THE REALITY OF ECOCIDE: a truth thread from the NSW Northern Rivers. If you read nothing else between now and New Year 2020 read this

This is not an easy read. It may upset you. It will frighten you by the time its import sinks in.

It speaks both lived experience and brutal truth. 

Truth which we ignore at our peril.

Mecurius Goldstein, on Twitter, 19 December 2019:

Ecocide: A thread
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Bearing witness at Wytaliba NSW, these photos are a response to the neverending know-it-all 💩 from armchair experts since the #NSWfires started in September.
6 weeks and 3 inches of rain later, this is a riverbed.

Here's a creek into the Mann, a tributary of the Clarence River NSW. We're +40 days and there's been rain, but nothing here is coming back. I've had to put up with endless smug woo-woo from online dipshits saying everything would be lovely again in 6 weeks after rain. Well look:

What's happening now. These roos didn't starve, they died from drinking the toxic run-off from rain. The river is full of tar, basically the ashes of hell. Our local Greens group has donated a large % of our funds to food for 65 joeys under wildlife care, but the water is toxic.

What the insta-expert smug online pricks don't get is that in fact, no, these fires aren't "good for the environment", they don't make the forests thrive, there's nothing here but the smell of death. No food, no water, no going back. 6 weeks and after rain, all is still.

A belting flash-flood came through here the last week. There's nothing to hold the water, nothing to stop it churning tonnes of toxic shit downstream. This will all eventually end up going past Grafton NSW. Gravity is like that.

And as for the sanctimonious scapegoating delusions about hazard reduction and back-burning, sit down and listen: Behind those hills a massive back-burn was instigated in September by authorised agencies, thousands of hectares. Made shit-all difference.

Also get this. In September one of those lovely slow-burning ground fires came from the top of that ridge in the back and devoured all the fuel over 3 days it took to travel 800 metres. They're supposed to help but again doesn't make a difference when a crown-fire comes through.

So this whole area that had slow-burnt at ground level in September for days on end, then explosively burnt in November in 15 minutes flat. Smug armchair fuckos think that "burning" will save us from disasters, but they're wrong and they don't know what they're talking about.

Here's but a small patch of the whole perimeter where we did a fun weekend's raking leaves in September. Whole place went up like a torch come November. The ridge in front had been hazard-burned the previous season less than 12 months prior. Do you see now? It doesn't help.

I repeat: Everything you see here had been slow-burnt at ground level not two months before the crown fire came through. Just like the textbook recommends. Just like all the scapegoaters and victim-blamers howl. Not even the large trees survived. We're +6 weeks, and it's over.

Today I realised something important about the scapegoaters and victim-blamers. They're weak and scared. They want to believe this isn't their future, because they would do it differently. They would hazard-burn and back-burn. They would be RFS. Well, that's no escape I'm afraid.

Because this is all our futures if we stay inert, complacent, inactive & disengaged. We need the natural world a great deal more than it needs us, and right now we are being forcibly ejected. Deniers won't turn back until it's too late, will you let them take you down with them?

Humans can survive just about anything, but we can't survive ecocide. It's happened in this community and it will soon happen in yours, unless you take action to stop it. I wonder if you will?

2019 Bushfire Season In Australia

How it was and is......

It’s all gone there’s nothing left
Tianjara fire destroyed everything pic.twitter.com/Qe92NN4fH7

— leanne (@snag_sanga) December 22, 2019

This is a random collection of images found on Twitter and Google Images of bushfires occurring in Australia between September and December 2019.

Australian Climate Emergency in December 2019: leadership failure

Geoscience Australia, satellite mapping of hotspots, 18 December 2019

On the evening of Sunday 15 December 2019 Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison left the country unannounced.

When his absence was noticed the prime minister's office confirmed he was taking a 'personal' holiday with his family for a few days, at first refused to confirm this holiday was overseas and flat out denied it was being taken in Hawaii, USA.

Turns out the holiday was in Hawaii and, as Australia burned, he was smiling happily for a group photo on a beach flashing the handsign for 'hanging loose'.

Let me make this clear. This was during a time forests were burning, untold native animals were perishing, more homes were destroyed, another NSW state emergency was declared and two firefighters were killed as well as two in the same NSWRFS crew injured - but Morrison was having his oh-so-jolly, carefree jaunt in the balmy tropics.

https://twitter.com/Ben_Downie/status/1207569984857096192, 19 December 2019

Once Morrison realised he had been discovered he issued a half-hearted brief apology; "I deeply regret any offence caused to any of the many Australians affected by the terrible bushfires by my taking leave with family at this time". 

Saying he would return to Australia as soon as it could be arranged.

Morrison's overseas holiday was for 8 nights & 7 days planned to end on 23 December 2019 - meaning it ended less than two full days earlier than planned.


Since returning to Australia Morrison has been conducting a public relations blitz portraying himself as a man just trying to do the right thing by his kids, whom he had already taken on holiday to Shoalhaven in NSW (January 2019) and Fiji (June 2019) before taking them to Hawaii this month.

He has also doubled down on false claims that Australia was meeting it greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and told the general public that the current fire season was nothing to panic about, that the rural fire service volunteers were well resourced and supported and there was no need for additional responses to the climate emergency/climate change impacts.

A message which simply increased the level of anger shown towards him on social media.

#auspol#ScoMoResign #Scummo

Morrison is smacked down by a volunteer firefighter.

Jacqui doesn't hold back.

Good on her, she speaks for us all. pic.twitter.com/E1xkgilN0W

— Sir Thomas Wynn ⚫️ (@Sir_Thomas_Wynn) December 23, 2019

A sobering interview from the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25 in December 2019

This is a sobering interview from the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25 in Madrid (2-13 December 2019).

https://youtu.be/oa13KrOvE2s

Dr. Peter Carter founded the Climate Emergency Institute. He served as an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s fifth climate change assessment in 2014. 

According to Dr. Carter the COP25 conference, like UN climate change conferences before it, are designed to fail.

Since 2013 Australia has been on a path that ensures such failure.

Under Scott Morrison's prime ministership the federal government's willingness to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry at these conferences is becoming quite noticeable.

The Guardian, 10 December 2018:

As four of the world’s largest oil and gas producers blocked UN climate talks from “welcoming” a key scientific report on global warming, Australia’s silence during a key debate is being viewed as tacit support for the four oil allies: the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait.

The end of the first week of the UN climate talks – known as COP24 – in Katowice, Poland, has been mired by protracted debate over whether the conference should “welcome” or “note” a key report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC’s 1.5 degrees report, released in October, warned the world would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 45% by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5C and potentially avoid some of the worst effects of climate change, including a dramatically increased risk of drought, flood, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

BBC News, 12 December 2019:

According to the UN, 84 countries have promised to enhance their national plans by the end of next year. Some 73 have said they will set a long-term target of net zero by the middle of the century. In a rare move, negotiators from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) pointed the finger of blame at countries including Australia, the United States, Canada, Russia, India, China and Brazil. They had failed to submit revised plans that would help the world keep the rise in global temperatures under 1.5C this century.

Courier Mail, 14 December 2019:

Australia has come under fire for resisting proposed future emissions targets and changes to carbon markets.

Escalating tensions, Costa Rica’s environment and energy minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez outright blamed “Australia, Brazil and the US” for the stalemate.

For clarity, obviously all countries are here to advance their national interest. For some that's to stop all their citizens dying. For others it's profit #COP25 https://t.co/CaSy8OzeQU

— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) December 14, 2019