Source: Informed Comment
Australia has been turned by the climate crisis into a huge oven. On Wednesday, 14 of the hottest places in the world were in Australia.
Firefighters are combating 100 wildfires in New South Wales (NSW), with some of them encroaching on Sydney, Australia’s largest city. NSW declared a 7-day state of emergency.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who denies the human-caused climate emergency, initially thought this would be a good time for a vacation in Hawaii, but a public outcry made him cut his trip short. I guess the attitude of Anglo-Saxon ruling classes is that as long as they can fly off in private jets to some place less unpleasant, let the poor saps at the bottom take the heat waves, wildfires, and floods on the chin. The profits from hydrocarbons that feather their nests are more important than the welfare of the mere people, I suppose.
Some 800 buildings have been lost in New South Wales< with many more threatened, and firefighters are being treated in hospital for severe burns.
The continent-wide average temperature on Wednesday, of 107.4° F. (41.9° C.), the hottest in recorded history, broke the record set just on Tuesday. That was the average, which means there were places substantially hotter than that.
Nullarbor broke the record when it hit 120.5° F. (49.2° C.) and Adelaide is forecast to hit nearly 114 F. (46 C.).
The world temperature has risen by 1.8° F. (1° C.) over the past century because of human beings driving gasoline cars and heating buildings with coal and gas. Climate is measured in long-term changes of patterns, not in specific events. The question is not whether global heating affects these extreme weather events, but the size of the contribution it makes to their intensity and frequency.
Hotter average temperatures have contributed to greater dryness in Australia and to easier combustion of bushfires. As the climate has been changed, cool summer rainfall has decreased, which makes bush fires more likely.
Australia is a major exporter of coal and other hydrocarbons, and with 0.7 percent of the world population is responsible for 5% of carbon dioxide emissions if exported fuels are counted. That is staggering.
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Bonus Video:
Fires and a reocrd breaking heatwave in Australia | DW News
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1 Comment
Australia has a highly resource dependent economy – becoming more so. In other words, we have a capitalist class a large part of which has invested itself heavily in stranded assets – and does not want to give them up. Moreover, resource capital has been able to form a class alliance (via useful journalists) with those who, in the absence of a solid, audacious and credible transition programme yet from the left, fear change.
Hence we have many still trying to make themselves believe that the Greens are somehow responsible for the fires because they have opposed land management, even though the Greens have actually never done so.
It so happens, meanwhile, that the communities with the strongest connection to the resources sector tend to be in smaller cities and country towns. Hence the battle lines in many people’s heads are between ‘the bush’ and the larger cities. The right have exploited this division shamelessly, juxtaposing the idea of good, sensible, hard working folk in the country to ‘inner-city raving lunatics’ and ‘latte sippers’ within ‘the goat’s cheese circle.’ This is a similar dynamic I guess to that in the US.
Meanwhile, the only hope in turning all this around, is to unite as 99%ers across the town/country divide in the name of humanity and what we call here ‘the bleeding obvious’. This is a very difficult task but vital. How to do this is he next big question.