Raging fires choke top cities in Australia
DEFIANT PM Scott Morrison denies his climate policies are causing bushfires
SYDNEY: Australia’s Prime Minister on Thursday denied his climate policies had caused unprecedented bushfires ravaging the country and insisted his government was doing enough to tackle global warming.
As dozens of new blazes scorched the countryside and the country’s largest city was cloaked in hazardous smoke, conservative leader Scott Morrison defended his climate record, saying Australia was “doing our bit”.
His comments came after weeks spent refusing to speak about the link between climate change and deadly fires described by the emergency services as unprecedented in number and scale for the early bushfire season.
As more people in the southeast of the country were told to evacuate their homes and schoolchildren in Sydney were again forced to play indoors, Morrison dismissed mounting calls for action.
“The suggestion that any way shape or form that Australia -accounting for 1.3 percent of the world’s emissions... are impacting directly on specific fire events, whether it is here or anywhere else in the world, that doesn’t bear up to credible scientific evidence,” he told ABC radio.
Scientists, former fire chiefs and residents touched by bushfires have all drawn the link between this season’s more intense fires and climate change.
Drought, unseasonably hot, dry and windy conditions have fuelled the unprecedented blazes. Scientists believe many of those factors are made worse by rising global temperatures.
On Thursday bushfires burned across every region of Australia with residents in Victoria warned to leave high-risk areas and officials in New South Wales reporting more than 600 homes have been destroyed in recent weeks.
Morrison is facing calls to cut greenhouse gas emissions and rapidly transition to renewable energy -- a sensitive debate in light of Australia’s lucrative mining industry.
Australia has signed up to globally agreed climate targets to help limit warming, but its emissions continue to rise and targets are only being met with the use of some creative carbon accounting -- using credits gained in past decades.
The country committed to cut emissions to 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 under the 2016 Paris climate accord, but emissions have risen every year since then.
And while Australia’s burning of fossil fuels accounts for only a fraction of global emissions, coal dug up Down Under and burned around the world makes the country a major emissions exporter.
Devastating fires along the country’s east coast have claimed six lives since mid-october.