January 04, 2020

Happy fireworks Australia: the show must go on

topic:	Climate Change
located:	Australia
editor:	Murat Suner

Happy New Fireworks! Like every year before it, Australia celebrated the new year with a tremendous firework over the bay of Sydney while large parts of the country burn in the wildfires, around 20,000 fire workers have been putting their lives at risk, at least 17 people died, dozens of communities destroyed let alone the loss of 6 million hectares of habitat. In comparison: the Amazon rainforest fires burned about 7 million hectares. Some of Australia's largest cities have also been affected, including Melbourne and Sydney – in the latter the smoke was so bad that the air quality measured 11 times the hazardous level.

As the controversy grew about the celebrations, Sydney's mayor Clover Moore justified this year's fireworks by the masses of people coming to see the iconic show. While acknowledging the destruction of communities as well as the loss of animals, her language remained emotionless and unmasking. She talked about the "decimation" of animals as if they were commodities. She didn't mention Ecologists at the University of Sydney estimate that approximately half a billion animals burned in the fires. On Twitter, locals reported they could hear their harrowing cries in agony.

Once again for those who still don't acknowledge it: we are in the era of radical climate change and mass extinction. Hence, leaders should embrace our interdependence with our natural habitat and demonstrate empathy with our fellow creatures and not deliver them to the slaughterhouse of perpetuating disasters.

Moore's language, however, shows her deep disregard of these truths and moral necessities. Her perspective is so disturbingly narrow that she can only think about the one million people attending the fireworks and the public exposure to the worlds' audience.

Instead, she could have chosen to ask people to pause for a moment to commemorate the loss and the damage of this unprecedented disastrous tragedy. But no, she has chosen denial. It is business as usual; there is no climate crisis, and the show must go on. 

Earlier in December Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been at least a bit more honest as he unapologetically defended the nation's reliance on the coal industry saying "I am not going to write off the jobs of thousands of Australians by walking away from traditional industries".

Traditional industries obviously mean mining and coal. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Australia’s resources exports delivered a record $248 billion in revenue in 2018 and accounted for 72 per cent of Australia’s goods exports overall. Coal was the highest-earning export commodity for the year, accounting for $66 billion in export.

Despite its hazardous effects on the climate, coal is still high in demand, especially in energy-hungry Asian markets. It, therefore, seems a predicament to choose between these seductive revenues and employment provided through coal and environmental action – but only if you miss out factoring in the social and environmental costs, which are then pushed to the overall public, vulnerable communities and future generations. 

In his New Year's address to Australians, however, it's back to fairy tales: "We have faced these disasters before, and we have prevailed, we have overcome."

What he also didn't say is that the wildfires' hot phase usually begins in December not in October as they did this time. By December a landmass equal to Croatia was already lost to the fires, the fire workers past their physical and mental limit and more than 1,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean, the sky over New Zealand turned orange. All that is not normal. And again all his appeasement talk denies the fact that burning fossil fuels and deforestation are the primary causes of climate change.

And so Green party leader Richard Di Natale said that Scott Morrison is "failing in his basic duty to keep our citizens safe from harm. His totally inadequate response to these fires and his obstinate refusal to accept what we have known for decades: that burning climate-changing fossil fuels would lead to more frequent and intense bush fires and is putting the lives of Australians at risk." 

Also, Australia alongside the United States of America and Brazil was, in fact, one of three countries that let the whole world down during the recent climate summit COP25 in Madrid by blocking programmes to help defray the costs of climate losses of poorer countries. 

Australia as one of the richest countries on the globe benefited greatly from burning fossil fuels. It is therefore morally obligated to help less developed, more vulnerable countries cope with climate-related losses. Otherwise, we as a global community will never be able to cope with the self-inflicted climate crisis.

It's about time for truth for Australia's leaders. A crisis is not business as usual, and we don't need any more politicians who act in disregard of our times and moral duties. It's time for action. 

Image credit: Scott Marsh

Scott Marsh made the mural shown in the image, which he offers here as the "Merry Crisis - Giclee print edition". 100% of the profits from this print edition will be donated to the Rural Fire Service RFS. 

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