Opinion: Can we learn anything from Australia's wildfires?

Article content

By Jim Harding

We have much to learn from Australia’s wildfires. They spread in the wake of extreme droughts. They started earlier and will last longer than the “typical” wildfire season. There are hundreds of them, which can merge into mega-fires; an area as large as Switzerland has already burned. Many humans have died and more will have respiratory illnesses. As many as a billion wild creatures have died in the inferno.

This is an early warning system. Such fires will become the new normal if global temperatures rise by 3 C. There would be nothing normal living under such conditions.

Even so, climate-denying conspiracy theories remain rampant in Australia. The coal lobby and the Murdoch papers play a role, but so does the fossil-fuel-promoting government of Scott Morrison.

NASA monitored the smoke spreading to South America and encircling the globe, a startling sign of the magnitude of the climate emergency. Unprecedented fires in B.C., California, the Tundra and, most disconcerting, Brazil’s rain forests present a cumulative threat to our collective security. International solidarity is growing, and Canadian firefighters are on Australia’s front lines. But global emissions simply must be curtailed and reduced.

Each year we lose forests that would fill Great Britain. Deforestation accounts for 13 per cent of global emissions.

Some try to blame the Australian fires on arsonists, and how quickly such internet disinformation spreads. Like Trump after California’s fires, climate deniers also blame the fires on the lack of preventive burns. When forestry officials challenge this, deniers retreat to clichés about how “we’ve always had these fires.”

No, we haven’t, and ignorance will not be bliss for our grandchildren. And in polling, two-thirds of Australians, as in Canada, say they want immediate climate action.

But Australia’s coal industry is worth $32 billion and has 50,000 related jobs. To defend short-term benefits, some put on cognitive blinders and deny the climate emergency. Belief systems that defend fossil fuel exports overrule what is right before people’s eyes.

We must soon come to our senses.

Most of us see these wildfires on our TVs. Australians gasp for air. Some bond with a koala bear with life-threatening burns, a painful way to realize that we mammals, all with emotional limbic systems, are in this together.

Australian deniers use the excuse that their emissions aren’t big enough to matter. Sound familiar? Climate Transparency’s 2019 report shows that Australia’s yearly per capita emissions (22 tonnes) are the highest of the G20, which are responsible for 80 per cent of global emissions. And who is right up there with the Aussies? Canadians, at 19 tonnes. And our total emissions are much higher (708 compared to 552 mega-tonnes).

And where is Saskatchewan? Three times higher than Canadians or Australians as a whole, at 68 tonnes per person per year.

While Australia tries to displace its responsibility, it is a victim of the lack of action to reduce emissions everywhere, including from Canada. Climate deniers point their fingers at China (and sometimes the U.S.), the two largest emitters. While they must also act quickly, climate change will continue to be driven by total global emissions.

During the Cold War, each side looked at the other’s nuclear weapons as the threat. It took time to recognize that nuclear weapons themselves threatened everyone. Then, as now, we deluded ourselves with dualistic, unscientific beliefs.

The mentality that dominates Saskatchewan politics is putting us all at risk. As in Australia, we try to justify our extremely high emissions because we have allowed ourselves to become so dependent on fossil fuel exports. Our politics of denial is as toxic as the fossil fuel emissions that we try in vain to defend.

The Sask. Party government and NDP Opposition need to quickly join hands for the greater global good and face the climate crisis head on.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. He is a founding director of the Qu’Appelle Valley Environmental Association (QVEA.CA).