Australia’s Fires Test Its Winning Growth Formula.

Australia’s remarkable prosperity rests on a balancing act. It mines coal, natural gas and iron ore from a vulnerable landscape. It takes ever more money from China while allied with the American military.

Scientists say Australia’s increasingly hot and dry
conditions are to blame for the blazes ripping
 through its countryside. 

With devastating wildfires ripping through its countryside, that balance may become increasingly difficult to maintain.

Australia’s leaders face growing pressure to address climate change, as scientists blame the country’s increasingly hot and dry conditions for the disastrous blazes. 

That would mean reckoning with Australia’s dependence on providing China and other countries with coal.

The fossil fuel, used to fire many of the world’s power plants and steel mills, is one of Australia’s biggest exports. Coal is also one of the biggest sources of climate change gases, and produces most of Australia’s own electricity.

Read the story from The New York Times by Keith Bradsher and Isabella Kwai - “Australia’s Fires Test Its Winning Growth Formula.”