Wildfires stoke heated debate on arson impact
CANBERRA, Australia — What’s to blame for scores of wildfires devastating Australia’s southeast?
There’s an increasingly bitter faceoff between those who say arson and those who fault climate change.
Each side has powerful backers and their weapons of choice are often fabrications and parttruths that have spread in time with the fires in recent weeks.
Humans burning fossil fuels and humans with criminal intent who torch a combustible landscape both factor into this unprecedented crisis.
But just how to accurately apportion the blame has become a big political issue. The debate is made hotter by many — including some Australian lawmakers — who argue against deeper cuts to carbon gas emissions.
Firefighters blame lightning strikes for most of the major blazes in New South Wales and Victoria states, and many scientists say climate change is the main reason for fires that have claimed at least 33 lives since September, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed more than 26.2 million acres.
Still, the arson side often cites repeatedly on social media a debunked statistic that says more than 180 suspected arsonists have been arrested.
“Truly Disgusting that people would do this! God Bless Australia,” President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “More than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the bushfire season.”
Although it’s been discredited by AAP FactCheck, the factchecking division of news agency Australian Associated
Press, the statistic has been repeated thousands of times online.
AAP FactCheck links the statistic to a statement by police in New South Wales — the worst fireaffected state — that said “legal action” had been taken against 183 people since November for “bushfirerelated offenses.”
These included only 24 people charged over “deliberately lit bushfires.” Legal action — which includes cautions — had also been taken against 100 other people for conduct that could be described as being careless during a fire ban. The statement did not detail the offenses alleged against the remaining 59 suspects.
Climate change is the main reason for the current extraordinarily destructive fire season, according to Janet Stanley, a director of Australia’s National Center for Research in Bushfire and Arson.
“The conditions that make a fire very big and dangerous and spread quickly are now a great deal worse, so it’s much harder to put out the fire once it occurs than it was in the past,” she said.
But some lawmakers in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal Party publicly dispute any link between climate change and the fires.