INVEST IN DISASTER PREVENTION

It’s broadly accepted that climate change is the greatest threat facing mankind, although those responsible for addressing the challenge don’t appear to appreciate the urgency.  

While most of us perceive climate change to be a matter of higher temperatures, easily addressed by better home insulation and the use of air-conditioners, fire is by far the greatest climate related threat, not only to humans, but to all other life forms.

We had a taste of that in 2019–20, and with temperature rises locked in for generations to come, the bushfire threat simply must be addressed. 

Following the bushfire crisis, we had an Independent Bushfire Inquiry established by the NSW  Government and a Federal Royal Commission which, we had hoped, would have identified effective actions to respond to wildfire during periods of extreme fire danger.   (For the inquiry reports check  report of the NSW Inquiry and the Royal Commission report .)

The Bushfire Royal Commission  recommended the establishment of an authoritative disaster advisory body (R 3.2), seemingly needed to manage disasters generally, rather than a focus on bushfires alone.

That is effectively what the NSW government did when setting up the $770 million Resilience NSW under bushfire hero Shane Fitzsimmons, whose first test was the Lismore flood catastrophe. The emergency services’ response to that catastrophe was so appalling, that within weeks, Fitzsimmons was fired and Resilience NSW shut down. 

Now it seems that last year’s catastrophic floods may have taken a lot of the focus off bushfires and, three years on from the last fire catastrophe, we have grass fires raging out of control in the NSW Central West near Hill End and Sofala, with firefighters able to do little more than protect homes. For the first time in three years our firies have had to face a major bushfire fire threat and it seems little has changed.  

Claims that the SES (State Emergency Services) lacked enough volunteers and they were poorly trained, merely points to poor government planning. With the climate emergency well and truly upon us, governments at all levels need to get serious about dealing with these emergencies and reduce reliance on volunteers.

They also need to spend more on resources to prevent these catastrophes, rather than focussing on recovery.

-        John Edwards

 Adapted from the "Voices for the Earth" column in The Clarence Valley Independent  15th March 2023.

 

 

 

 

BUSHFIRE SURVIVORS TAKE LEGAL ACTION

Any notion that climate change is an issue that could be dealt with effectively in some distant future has been shown to be untenable given events of the past few years.  Extreme weather events, severe droughts and longer and more catastrophic bushfire seasons have shown more people that there is a connection between these events and the growing  carbon emissions in the earth’s atmosphere.

Australians concerned about climate change are becoming increasingly frustrated with the ostrich-like attitudes of many of their politicians and government agencies.

One group which is taking legal action in an attempt to force a NSW government agency to do more on climate change is Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action which is taking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to court because of its failure to better protect communities. 

Jo Dodds, president of the group, says that all its members have experienced a bushfire at first hand.  They believe that climate change is a major contributing factor to the cause and growing intensity of bushfires in Australia.

She said that the issue isn’t being taken seriously enough and “There’s a sense that the bushfires are over and we can get back to normal life after COVID-19 – but the fires are going to come harder and more frequently.”

The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) is representing the group. 

David Morris, the EDO chief executive, said the EPA had “a statutory mandate to protect the environment … but the EPA don’t have a current policy to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“Those two things can’t co-exist.

“We’re simply asking the court to tell the EPA go and create environmental quality objectives with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, regulate the pollution and use their existing powers to do so.”

According to the EDO the EPA is in a unique position.  As an agency “with teeth”, it has the power to issue licences to control pollution, as well as putting caps and prices on substances which are harmful to the environment.

The case is listed in the NSW Land and Environment Court in Sydney on May 8.

            - Leonie Blain

This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on April 27,  2020

A FIERY FUTURE - PART 2

In "A Fiery Future - Part 1"  conservationist Dailan Pugh described the impact of the current bushfires on rainforest, with particular reference to Terania Creek. Below is a continuation of that post which was  published in the CVCC blog on December 4.

As exemplified by Koalas, numerous species have been hit hard. The fires have burnt out 23% of the high quality Koala habitat identified in north-east NSW, including a third of that on public lands. Only small refugia have survived within the burnt areas, and the Koalas are under immense stress in these.

Though the situation is more dire than indicated as much of the highest quality habitat has been degraded by intensive logging, and most of the remaining core populations have now been hit hard by the fires.

The Busby's Flat and Myall Creek fires have burnt out most of the regionally significant Koala populations of the Richmond Lowlands, the Bees Nest and Liberation Trail fires burnt out the most of the nationally significant Koala populations on the Dorrigo plateau, and the Crestwood Drive fire burnt out the major refuge left south of Port Macquarie.

While the rednecks are quick to blame national parks for fires, parks only represent 36% of the burnt area, with private lands 44%, and most of the ignition is likely from humans. Given that logging dries forests, creates fuel and increases the likelihood of canopy fires it is the bigger threat.

There is a belief that we need to burn forests more frequently to reduce fire threat, though it only takes 2-4 years for leaf litter to build up, and in extreme events prescribed burning does little to stop the spread of fire. It is telling that 151,000 ha of the area burnt this year has been burnt in either wildfires or prescribed burns in the past 3 years, with 73,000 ha burnt in the previous 12 months.

As well as affecting rainforest and old growth trees, too frequent burning adversely affects many seed producing shrubs, along with refuges and resources for a variety of fauna.

The protection and expansion of forests are essential to take up and store the carbon we emit if we are to have any chance of limiting the worst of climate heating. As we continue to slash and burn our forests we are increasing their flammability and turning a vital carbon sink into another source of emissions.

We need to undertake a rigorous review of how we manage forests, manipulate fire and protect property if we are to adapt to this brave new world we are creating. Business as usual is an unfolding catastrophe.

   -  Dailan Pugh 
       November 2019.

A FIERY FUTURE - PART 1

Hundreds of ancient Brush Box and other rainforest trees, many over a thousand years old, have been felled in the head of Terania Creek, their bases eaten out by fire. While the loggers were stopped 40 years ago, this time nothing could stop the assault by human-induced climate change.

In early November fire swept into the basin at the head of Terania Creek, consuming ferns, desiccating shrubs and cooking thousands of Bangalow Palms. Towards the valley floor the remnant moisture slowed the fire's assault, though the fire ate at the tree's bases, toppling immense trees that smashed through the rainforest canopy, spreading the devastation. Three weeks later fallen veterans were still smouldering and fire trickled through the leaf litter deep in the rainforest.

The last time fire burnt into the heart of this rainforest was around 1,100 years ago. Now we have so fundamentally altered the climate that a regime change is occurring and such events will happen with increasing frequency.

From August to November this year the Rural Fire Service (RFS) mapped 1.7 million hectares of north-east NSW, from the Hunter River to the Queensland border and west onto the tablelands, as being burnt in wildfires. So far 958,000 ha of public lands and 752,000 of private lands have been affected.

The scale is already massive, encompassing 20% of the land area, and 32% of our remnant native vegetation, and at the time of writing the fires are expected to continue for months.

The fires are coming on top of a drought, compounding each other's impacts.

The bush is so dry that fire is burning through the moist areas, the gullies and rainforests, that we could rely upon in the past to stop fire's spread. These are also the refugia that so many of our species depend upon in hard times. The RFS mapping encompasses 120,000 ha of rainforests, while not all this will have burnt, as shown by Terania Creek a lot has.

The big old trees are irreplaceable, the eucalypts may live for 300-500 years, or more, and the Brush Box at Terania Creek have been aged at over 1,340 years old. The older they get the more essential nesting/denning hollows, nectar, browse and other resources they provide for a multitude of species.

Most old trees have been lost through clearing, ringbarking and logging. Now the death of the survivors is being hastened by drought, and in huge numbers as successive fires eat away at their bases. They are also routinely cut down and bulldozed to control fires.

Over half our remnant old growth forest has been burnt this year. Hundreds of thousands of the oldest remaining trees have perished. Their loss is tragic.

Dailan Pugh
November, 2019 

THE FIRE EMERGENCY IN NSW

Lives lost, hundreds of homes destroyed, hundreds of thousands of hectares of native bushland reduced to ashes, and millions of native animals burned alive. That is the story as bush fires continue raging out of control along Australia's eastern seaboard.

These unstoppable fires, beginning two months ago in winter, are escalating towards an uncertain crescendo of catastrophic proportions. The tireless, heroic efforts of fire-fighters, mostly volunteers, have been magnificent, but they have been totally overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, with no end in sight.

As the planet warms, the situation will only worsen. Anyone claiming these fires are not related to climate change is delusional. Incredibly, many of our politicians are exactly that, content to ram their heads deeper into the sand with every successive climate-related disaster.

Over a decade ago, British economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, undertook an economic review of action on climate change, reporting that the high cost of acting would be dwarfed by the cost of inaction.

Professor Ross Garnaut similarly warned the Rudd Labor Government, subsequently reporting that Australia’s climate change position“is weak only because of an extraordinary failure of leadership”, pointing out that neither major political party has committed itself to policies that can get anywhere near their already weak emissions reduction targets.

Last week, retired fire chief Greg Mullins, warned the Federal Government that fire-fighters are entering uncharted territory and that the government needs to urgently address the situation. His plea for the Prime Minister to meet with 23 former senior emergency figures to discuss their concerns about climate change and “the missing capacity to fight fires in a new era” was fobbed off onto a junior minister.

"This is really dangerous," Mr Mullins said: "People are at risk, we need a game changer in how we deal with these catastrophes because they're going to get worse and worse.”

The escalating cost of the current catastrophe will certainly bear out Nicholas Stern's claim about the cost of government inaction! Unfortunately, that cost will be borne by all of us, some paying for it with their lives.

            - John Edwards

Burnt bushland near Coutts Crossing, south of Grafton.  Photo: John Edwards

This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on November 18,  2019

THE INCREASING THREAT OF WILDFIRES

Recently the Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition discussed the ever-increasing threat from fire to biodiversity, humans and our built environment, and decided there needs to be an urgent review of fire management across the country.

The decision to lobby for a review was triggered by the fact that the Clarence Valley had been ablaze for over a month with fire-fighters brought into the district from elsewhere, along with water-bombing aircraft, to support local brigades who had been stretched to the limit for weeks. Many of the scores of fires that erupted during the month were illegally lit, and many more remained uncontained for days or even weeks. And this all took place in winter!

The catalyst for this frenzy of burning was seemingly the announcement by the Rural Fire Service in the last week of July about bringing the “fire season” forward to the 1^st of August. Since that announcement landowners, pyromaniacs, arsonists, and the just plain stupid, have been dropping matches everywhere across the valley, and residents have had to endure the choking smoke haze that has blanketed the valley ever since. Stinging eyes, blocked sinuses, and sore throats being only minor irritants compared with what asthmatics and those with lung ailments have had to endure.

Climate change is having an enormous influence on fire behaviour, not just here in Australia, but around the world. Unmanageable fires are now commonplace despite the introduction of new sophisticated techniques like fire suppressant chemicals and aerial water bombing. Catastrophic winter fires are now being reported on a regular basis on both sides of the equator, and this year summer fires even caused problems within the Arctic Circle.

No country is being spared. The human toll is mounting as is the cost of destroyed homes and infrastructure, but that comes nowhere close to the toll on the environment and wildlife. In short in many areas of the world, biodiversity declines as a direct result of fire, are leading to ecological collapse, something I fear we humans will feel the impact of in the not too distant future.

- John Edwards

This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on September 3, 2018.  

 

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE

The Prime Minister (PM) Tony Abbott is pushing ahead with his election promise to repeal the carbon tax.  He is hoping to push this through before the end of the year even though the upper house - the Senate - remains under the control of the Labor Party (ALP) and the Greens until the new Senate is installed in July next year.  The PM is trying to persuade Labor to accept that he has a mandate for the change and that they should accede to his demand for its repeal early in the parliamentary sitting.  Behind his urging is the threat of a double dissolution some time in the new year if Labor does not fall into line.  Labor has so far rejected Abbott's demands.

The government has claimed that the repeal of the carbon tax will lead to a significant fall in electricity prices.  Environment Minister Greg Hunt has  claimed it will save households $3000 over six years.  A recent article by economic journalist Peter Martin (Why cut a nearly undetectable tax?) queries both claims about the impact of the tax and the impact of doing away with it.

But the fate of the carbon tax is only one issue related to climate change that has been in the news lately. The recent disastrous bushfires in NSW - particularly those in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney - have sparked some controversy about whether these fires are related to climate change.

Both Greg Hunt and the Prime Minister have denied that the fires have any connection to climate change.

In disputing the notion that climate change had any relationship to the fires, Mr Hunt claimed that he had checked Wikipedia to establish that bushfires had been frequent in Australia since before European settlement. It is truly astounding that we have a federal Minister claiming Wikipedia as a source of information on which he bases important public statements. It is also astonishing that Hunt dismisses so readily any notion that the extreme weather conditions we are experiencing could be associated with a changing climate.

The head of the United Nations climate change negotiations, Christiana Figueres,  indicated that there was a link between climate change and bushfires such as those raging in Australia, although she conceded that the World Meteorological Organisation had not yet established a direct link.  She stated, "but what is absolutely clear is the science is telling us that there are increasing heat waves in Asia, Europe and Australia; that these will continue in their intensity and frequency."

The Prime Minister refuted any connection between climate change and the bushfires, claiming Ms Figueres was "talking through her hat".   He stated,  "These fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they're a function of life in Australia."

Whether or not the fires can be directly attributed to climate change, it is obvious that weather conditions over a period of months created an extreme fire danger situation.  We had a warm dry winter followed by a much hotter spring than usual with strong winds.

Scientists are telling us that, as the climate warms, we can expect more severe weather, including more frequent, and fiercer, bushfires. That would appear to have been happening in recent years - with the horrific fires in Victoria in 2009, serious fires in Tasmania early last year and  now the fires around Sydney-Newcastle this month.

Ostrich-like behaviour from both the federal Environment Minister, who is responsible for the Government's "Direct Action" plan to reduce carbon emissions, and from the Prime Minister only serves to make them look foolish both in this country and abroad. It certainly does not make climate change go away or lessen the need for an effective response to this very serious issue.