https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/only-way-confront-australias-wildfires/604546/
> How Long Will Australia Be Livable? > > Facing a future of fire, drought, and rising oceans, Australians will have to > weigh the choice between getting out early or staying to fight. > > Bianca Nogrady > January 7, 2020 > > When tiny flakes of white ash started falling like warm snow from a sky > sullen with smoke, we left. We had lived for weeks with the threat of two > huge bushfires hanging over our small Australian town, advancing inexorably > toward us from the north and the south. My hometown of Blackheath, perched at > the top of the Blue Mountains, surrounded by stunning but drought-parched > Australian wilderness, was in the center of this flaming pincer. > > The kids had just come home from their final day of school in December when > our neighbor messaged to say there were concerns the northern fire, which had > already burned through nearly 2,000 square miles of national park, would hit > Blackheath that night. Fire authorities had warned of dire conditions in the > following few days: high temperatures, low humidity, and wind. > > So we fled east down the mountains, heading for the coast and the relative > safety of Sydney, nearly 60 miles away. We returned five days later to our > scorched land, the house untouched thanks to the courageous actions of > neighbors and firefighters. > > Australians pride themselves on being battlers, on facing down terrible odds > and triumphing against whatever this land of droughts and flooding rains—and > bushfires—can throw at us. Yet one of the single most defining moments in > modern Australian nationhood was actually a retreat. In one of the greatest > military-campaign failures of World War I, the Australian and New Zealand > Army Corps—the ANZACs—staged an ingenious escape from the shores of Gallipoli > in 1915 after a bitter, futile eight-month battle with Ottoman forces. > > “This is our Gallipoli; this is our bushfire Gallipoli,” says David Bowman, a > professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania. He’s > talking about the bushfires that began in the spring of September 2019, that > have burned in every state and territory, that have claimed at least 24 > lives, that have destroyed nearly 1,800 homes, and that have turned more than > 8.4 million hectares of land into lifeless charcoal. They have led to one of > the largest peacetime evacuations in Australia’s history, as fire authorities > in two states instructed tens of thousands of holidaymakers and residents to > remove themselves from the path of several flaming juggernauts. In an echo of > the Gallipoli retreat, thousands had to be rescued from beaches by the > Australian navy and air force. In the face of these unprecedented fires, > Australians appear to be listening less to the inner voice of the Aussie > battler, and instead heeding the pleas and warnings of fire authorities. > > Read: Australia will lose to climate change: > https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/australia-caught-climate-spiral/604423/ > > Eleven years ago, the mind-set of bushfire response was different. Before the > devastating Black Saturday bushfires in the southeastern state of Victoria, > which killed 173 people over two cataclysmic days in 2009, the accepted > wisdom on bushfires was “stay and defend, or leave early.” After Black > Saturday, a new category of bushfire warning was introduced, labeled “Code > Red” in Victoria, and “Catastrophic” in New South Wales. The unambiguous > message of the new warning was “for your survival, leaving early is the only > option.” > > It appears the message is cutting through, says Richard Thornton, CEO of the > Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre. “With the magnitude > of these fires, and particularly with the fires that occurred in the Blue > Mountains and Mallacoota—in heavily populated areas—that we didn’t end up > with a Black Saturday–type fatality list is a sign that something is > different in these fires.” > > But what happens after the fires have passed through, and Australians return > to either their intact homes or smoking ruins, dead cattle, a blackened > moonscape where crops once grew? The lucky ones give thanks and get on with > their life. The unlucky ones grieve, rage, shake their fist at Fate—and > defiantly rebuild on the same ground. The battler spirit triumphs again, but > for how long? > > As the country suffers through one of its worst droughts on record, and heat > waves shatter temperature records not once but twice within the same summer > week, some are asking whether Australians can afford to keep returning to the > same parched, scorched landscapes that they have occupied not just since the > European invasion two and a half centuries ago, but for tens of thousands of > years before that. Even before climate change, survival—particularly of > agriculture—in some parts of Australia was precarious. Farmers were so often > rescued from the very edge of disaster by long-overdue rains that arrived > just in time. Now the effects of climate change are making that scenario even > less likely, and this bushfire season and drought are but a herald of things > to come. > > If people are to continue living in these places, “they’ve got to drastically > change their relationship with the surrounding environment; they’ve got to > drastically change the surrounding environment in order to be able to survive > and reduce their vulnerability,” says Ross Bradstock, director of the Centre > for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires at the University of > Wollongong. “Another option is the retreat from flammable places.” > > After the Black Saturday bushfires, the state government attempted to buy > back land from people in the most high-risk areas who had lost their homes in > the fires. Very few took up the offer. Now there’s a record-breaking drought > on top of the fire threat. Dubbo—a regional New South Wales town with a > population of more than 38,000 people—has all but run out of water, with its > dam at just 3.7 percent of capacity and the river supplying it forecast to > dry up by May of this year. Towns in Queensland are relying on charity > handouts of water, even as a planned coal mine in the region is set to access > billions of gallons of groundwater. The largest remote Aboriginal community > in Central Australia—along with many others that have long thrived on their > traditional lands—is also running out of drinking water. > > Then there are the heat waves. On January 4, 2020, western Sydney became one > of the hottest places on the planet, at 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.9 degrees > Celsius). “That’s uninhabitable; you can’t live in that,” Bradstock says. And > there are floods—one-in-100-year floods have laid waste to Queensland twice > in two years—and climate-change-related sea-level rise, which is predicted to > be a significant issue for a nation whose population is concentrated in a > narrow strip of land around its coastline. > > To abandon parts of this land, though, will be a tough sell to people who > have “stay and fight” ingrained in their soul. “There is definitely something > about the Australian way that people want to stay and defend, and don’t > necessarily want to think about moving away from the bush,” says Catherine > Ryland, an urban planner and a bushfire-resilience expert. She would like to > see more conversation around the idea of planned retreat—rebuilding in > low-risk locations, reducing development in high-risk areas, and even > relocating existing, unaffected communities, which she describes as the > “biggest, bravest, boldest step.” And some experts are starting to consider > what such steps would look like: The Planning Institute of Australia has > released a national settlement strategy, for instance. It highlighted both > the large parts of Australia more and more at risk from the adverse impacts > of climate change and the dearth of effective planning for climate change or > disaster-risk reduction. > > “Everyone is suddenly starting to realize that we actually need to plan > better for those things, instead of just keep sprawling out into the bush or > closer to the ocean,” Ryland says. > > Bowman argues that whatever we’re doing now isn’t working, so like the ANZACs > at Gallipoli, we have to rethink our strategy. He has put forward the > deliberately provocative idea that Australia shift the timing of its > summer-holiday period to avoid having massive numbers of holidaymakers—and > the businesses that rely on their coin—being displaced by bushfire. But > really, he says we need far, far greater cultural change. > > “We’re talking about real money, talking about bunkers, safe sites, massively > changing our firefighting capacity, fire preparation, communication systems, > our understanding of what nature is, our understanding of what being > Australian is, our understanding of the value of water, the understanding of > our relationship to other life forms, our understanding of what fire is,” he > says. > > It’s a big ask, and will not happen overnight. As we spoke, another day of > frightening bushfire weather was forecast. Bowman had already seen the bush > burn across the valley from his holiday house in Tasmania. > > “I’m just worrying like hell about tomorrow.” -- Kim Holburn IT Network & Security Consultant T: +61 2 61402408 M: +61 404072753 mailto:[email protected] aim://kimholburn skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
