Australia 2019-2020: "I have never been prouder of my nation. Leaderless, leaders emerged ... "

This is author Jackie French:

Jackie and her husband Bryan live in the Araluen valley, a deep valley on the edge of the Deua wilderness area. Most of their property is now a Conservation Refuge for the many rare and endangered species of the area. They live in a home made stone house, with a waterwheel Bryan made as well as solar panels to power their house, with an experimental orchard of over 800 fruit trees and more than 272 kinds of fruit that show how farming can coexist with wildlife. Jackie writes columns for the Canberra Times, Australian Women’s Weekly, Earthgarden Magazine, Australian Wellbeing and Gardening Australia. Her garden rambles over about 4 hectares, and there is never a time when there aren't basketsful of many kinds of fruit to pick.

The opinion piece below was penned by French.....

The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 2020: 

It is impossible to weep. 

I cannot weep because this is only the beginning. Logs smoulder on our ridges, a tide of injured wildlife is sweeping down into our refuge. I have been living out of a suitcase for most of the past six weeks, evacuated twice, sleeping in many different places and accepting generosity too great to count. I need to clean the pink sludge from the fridge (hint: remove watermelon from fridge before evacuating), keep putting out food and water stations, cope as desperately injured wildlife emerges from the flames, and help others in every possible way I can. 

Focus on what you can do. Don’t cry for what you can’t. 

I also cannot weep because I dare not even imagine yet all that we’ve lost. Friends have lost their houses and towns, entire communities have been displaced, the social links that make us who we are, as social beings, turned to smoke. Tourist towns have no tourists – or the heritage buildings that made them tourist towns. Businesses are bankrupt. Evacuees like me have lost months of paid work, with more lost months to come. I am OK. Many are not. 

The carefully planted local Indigenous "food larder" landscape I have loved and depended upon most of my life, and that has survived 200 years of colonisation, cannot survive fires like these. Farms and vast areas of bush already teetered on a knife-edge in the worst drought in history. Now they are ash. The Araluen Valley, south-east of Braidwood in New South Wales' Southern Tablelands, has lost much of its remaining peach orchards. Will the orchardists replant? We don’t know. 

I do know our community will support them. And that I have never been prouder of my nation.  

Leaderless, leaders emerged; the magnificent firies, but also those who defended their houses and others with nothing but hoses and determination. Our neighbour, Robyn, singlehandedly waited to defend her farm while checking on the properties of those who had evacuated, knowing that with age or injury we would now be a hindrance, not a help, on the fire front. 

I have never been prouder of my nation. Leaderless, leaders emerged ... [And] this is the comfort we must give our children: in the past weeks, Australia has been a truly great nation. We must remain one. We must not forget. 

Friends in their 70s and 80s, who would not want to be called old men, have been out for days or nights for three months with the tankers. I have seen a man, dying in great pain, still struggle towards the flames to give his wisdom on where the fire might go; I have seen wombats share their holes with snakes, quolls, possums and a nervous swamp wallaby; a fridge on the highway kept constantly stocked with cold drinks for those defending us; six firies leaning against the hospital wall, too exhausted to stagger inside for first aid. The next day they went out again..... 

Please read the full article here with its acute observations and well thought through suggestions.

Bushfire ash & debris as well as drought now killing fish in NSW coastal and inland rivers

"Fish kills are defined as a sudden mass mortality of wild fish. In NSW we are likely to see further severe fish kills across coastal and inland catchments during the summer of 2019/20....Fish can be directly impacted during fires through extreme high temperatures, loss of habitat, or be threatened from rapid declines in water quality if rainfall occurs in recently burnt areas. Run-off from rainfall events can wash large amounts of ash and sediment into rivers following fires, causing rapid drops in oxygen levels and threatening the survival of fish populations." [NSW Dept of Primary Industries]

The upper reaches of the Clarence River have been badly stressed by low water flows since 2018, so when bushfires began to eat their way through the severely drought affected Clarence Valley in mid-2019 it was obvious that the rolling impacts wouldn't stop when the fires diminished or when rain fell.

There has been a fish kill at Big Fish Flat, an area known for the protected eastern freshwater cod now only found in parts of this river system and commonly known as Clarence River Cod.

The most likely cause of this kill is bushfire ash entering a river which has all but ceased to flow - turning what water there is into a toxic brew.

At Baryulgil on the Clarence est. 1,000 fish died due to low dissolved oxygen within an isolated pool receiving minimal inflows due to drought conditions.

There was also a fish kill on the Mann River, a major tributary of the Clarence which reportedly coincided with ash in the water.

Two fish kills were experienced to the north at Emigrant Creek at Tintenbar in the Ballina Shire and the Brunswick River near Byron Bay - possibly due to low dissolved oxygen within an isolated pool and minimal freshwater inflows. 

Another fish kill occurred to the south on an 8km stretch of the Macleay River where locals describe the bushfire ash and burned debris turning that river's water into a thick sludge killing hundreds of thousands including Australian Bass, Bull Trout, Freshwater Mullet, Eel-tailed Catfish and Eels.

The Guardian, 17 January 2020: Results of a fish kill in the Macleay River in northern New South Wales, which locals said was like ‘cake mix’. Photograph: Larry Newberry

Similarly bushfire affected water ways in the NSW-Qld Border Rivers system appear to have been similarly affected by run-off from the fire grounds and reported fish kills there are being investigated.

All in all a total of 23 coastal and 17 inland NSW waterways have experienced small to large fish kills to date during the 2019-20 bushfire season.

Associated Press published a comparative scale of the largest wildfires since 2018 when the world began to burn

Australian Council of Social Service calls on Morrison to increase "seriously inadequate" emergency payments to bushfire victims

The Guardian, 13 January 2020:

Australia’s peak welfare body is calling on the federal government to immediately boost emergency payments for those affected by bushfires, saying it is concerned the current amount is “seriously inadequate”.

The Australian Council of Social Service chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, has written to the prime minister, Scott Morrison, with a range of recommendations the organisation says are urgently needed to help provide relief to those affected by the bushfire crisis that has destroyed more than 2,000 homes.

“It is vital that the federal government continues to play its role providing adequate support to the thousands of people so badly affected,” Goldie said.

“Acoss is very concerned that the current Disaster Recovery Payment is seriously inadequate, particularly for people on lower incomes and with fewer assets, family and friends to secure transport, alternative housing options and immediate recovery resources.”

The group is calling for the payment, which has not increased since 2006, to be boosted from $1,000 to $3,000, and from $400 per child to $1,000 per child. 

Other recommendations include increasing the Disaster Recovery Allowance, which is paid at the same rate as Newstart, which the organisation said was inadequate to cover basic living costs, and providing additional relief for people on low incomes who could not afford insurance.....

Less in response to this ACOSS call and more as pushback against his poor numbers in the 12 January 2020 Newspoll which showed Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese as the preferred prime minister with a lead of 4 points, Prime Minister Morrison has announced an increase in the Disaster Recovery Payment for children to a total of $800 per child from 20 January 2020.

Families who have already received payments for children will automatically be paid an additional $400 according to media reports.

Everytime someone says of Australia 'It's not climate change, it's drought and too much dry fuel in the forests' remember these basic numbers

The Guardian, 13 January 2020:

Australia experienced its hottest year on record in 2019, with average temperatures 1.52C above the 1961-1990 average. Our second hottest year was 2013, followed by 2005, 2018 and 2017. 

New South Wales – one state hard hit by the bushfires – broke its record by a greater margin, with temperatures 1.95C above average, beating the previous record year, 2018, by 0.27C. 

At a very basic level, rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere change the earth’s radiation balance, allowing less heat to escape. 

Australia also had its driest ever year in 2019, with rainfall 40% lower than average, based on records going back to 1900. NSW also had its driest year....

There have been two other meteorological patterns that helped generate the extreme conditions Australia has been experiencing, and both these “modes of variability” were in “phases” that made conditions worse. 

The Indian Ocean dipole was in a “positive phase”, meaning the Indian Ocean off Australia’s north west was cooler than normal and the west of the ocean was warmer. 

Positive dipole events draw moisture away from Australia and tend to deliver less rainfall. 

But there is evidence that the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are also impacting the dipole and another phenomenon, known as the southern annular mode (SAM). 

A 2009 study found that positive dipole events “precondition” the south of the country for dangerous bushfire seasons and that these events were becoming more common. 

A 2018 study in the journal Nature Communications found the number of extreme positive dipole events goes up as climate heating continues. 

An animated history of average maximum temperatures and rainfall in Australia since 1910 can be found here at https://youtu.be/okmjuh0pNCU

The Australian Bureau of Meterology has produced two charts which display the stark transformation in temperature and precipitation across the continent over the past century.

The first chart shows the anomaly of mean temperature for each calendar year from 1910 to 2019, compared to the average over the standard reference period of 1961–1990.

The colours range from dark blue (more than 3 degrees Celsius below average), through blues and greens (below average), yellow and orange (above average), and then brown (more than 3C above average).

The Bureau has also produced a second chart showing rainfall in each year since 1900.

The colours range from dark red (lowest on record) to white (average) and dark blue (highest on record).

NSW Bushfire Emergency Declaration covering the Clarence Valley has been revoked as fires begin to diminsh

Bushfires in the Clarence Valley are diminishing.

So the Section 44 Bushfire Emergency declation declared in August 2019 when the NSW Rural Fire Service was battling around twenty fires a day - many caused by hazard reduction burns on private land which ran out of control - was revoked last week.

Although the fire grounds have contracted significantly, the Myall Creek Road and Washpool National Park fires are still burning and peat in the Shark Creek area is also still alight.

However, these fires have been listed as under control for some weeks.

Valley residents should still keep an eye open for new fire activity, because forewarned is forearmed for our scattered communities.

Since June 2019 an est. 548,698 hectares have burned in a local government area comprising a total of 1,044,996 hectares. That is almost 53 per cent of the Clarence Valley land mass affected by fire to date.

The fires kicked off in a big way in September when the Shark Creek fire entered Yuraygir National Park and spread to threaten Angourie and Wooloweyah with one spot fire burning as far north as the vicinity of the Yamba community pool before being controlled.

Then in October-November the Nymboida region began to blaze, quickly followed by the spread of the Myall Creek Road fire into the Valley, then Washpool National Park began to burn and Woombah through to the New Italy area as well as Bunjalung National Park lit up - creating even larger fire grounds.

Now on Wednesday 15 January 2020 the smoke has gone, the air is clean, in the Lower Clarence River the water remains clear and, popular beaches along the Clarence Coast are much as they were before the bushfire emergency began.

During the Christmas holidays the tourists came back, so there are small children in rashies, young women in sarongs & sandals and proud local grandparents showing off their visiting grandkids once more peopling our streets.

But all is not well. 

We can easily count how many homes, sheds and how much community infrastructure we've lost in the Valley and, eventually money will rebuild much of what is gone.

Trying to gauge the degree of loss of natural landscapes, wildlife biodiversity and cultural sites - and what that means to us as regional communities - will be much harder.

The Clarence Valley may find itself changed forever. 

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan appears to have drunk the #ArsonEmergency Conspiracy Kool Aid

In which Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan decides that a fire believed to have started on Friday 4 October 2019 in the Busbys Flat area was deliberately lit.

Pre-empting the results of Strike Force Cleander investigations into that fire of unknown origin. Such fires are as a matter of course treated as suspicious and investigated.

In addition Hogan claims that: "Over 50% of the recent fires burning in New South Wales did not start by natural causes."

Neglecting to point out that most human-induced fire ignitions are not arson but accidental ignitions, often caused by people being reckless in the handling of a small fire but without malicious intent.

From the rather dodgy figures he presents it seems that Hogan is a fan of the Murdoch press.

Myself I prefer to believe not clickbait journalism but an authorities with some gravitas:

According to NSW Rural Fire Service spokesman Ben Shepherd the vast majority of major fires in the state since August 2019 were the result of lightning storms and "The Country Fire Association (CFA) said the majority of fires were not arson-related. "Most of the fires have been caused by lightning," said Brett Mitchell, the CFA incident controller in Bairnsdale, in East Gippsland. "Our intelligence suggests there are no deliberate lightings that we are aware of."

For good measure in his media release the Member for Page also throws in the standard political lies denying the Abbott-Turnbull- Morrison Government's woeful track record on national greenhouse gas emission reduction.

Kevin John Hogan

Reading the media release set out below, one should remember it was written by a member of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government since 2013 - a man who has always voted for every piece of legislation which revoked, dismantled or hobbled pre-September 2013 acts of Parliament which sought to establish a genuine response to climate change.

This is a politician who helped create the conditions which led to the mega fires burning across Australia since the start of the 2019-20 bushfire  season.

And like his political masters he seeks to shift the blame for the almost 5 million hectares ravaged by fire, the thousands of homes destroyed or fire damaged*, the est. billion wildlife killed**, the huge stock losses and a growing roll of the needless early deaths of ordinary people caught in the path of these bushfires.

Kevin Hogan was part of a federal government which did this.....

Financial Review, 11 January 2020:

A federal government plan to prepare for the dire effects of climate change-related natural disasters was left to gather dust in the Department of Home Affairs for 1½ years before catastrophic bushfires hit last month.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework warned the changing climate was exposing the country to natural disasters on ‘‘unimagined scales, in unprecedented combinations and in unexpected locations’’.

It warned more and more people and assets would be exposed to these disasters, with essential services – including power, water, telecommunications and financial services – particularly vulnerable.

‘‘As a result, the cost of disasters is increasing for all sectors of society – governments, industry, business, not-for-profits, communities and individuals,’’ the report warned.

But in the 1½ years since its publication in mid-2018 – weeks before the leadership coup in which then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was replaced by Scott Morrison – the federal government has taken little tangible action, and has failed to publish the national implementation plan promised for 2019.....

The misleading media release at kevinhogan.com.au, 7 January 2020: 

Federal Member for Page, Kevin Hogan has today called for tougher penalties for arsonists in the wake of recent bushfires across the country. 

Kevin Hogan said over 180 suspected arsonists have been charged in NSW and QLD over the past 12 months alone. Over 50% of the recent fires burning in NSW did not start by natural causes. 

“The fire that took out Rappville and has caused community and environmental carnage, from New Italy to Woombah and out past Whiporie, was deliberately lit.” 

“While we can do more on hazard reduction burning and are doing more on cutting emissions, if someone deliberately lights a fire on a total fire ban day, people, properties and wildlife are going to be lost,” Kevin Hogan said. 

The NSW Government has set the non-parole time for arson at 9 years. I believe this needs to be at least doubled. The distress and damage done to homes, infrastructure and the environment by these fires demands this. 

“Potential arsonists need to be sent a strong message, that because of the damage they are causing, they will be heavily punished. I will be lobbying my state colleagues on this,” Kevin Hogan said. 

How can you help? If you see something that looks out of place, record the details of vehicles such as the make, model and registration of suspicious vehicles. Also take note of the appearance of anyone acting suspiciously. 

Report suspicious behaviour to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

 Authorised by Kevin Hogan MP, National Party of Australia, Lismore, NSW
[my yellow highlighting]

Note:

* Latest NSW Infrastructure Impact Assessment as of 10 January 2019

** An estimation drawn up by Australian Academy of Science Fellow, Professor Chris Dickman, which includes. mammals. birds and reptiles but does not include  bats, frogs, insects or other invertebrates.

When even a high-end jeweller has a better understanding of climate change threat than the Australian Coalition Government

Advertisement placed in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 11 November 2020:

Image: @BevanShields

Tiffany & Co. was established in New York in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Long. In 1987 it became a public company.

Centrelink lives up to its growing reputation for incompetence

The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 2019:

Confused and angry locals doing it tough in bushfire-ravaged NSW towns have been denied government relief payments due to outdated maps and technicalities.

Upset residents told The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Nine News they applied for the $1000 tax-free disaster recovery payment, only for Centrelink to knock it back because their "guide maps" showing the fire zone were out of date.

And several workers on the NSW South Coast whose employers have closed or reduced staffing levels due to a combination of fires, power outages, road closures and evacuations said they were also rejected by Centrelink.

Mogo resident Melinda Evans said she had been told by four Centrelink workers she was "not in the area [affected by bushfires] ... They're looking at their own map but if you look around here you can tell we're in the thick of it".

On New Year's Eve, fire tore through her rural property, destroying sheds and fences and affecting the health of Ms Evans' young son Michael.

"His breathing's terrible, he's stuffy, he's got a cough. There's nothing else we can do about it, there's nowhere else we can go."....

Read the full article here.

Infrastructure toll in NSW since the beginning of the 2019-20 bushfire season

NSW North Coast repaying South Coast firies who came to our aid in the 2019 bushfires

Macquarie Port News, 6 January 2020:

Firefighters have flown in a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) cargo plane to help fight fires on the NSW South Coast.

Twenty Fire and Rescue NSW personnel from stations between Grafton to Taree boarded the RAAF C-130 Hercules flight at Port Macquarie Airport on Sunday, January 5.....

Mr Chetwynd said this is first time he has seen firefighters carried by RAAF planes in 30 years of working with Fire and Rescue NSW.

"We send crews all over the state, interstate and overseas for humanitarian and disaster relief," he said.

"But I've been doing this for 30 years and it's definitely the first time we have sent firefighting crews on RAAF planes to NSW.

"It's definitely an unprecedented situation and something which is very unique. The crews are happy because they are received support from both metropolitan and regional areas during our bushfire crisis here in 2019.

"They feel like they are paying back and giving their South Coast colleagues some support. We are also really appreciative of the RAAF for assisting with the efforts."

Clarence Valley RFS and Fire and Rescue crews have been deployed to assist and a Hazmat Tanker from 306 Grafton responded to the south coast fires on New Year’s Eve.

#ScottyFromMarketing needs to grow up or find another job

no_filter_Yamba 

#ScottyFromMarketing is simultaneously reminding us the crisis is still occurring & recovery has begun. He speaks as though all that is needed to recover is to replace bricks & mortar destroyed by fire and livestock lost. He just doesn't understand it will take more...1/4 

..than $$$. Mother Nature isn't impressed by $$$. They do not make it rain, keep baked & exposed soils fixed to the earth, cause new trees to grow on burnt ground, keep the few healthy rivers we have left alive & free of ash pollution, clean the air or lower high air/soil...2/4

....temperatures. Even if Scotty & his climate change denying mates commenced right now to lower greenhouse gas emissions instead of just pretending to, there will be no environmental, social and economic recovery across his next set of precious foreward estimates....3/4

2020 will likely end as it began - with some of the remaining forests burning, farms still not capable of past levels of agricultural production and water scarcity still a fact of life across Australia. Scotty needs to grow up & face these facts or find another job. 4/4 

This is how the world sees Australia and Australians in January 2020

A British perspective.....

"..the boys from the Morrison campaign were the Neville Chamberlains of Australian politics who had convinced Australians to ignore the greatest threat to their nation’s security" [TheObserver columnist Nick Cohen writing in The Guardian, 5 January 2020]

The Guardian, 5 January 2020:

There are worse leaders than Scott Morrison. The “international community” includes torturers, mass murderers, ethnic cleansers 
and kleptomaniacs beside whom he seems almost benign. But no 
leader in the world is more abject than the prime minister of Australia.

He cuts a pathetic figure. A leader must speak honestly to his people in a crisis.The sly tactics of climate change denial, the false consoling words that it’s a scare and we can carry on as before, have left Morrison’s words as meaningless as a hum in the background. Nothing he says is worth hearing.

Australian English is rich in its descriptions of worthless men: as useful as tits on a bull, a dry thunderstorm, a third armpit, a glass door on a dunny, a pocket on a singlet, an ashtray on a motorbike, a submarine with screen doors, a roo-bar on a skateboard. Morrison is all of the above, but a British saying sums him up: “too clever by half”. Morrison won last year’s Australian general election, although his conservative Liberal party was expected to lose, by slyly mobilising opinion against tax rises in general and environmental taxes in particular.

The climate change denialism he espoused is a moving target. In the 1990s, lobbyists funded by the oil industry acted as if the overwhelming majority of scientists who understood the subject were in a conspiracy against the public. They accused the authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports of being guilty of a “major deception” when they discussed the human influence on climate. Many still hold to the original sin of this denialism.

Even as Australia burned last week, Tony Abbott, Morrison’s conservative predecessor, was still saying the world was “in the grip of a climate cult”. Abbott proved he was willing to make others suffer for his wilfully ignorant belief by scrapping a carbon tax when he was in power in Australia in 2014. A fallback position is emerging. It accepts that manmade climate change is real but withdraws the concession as soon as it has been made and loses it in an obfuscatory smoke.

The final fallback and the final degradation will come, I predict, in the mid-2020s when the right abandons denialism completely, admits that climate change is catastrophic, but adds it’s far too late to do anything about it, which it may well be.

Scott Morrison is hunkered down in stage two. He grudgingly acknowledges the existence of man-made climate change but hurriedly adds that other causes are at work. The climate has always changed and it’s not worth bearing the costs of challenging a polluting culture. It worked in last year’s elections, but sounds absurd today.

“By not recognising climate change as a serious threat you fail to prepare overworked, underappreciated first responders for larger, more frequent bushfires that devastate communities,” said one previously solid Morrison voter, after he had learned the truth about conservatism as his family waited to be evacuated from a New South Wales beach.

Despite its failure, perhaps because of its failures, the do-nothing Australian right remains admired across the conservative world. The 2019 election was meant to be a climate change election about the killing of the Great Barrier Reef, the extreme drought and average summer temperatures across the continent hitting 40C. Yet Morrison and his campaign team managed to turn it into an election about the Australian Labor party’s tax plans.

So impressed was Boris Johnson that he hired Morrison’s boys to win the British general election. Fawning coverage followed of the digital “whiz-kids” from New Zealand: Sean Topham, 28, and Ben Guerin, 24. In Australia, the hotshots refined their technique of dumping hundreds of crude variations on the same theme on social media. They described how Labor would raise taxes and warned that a proposal to encourage electric cars threatened motorists. Labor wanted to hit “Australians who love being out there in their four-wheel drives”, said Morrison, as his propagandists targeted ads at owners of Ford Rangers, Toyota Hilux and every other popular model, saying that Labor would increase the price of “Australia’s most popular cars”. In Britain, the same team banged home the crude message in a thousand different ways that Johnson would “get Brexit done”.

Politicians and political journalists who eulogise the cunning of clever operators aren’t being wholly asinine. How a party wins a campaign remains a matter of importance. But not one of them added, after the praise for the wise guys and whiz-kids had ended, that the boys from the Morrison campaign were the Neville Chamberlains of Australian politics who had convinced Australians to ignore the greatest threat to their nation’s security. It’s as if crime writers spent their time detailing the cunning of criminals while never mentioning the victims left bleeding on the floor.......

Read the full article here.

An American perspective.....

"Perhaps more than any other wealthy nation on Earth, Australia is at risk from the dangers of climate change. It has spent most of the 21st century in a historic drought. Its tropical oceans are more endangered than any other biome by climate change. Its people are clustered along the temperate and tropical coasts, where rising seas threaten major cities. Those same bands of livable land are the places either now burning or at heightened risk of bushfire in the future." [Journalist Robinson Meyer writing in The Atlantic, 4 January 2020]

Think how many Australian lives, homes and forests could have been saved if Scotty From Marketing had done this in September-October 2019

Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison literally spent months denying the widespread mega fires were something that as a nation and as a people we had never experienced before.

He stubbornly and callously ignored the mounting death toll, the loss of so many homes and businesses, the environmental devastation, the crushing fatigue of volunteer firefighters, because he wanted to stay on message - coal is king and climate change is something 'greenies' use to scare the kids.

It wasn't until bushfire victims and firefighters began to get right in his face, when he realised that he might lose that lucrative prime ministerial paypacket, that he finally began to provide a decent level of federal assistance.

It's just a pity that this below is over four months too late for most of New South Wales from the Great Dividing Range to the Pacific Ocean.

We’re putting more Defence Force boots on the ground, more planes in the sky, more ships to sea, and more trucks to roll in to support the bushfire fighting effort and recovery as part of our co-ordinated response to these terrible #bushfires pic.twitter.com/UiOeYB2jnv

— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) January 4, 2020

The words of an Australian prime minister who still hasn't grasped the reality of climate change

As Australia literally burned from the mountains to the sea*, with thousands fleeing the flames after being told to evacuate ahead of extreme fire conditions expected on the east coast for Saturday, 4 January 2020 .

This was Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott John Morrison, speaking at a press conference on the afternoon of 2 January 2020:

“Let me be clear to the Australian people, our emissions reductions policies will both protect our environment and seek to reduce the risk and hazards we are seeing today. At the same time, it will seek to ensure the viability of people’s jobs and livelihoods, all around the country. 

“What we will do is ensure our policies remain sensible, that they don’t move towards either extreme, and stay focused on what Australians need for a vibrant and viable economy, as well as a vibrant and sustainable environment.”


NOTE

* According to Canadian field geophysicist and disaster researcher, Mika McKinnon, by Friday 2 January 2020 the combined size of burned areas across Australia was getting close to 40,000 sq km or 10 million acres - roughly the size of Switzerland. While the smoke plume was 5.5 million sq km or 1.3 billion acres - half the size of Europe.