Australia is on the frontline, in the new age of fire
”Covid-19 is more than an illness. It is a symptom of the ailing health of our planet.”.
 Born in the ice age, humankind now faces the age of fire – and Australia is on the frontline The bushfires and the plague are symptoms of something momentous unfolding on Earth – an acceleration of our impact on nature, Guardian, by Tom Griffiths, 1 Nov 20 What has been the most shocking event of 2020? Was it awakening on New Year’s Day to more news of terror in Australia’s southern forests, to the realisation that the future was suddenly here, that this spring and summer of relentless bushfire was a planetary event? Was it the silent transmission of Covid-19, already on the loose and soon to overwhelm the world and change the very fabric of daily life everywhere at once? Or was it the surging race riots and protests, especially across America, where police brutality triggered grief, anger and outrage about the inequality and injustice still faced by black people? Could we even distinguish them from each other, this overlapping sequence of horrors? Fire, plague and racism are always with us, percolating away, periodically erupting, sometimes converging. They came together in the colonisation of Australia when the conquering British brought smallpox, scorned Indigenous rights and fought Aboriginal fire with gunfire. Systemic racism is the virus, declared Black Lives Matter protesters. ………
Throughout 2019, fire experts had pleaded with the federal government to hold a bushfire summit to prepare for the dreaded summer, but the prime minister had refused. The crisis could not be acknowledged in case it gave credence to the need for climate action. As if neglect and omission in the face of the fire threat were not enough, Coalition politicians and their apologists then hastily encouraged lies about the causes of the fires, declaring that they were started by arsonists and that greenies had prevented hazard-reduction burns. Yet these fires were overwhelmingly started by dry lightning in remote terrain, and hazard-reduction burning is constrained by a warming climate. The effort to stymie sensible policy reform after the fires was as pernicious as the failure to plan in advance of them.
There was barely a moment to breathe between bushfires and Covid. Australians had been in lockdown for months even before the year began, fighting fires that had started at the end of winter, cowering indoors from smoke, heat and ash, and wearing masks on their brief forays outside. People spoke courageously of “the new normal” but did not yet understand that “normal” was gone. Just as they finally stepped outside to sniff the clearer autumn air, it was declared dangerous again. Their masks were still in their pockets. Despite the connections between these crises, politicians were keen to separate them, as if one blessedly cancelled out the other, not least because the pandemic gave the prime minister a chance to reset after his disastrous summer. Instead of forcing handshakes he was forced to withhold them. For the beleaguered Coalition government, Covid seemed to provide the escape it wanted from climate politics.
Australians were forbidden from talking about the obvious relationship between bushfires and climate, so how will we manage to interrogate the common origins of climate change and the pandemic? The fires and the plague are both symptoms of something momentous that is unfolding on Earth: a concentration and acceleration of the impact of humans on nature. As the environmental scientists Inger Andersen and Johan Rockström argued in June: “Covid-19 is more than an illness. It is a symptom of the ailing health of our planet.”……..
Covid-19 spilled over from wild animals to humans and became a pandemic because of ecosystem destruction, biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, the illegal wildlife trade and increased human mobility. “So when you’re done worrying about this outbreak,” Quammen warns, “worry about the next one. Or do something about the current circumstances.” Doing something about it means more than finding a vaccine; it means urgently addressing the causes of the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis. It means understanding how dire the current rupture is in the long-term relationship between humans and nature……………
It is confirmation that in the 21st century our country remains a colony, still unable to accept (as the Uluru statement puts it) that “this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood”. The deep environmental and cultural inheritance of this continent, with all the wisdom and perspective it might offer about living in this place, about survival, species and cultural burning, about fires, plagues and rising seas, is not yet important enough to Australians. When will it be, if not now? The insidious smoke is coming. • This essay will be part of the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, edited by Sophie Cunningham and published by Penguin Random House in December https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/01/born-in-the-ice-age-humankind-now-faces-the-age-of-fire-and-australia-is-on-the-frontline
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