Tim Flannery: This is the age of the megafire – and it’s being fuelled by our leaders
Unprecedented
wildfires have recently devastated California, the Amazon, southern Europe,
Siberia and Australia. It’s safe to say that we’ve entered the era of the
climate-fuelled megafire. But because fire conditions depend on local
vegetation, topography and climate, each of these great conflagrations is different.
Australia’s bushfires
of the last four months have been true megafires, creating their own weather
and becoming so vast in their impact that more than half of all Australians have been directly affected
by them. As I write, fires continue to burn around Canberra, and though rain
has begun to fall in northern New South Wales, 17 are “yet to be contained”
according to the fire
service. Meanwhile, what is traditionally the worst part of the fire season
for Victoria and South Australia is just commencing. Conditions have been so
severe that firefighters have often been unable to stop fires joining up,
generating massive dry thunderstorms that spread fire with thousands of
lightning strikes.
So far the fires have
burned an area around the size of England, killed more than 30 people and destroyed about 6,000 buildings. They have left deep psychological scars, and
while it seems impossible to shift the government’s disastrous climate policies, the fires will alter the
way that Australians view themselves and their country....
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