Time to examine the cause of current catastrophic bushfires

As humans, we are conditioned by our experience, so it is not difficult to understand the city media's reaction to the recent catastrophic bushfires. 

Fire swept through Willawarrin, west of Kempsey, in early November.

The intensity is blamed on climate change, with the assumption if you fix that problem all will be solved. 

As most farmers know, it is part of the problem but not the whole story, as we recall the 1939 Black Friday fires where 2 million acres were burnt, 700 homes lost and 75 people perished.

Climate change is both real and man-made and questioning the science is a no-brainer, but Australia must act within the limits of our economy even though we are only 1.2 per cent of the earth's emissions. 

Read the story from The Land by Mal Peters - “Time to examine the cause of current catastrophic bushfires.”

The Guardian view on climate change: a global emergency

Climate change is an existential threat to the human race. This may seem an absurd or alarmist statement, since we have been conditioned by unparallelled growth to expect that there are no catastrophes that are insurmountable. Even apocalyptic science fiction deals with bands of survivors who have, by definition, survived. And we always imagine ourselves as among the survivors.

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil. ‘The deforestation of
tropical regions, is doubly dangerous, because
it converts carbon sinks into producers of carbon.’

But the threat is real. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that there are only a dozen or so years in which to change our economies radically if we are to keep the effects of the warming already under way to manageable proportions. That would require the countries of the world to live up to the most ambitious of the goals of the Paris climate change agreement, and keep the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. A rise of even half a degree above that, to 2C, will have effects that are very much worse. Already this seems much more likely. All corals will disappear, as will many insects and plants.

Read the Opinion piece from The Guardian - “The Guardian view on climate change: a global emergency.”