The Australia fires portend a future of climate apartheid

It will be a long hot summer in Australia. Fires of almost biblical proportions have swept across the country, devastating land, property and wildlife. More than 30 people have been killed, a billion animals have died, and more than 3,000 homes have been burned down. The cost of the bushfires has been estimated at $2bn and could climb even further.

Rural Fire Service (RFS) volunteers and NSW Fire and Rescue
 officers fight a bushfire encroaching on properties near Termeil,
 Australia on December, 3, 2019

Although heavy rain and lower temperatures this month have helped put out some fires, the threat of the blaze coming back is still imminent. 

Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's response to this environmental catastrophe has been to refuse to expand measures to combat climate change. In December, as the death toll was climbing and Australian fire brigades struggled to control the fires, the prime minister left the country for a holiday in Hawaii.

His attitude and actions illustrate quite well just how the wealthy and their political allies plan to rule our burning planet.

Read the story from Al Jazeera by David A. Love - “The Australia fires portend a future of climate apartheid.”

Devastation marches west across Alpine and Upper Murray

Property and stock losses have been “devastating” in Victoria’s already battered north-east and Upper Murray regions, residents said, as they prepared for conditions to worsen dramatically on Saturday.

Fires approach a cattle farm in Cudgewa, near Corryong, earlier this week.

Temperatures are expected to reach up to 44 degrees, with dry conditions and gusty winds combining to create a horror recipe for firefighters and local residents as the fire front marches west.

There were early reports of properties razed in the Cudgewa and Corryong areas on Friday, as more people evacuated to Albury-Wodonga and beyond.

Read the story from The Age - “Devastation marches west across Alpine and Upper Murray.”

Cape York property with tree-clearing plans given part of $4m reef funding

A property in Queensland with one of the biggest tree-clearing proposals in Australia, and which is specifically identified by experts as a risk to Great Barrier Reef water quality, is one of the beneficiaries of a $4m federal government reef water quality program.

The east coast of Cape York peninsula, where coastal waters are
 protected as part of Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Site. 

Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Andrew Picone said that it showed the federal government “isn’t taking its reef commitments seriously” since the proposed clearing would exacerbate the very problem the funding is meant to mitigate.

“At face value it seems inappropriate that we’re spending money on water quality improvement measures on a property where the landholder is wanting to clear 30,000 hectares in a reef catchment,” Picone said.

Read Michael Slezak’s story from The Guardian - “Cape York property with tree-clearing plans given part of $4m reef funding.”

Driest start to winter on record has farmers worried, weather bureau forecasts no reprieve to dry spell

Drier weather may have made for a pleasant start to winter across southern Australia, but for grain growers, like South Australian Jordan Wilksch, it has been a source of much frustration.

Most areas of Victoria will need to see decent
 rainfall within the week or farmers will lose crops.

Mr Wilksch has never seen his crops looking so dry at this time of year.

Since March, it has rained just 15 times at his property on South Australia's lower Eyre Peninsula, resulting in a measly 22 millimetres of rain.

"Things have never really got wet," Mr Wilksch said.

"As soon as June runs out we will have set a new record low, the driest in 100 years."

Read the ABC Rural story - “Driest start to winter on record has farmers worried, weather bureau forecasts no reprieve to dry spell.”

Queensland triples its land clearing - leaked figures

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eaked figures obtained by the ABC show land clearing in Queensland last year was around 278,000 hectares — triple what it was in 2009.

The scale of the clearing is of a size larger than the ACT with one property alone permitted to clear 600 square kilometres.

Martin Taylor for conservation group WWF described the increase as "meteoric and extremely alarming".

Read the ABC story - “Land clearing soars in Queensland, leaked figures show”.

Denial could lead to massive and catastrophic recession

D

enial of climate change could lead to a massive catastrophic recession in Florida.

In discussing the U.S. state, ClimateProgress reports that there is at least $1.4 trillion in property within 660 feet of the U.S. coast.

Florida continues to deny the very existence of climate change and yet astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us that, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

ClimateProgress reports: “And what science told us in the last 12 months about likely sea level rise has been shocking. It’s the kind of news that should have stopped coastal development cold.”

The story - “Florida’s Climate Denial Could Cause Catastrophic Recession” – says, “A January study found that global sea level-rise since 1990 has been speeding up even faster than we knew.”