#AuthorsForFireys (and a bit of science)
When I was in primary school, my mother bought an illustrated book on the greenhouse effect. I read it avidly from cover-to-cover (perhaps indicative of my early environmental consciousness) while my brother used it in a school project for which he received top marks (although that was nothing unusual). The book was published in 1984, which means that information about global heating, accessible to 8 and 9 year olds, was available NEARLY FORTY YEARS AGO.
In 1988, Dr Tom Beer published the first study in the world on the impact of the greenhouse effect on bushfires, predicting the catastrophic conditions that have burned through 12 million acres, killed 23 people and affected half a billion animals, with many populations expected to become extinct (I would add that plant populations are likely to be severely affected too).
The Garnaut Climate Change Review, published ten years later in 2008, indicated that ‘fire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense.’ These effects would be ‘directly observable by 2020.’ Well, that’s a bit of an understatement.
Over the last decade, when we should have been acting on this science, public sentiment was instead swayed by lobbying and the Coalition (those two things are linked). For evidence on the ways in which the Coalition has contributed to the terrible situation in which we find ourselves, read this thread.
The Liberals’ obsession with the surplus, together with their indifference to the ecosystems upon which they rely, have reached their apothesois in Scotty from Marketing, who tries to sell his belated response to the emergency with an ad featuring the ADF (who aren’t trained in firefighting) to the dinky tune of Tropical Beats. No wonder he was fired from his Tourism Australia job. No wonder a comedian has donated more money to the climate emergency than he has.
The ABC has been valiant in its reporting (and of course the government wants to cut their funding again next year), and have produced a page listing ways in which you can help. Writers across Australia are also mobilising through #AuthorsforFireys on Twitter. As of today, for six days, you can bid on Twitter for awesome literary goodies such as packs of books, signed copies, mentoring and manuscript assessments, a visitation from Trent Dalton to your bookclub (he will bring French champagne), artworks and prints (I have donated a copy of Hearing Maud). The proceeds will be donated to the Country Fire Authority.
I am hoping that this terrible disaster will mean change. People are pissed off – even beyond the echo chambers of my social media channels – and I hope this means that they will vote for the ecosystems that keep them alive. As scientist Dr Joëlle Gergis writes, ‘There genuinely is no more time to waste. We must act as though our home is on fire – because it is.’
11,000 scientists have called for urgent, necessary action, and in this article there are also some suggestions for what individuals can also do (it’s not radical stuff). I would hasten to add, however, that we must privilege Aboriginal people’s voices in discussions about Australia’s environment. They have worked with fire on this continent for thousands of years, & while colonisers have buggered a lot of things up, it doesn’t mean Aboriginal knowledge is redundant, and as it’s not as if the current policies are working very well.
Bid on a book. Sew a pouch for a possum. Donate to firies and wildlife groups. Read about cultural burning and support the groups that do it. Vote to protect our precious ecosystems, not only for humans (who are, aside from dickwads like oil moguls & Scotty from marketing, largely good and kind) but for the myriad non-humans that don’t deserve to burn at our hands. They keep us alive; we should protect them in turn.