Glimpsing a fearful future
It’s not for nothing that a crackling hearth is the very image of comfort, security and family. And not for nothing that hell is portrayed as a place of endless tormenting fire.
Fire, and mastery of it, made humankind what we are. Fire, out of control, is among our greatest visceral dreads.
In recent weeks, Australia ablaze has provided – along with its warnings for the globe — images of abject horror.
The funerals for volunteer firefighters. The millions of hectares of scorched lands. The ruined homes and displaced thousands. The carcasses of millions of animals.
Cities and towns have been shrouded in smoke, blankets of it carrying darkness thousands of kilometres away. Dazed koalas and kangaroos have been rescued, swaddled and fed water like infants.
In short, it is the stark picture of climate change and its catastrophic consequences, with Australian writer Bianca Nogrady saying that, in her small hometown of Blackheath, it was like being trapped in a “flaming pincer.”
It is summer in Australia, though not yet quite the height of the season. Summers are hot there. Bush fires are common. But not like this.
Wildfires need fuel, the dryer the better. Weather conditions contribute to their ignition and spread.
Climate change has made the continent’s wildfires more frequent and far larger. Temperatures rise, the spring rains diminish, evaporation increases, wind patterns change, extreme heat grows more common, the land becomes a tinderbox.
Experts say it was predictable. But contending with climate change demands reducing coalburning. And Australia is one of the leading exporters of coal in the world.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has insisted climate change is just “one of many factors” behind the crisis. He has dismissed environmental activists as radicals, extremists and anarchists and threatened to find ways to “outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices that threaten” jobs.
This despite a 2018 report from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that found the country’s climate had warmed more than one degree Celsius over the past century leading to an increase in frequency in “extreme heat events”; that oceans around the continent had warmed by a similar measure, contributing to “longer and more frequent marine heatwaves”; that sea levels around Australia were rising, “increasing the risk of inundation”; and that April-October rainfall in the south of the country had decreased by as much as 20 per cent over the past 50 years.
It is a scenario hardly unique to Australia. Canada has suffered ruinous wildfires in recent years in Fort McMurray, Alta., and in British Columbia. California has been scorched by seemingly biblical fires as well.
And not only fire takes human lives and homes. Water, that other element humans have always sought for tranquility, has produced catastrophic storms and floods.
This month, Public Safety Canada put the bill for dealing with natural disasters across the country at $430 million annually over the past three years.
In the five previous years, disaster clean-up bills were $360 million annually – three times the average cost in the five years before that.
An estimated $5.4 billion has been spent by the disasterassistance program to help provinces since its inception in 1970 – almost 25 per cent of that amount in just the past three years.
A report last year from Environment and Climate Change Canada said there is overwhelming evidence that the Earth “has warmed during the Industrial Era and that the main cause of this warming is human influence.
“It is extremely likely that human influences, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, have been the dominant cause of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century.”
The report said “it’s likely that more than half of the observed warming in Canada is due to the influence of human activities.”
Canada’s climate will warm further, in all seasons, in coming years, it said, and “extreme hot weather will become more frequent and more intense. This will increase the severity of heatwaves and contribute to increased drought and wildfire risks. While inland flooding results from multiple factors, more intense rainfalls will increase urban flood risks.”
In one bold-faced heading, the report expressed with compelling clarity the state of affairs for Ottawa, Canberra and all points between. “Our future: choices matter,” it said. Meanwhile, high summer is just arriving in Australia. The account of the situation there by Bianca Nogrady in The Atlantic quoted a man who touched on the existential nature of questions to be answered. He said Australians must come to terms with nature, with “our understanding of the value of water, the understanding of our relationship to other life forms, our understanding of what fire is.”
The headline on Nogrady’s story was cautionary, almost as compelling as the photos of those bedraggled and bewildered koalas causing tears around the globe.
“How long will Australia be livable?”
The bill for dealing with natural disasters across Canada was put at $430 million annually over the past three years