Global Apathy Toward the Fires in Australia Is a Scary Portent for the Future

[babylonsister]

3:37 P.M.
Global Apathy Toward the Fires in Australia Is a Scary Portent for the Future
By David Wallace-Wells


Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in which the public seemed finally to wake up to the dramatic threat from global warming, a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two full months, and the rest of the world is hardly paying attention.

The New South Wales fires have been burning since September, destroying fifteen million acres (or more than two thousand square miles) and remain almost entirely uncontrolled by the volunteer firefighting forces deployed to stop them; on November 12, greater Sydney declared an unprecedented “catastrophic” fire warning. That was six weeks ago, and the blazes are almost certain to continue burning through the end of next month, the soonest real rain might arrive. They may last longer still, of course, aided in part by record-breaking heat waves that are simultaneously punishing the country (technically an entire continent, Australia as a whole averaged more than 100 Fahrenheit earlier this month) and devastating marine life in the surrounding ocean. “On land, Australia’s rising heat is ‘apocalyptic,” the Straits-Times of Singapore wrote. “In the ocean, it’s even worse.”

Already, smoke has enveloped the city of Sydney in air at least ten times as thick with smoke as is considered safe to breathe, setting off indoor fire alarms and suspending the city’s ferry service, since the boats couldn’t navigate the smog. The city of Melbourne, more than 500 miles away, has been choked by smoke, as well, and the glaciers all the way in New Zealand have changed color because of the fires, too. An early report that koalas were made “functionally extinct” turned out to have been erroneous, but a more recent report suggests that, due to the bushfires, 480 million animals have died. And because plants contain carbon which is released when burned, when the New South Wales fires finally do burn out, they almost certainly will have doubled Australia’s national carbon emissions for the year — or more.

more...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/new-south-wales-fires-in-australia-the-worlds-response.html

[mahina]

1. I'm not apathetic and I don't know anyone who is.

It’s heartbreaking and soul crushing.

[c-rational]

2. Agreed, this is not a good harbinger for the future. Unfortunately it is also not unanticipated.

Most humans sleepwalk through life, live paycheck to paycheck or simpley put one foot in front of the other to get from birth to death. This crisis more than possibly any other crisis faced by mankind needs leadership, something we sorely lack today. Information not disinformation is needed, but we seem to have more of the latter as of late. The next decade will be telling.

[snowybirdie]

3. Perhaps

a reason is the Prime Minister is a climate denier. He isn't sounding the alarm.

[Voltaire2]

4. The global response to the now present catastrophe has been to elect the meanest stupidest people

they can find to lead them. Things will proceed on that basis.

[Hortensis]

5. :) Hey, agreeing with you on something. Fear tends to

bring out the worst in people. And fear causes some to support the kind of bad leaders who get elected BY encouraging and exploiting bad reactions instead of uplifting them.

Fear is planetary these days. Exactly when we need people to be brave and raise their standards.

One simple standard to keep those standards up: Commit to truth. If it's not true, it's not moral.

[malaise]

6. And yet there's a test math against New Zealand in Sydney starting

later this evening. The fireworks weren't canceled either. Maybe the officials in some of these Australian states should start taking the wildfires seriously.

[Thyla]

7. Apathy or helplessness?

Either way the only real way to even begin to help is by voting in candidates with the strongest green credentials globally.
Nobody will though, nobody.

I mean this one is too old, this ones too socialist, this one is not enough whatever the fuck isn't really important.
We have known this for years and yet the status quo remains.
No more excuses or me and Greta are going to start rolling heads.

[Moral Compass]

8. Not the least apathetic

But I do feel completely powerless.

Climate change is here and in this country we're still arguing about whether it is real or not.

No country is really doing anything real about it. China is building coal fired power plants as fast as it can because they have to keep their economy juiced or unrest will break out.

How do we rein in the economic activity that produces all the CO2?

There are too many people. There are too many people. There are too many people. There are too many people.

If this is a numbers game then we can only lose.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

[Bayard]

9. Agreed

It kills me to see pics of burning koalas.

I haven't seen any real plan for containment. Battling the here and now for the country.

[Kaleva]

13. I don't feel powerless at all.

I spend much time on the internet reading about what the expected impact climate change is predicted to have in the region of the country where I live and most every day, I spend time, anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, working on preparing for the changes.

With knowledge, there is power. The internet provides easy access for those who seek the knowledge.

[UniteFightBack]

10. When there is no leader of the free world it has massive repercussions. nt

[moondust]

11. No apathy here.

So many lives and properties lost but also so many animals and their habitats lost. The coming summer weather is expected to be hot and dry.

500 million animals lost in Australian bushfires in 2019

[misanthrope]

12. This is in line with my expectations

Human history has all the evidence we need on our species inability for effective proactivity and the path subsequent reactions normally take.

[Kaleva]

14. Humans are very good at adapting after the fact.

[IcyPeas]

15. Canadian firefighters are helping.

I don't know if any other countries are helping. I would hope so.

...

"Their willingness to be deployed out of the country during the holiday season is a testament to their dedication and professionalism," said Doug Donaldson, British Columbia's minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, in a statement.

Other members of the contingent come from fire management teams in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Canada's national parks service, Parks Canada.

....
The two countries have a strong history of fire assistance, exchanging professional teams to aid each other's wildfire crises for years.

"Canada has called on Australian firefighters four times since 2015, and we are proud to now provide support to them during this devastating fire season," Canada's Alberta Wildfire wrote in a tweet.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/world/canada-firefighters-help-australia-bushfires-for-holidays-trnd/index.html

[Binkie The Clown]

16. Our turn is coming up.

And with the way Trump has treated the rest of the world, the global community is likely to turn an apathetic eye toward us when our cities are burning.

[PufPuf23]

17. Recall how GWB turned away foreign help during Katrina?

Also turned away some US Fed Agency help offered for Katrina, specifically USFS.

[PufPuf23]

18. For an idea of scale regards 15 million acres burnt so far in Australia fires ....

California is about 100 million acres.

There are about 17 million acres of National Forest in California; this includes forests but also wilderness, oak-woodlands, chaparral, and miscellaneous other cover.

There is about 17 million acres of conifer forest in California; this includes National Forests, other Fed land (BLM mostly), corporate commercial timberland (about 4 million acres), state and federal parks, Fed NRAs, various preservation land trusts, and miscellaneous ownerships. Most of the National Forest conifer forest plus parks, NRAs and other preserved are not subject to timber harvest and have not that much (compared to what could be done) proactive vegetation management

The above acreage is mildly accurate based upon my memory in an attempt to show scale.

In 2018 1.89 million acres burned in California wildfires, worse fire extent in recorded history. (wiki)

In 2019 0.26 million acres burned in California. (wiki)

Over half the extent of the California fires are in oak-woodland and chaparral, not conifer forests.

I am not optimistic.

[smirkymonkey]

19. K&R

The plight of the Koala Bears just breaks my heart.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/tragedy-koalas-burned-death-australia-bushfire-191030050748421.html



"Hundreds of koalas are feared to have burned to death in an out-of-control bushfire on Australia's east coast, wildlife authorities said on Wednesday.

A bushfire believed to have been sparked by a lightning strike on Saturday near the town of Port Macquarie some 400km (249 miles) north of Sydney has ravaged an area of more than 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) with authorities battling to bring it under control.

Wildlife rescuers in northern New South Wales state said they had grave fears for a "very rare" population of hundreds of koalas living in the fire zone.

"The special importance of those koalas is that they are very genetically diverse," Sue Ashton, president of the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, told AFP news agency." [more...]