January 7. Then the following day that record was exceeded.
The breaking of so many records indicates that Australia’s climate is shifting. This is supported by analysis of the long-term trend. Over the past 40 years Australia has seen a decline in the number of very cold days, and the occurrence of many more very hot days. All of this was predicted by climate scientists decades ago, and is consistent with the increasing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.
The new conditions have seen the Bureau of Meteorology add two new colour categories to Australia’s weather prediction maps. Temperatures of 48-50C used to be the highest, and where such extremes were anticipated, the weather map was marked black. Over the past week, purple patches have begun to appear on some maps. They mark temperatures above 50C. Pink, which is yet to be deployed, will denote temperatures above 52C.
Climate extremes have a way of stacking up to produce unpleasant consequences. Two years ago, the ocean temperature off northwestern Australia reached a record high, and evaporation of the seawater led to Australia’s wettest year on record. This was followed, in central Australia, by the longest period without rain on record. The vegetation that had thrived in the wet now lies dried and curing, a perfect fuel for fires.
With abundant fuel and increased temperatures, the nature of bushfires is changing. Australians have long rated fire risk on the MacArthur index. On it, a rating of 100 – the conditions that prevailed in the lead-up to the devastating 1939 bushfires – represents ‘‘extreme’’ risk. But after the 2009 fires a new level of risk was required. ‘‘Catastrophic’’ represents a risk rating above 100.
Under such conditions fires behave very differently. The Black Saturday fires of 2009, which killed 173 people, were rated at between 120 and 190. They spread so fast, and burned so hot, that the communities they advanced on were utterly helpless.
The superheated air now monstering the continent is fickle. This week, Sydneysiders watched in relative thermal comfort as those living just 100km to the south endured scorching heat, blustering winds, and unstoppable fires. The forecast for coming days indicates Sydney might once again be lucky, with the worst fire conditions striking north of the city. But things might work out differently.
The unprecedented conditions have seen many Australians rethinking their attitude to climate change. A good friend of mine farms just outside Canberra. A few years ago the drought was so severe that his 300-year-old gum trees died of thirst. Then the rains came on so violently that they stripped the precious topsoil, filling his dams with mud and sheep droppings. This week he watched as his cousin’s property at Yass was reduced to ashes.
When I called he was trying to secure his own historic homestead from fire. He asked me if I thought the family would still be farming the area 50 years from now. All I could say was that it depended on how quickly Australia, and the world, reduced their greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia’s average temperature has increased by just 0.9 of a degree celsius over the past century. Within the next 90 years they are on track to warm by at least another 3C. Having seen what 0.9 of a degree has done to heatwaves and fire extremes, I dread to think about the kind of country my grandchildren will live in. Large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable, not just by humans, but by Australia’s spectacular biodiversity as well.
This week’s extreme conditions have raised the political heat. The Greens Party condoned an anticoal activist who created a false press release claiming that the ANZ bank had withdrawn support for a major coal project, causing its share price to plunge. Meanwhile acting (conservative) opposition leader Warren Truss said it was simplistic to link the hot spell to climate change, and ‘‘utterly simplistic to suggest that we have these fires because of climate change’’.
Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter, and the mining lobby is strong. As calls to combat climate change have increased, the miners have argued that ‘‘mum and dad investors’’ will lose out if any effort is made to reduce the export or use of fossil fuels. But the smart money is no longer backing fossil fuels. In South Australia, wind energy has gone from 1 per cent to 26 per cent of the mix in just seven years, and nationally solar panel installations are 13 years ahead of official projections.
And finally, with a carbon price in place, Australia’s emissions curve is beginning to flatten out. Despite these efforts, Australians are already enduring the kind of conditions they’d hoped to avoid if strong, early action had been taken. Now, more than ever, they’re in a race against time to avoid a truly catastrophic outcome.