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https://theconversation.com/writing-from-the-edge-of-catastrophe-two-new-books-clarify-whats-at-stake-if-we-fail-to-mitigate-climate-change-193846>
"
Review: Fire: A Message from the Edge of Climate Catastrophe – Margi
Prideaux (Stormbird); Saving the Reef – Rohan Lloyd (University of Queensland
Press).
The Australian Black Summer fires of 2019-2020 were unspeakably grim.
Twenty-four million hectares were burnt, 33 people died, and over a billion
animals perished.
In
Fire: A Message from the Edge of Climate Catastrophe, Margi Prideaux tells
us that on Kangaroo Island, which lies off the Australian mainland, just
south-west of Adelaide, 211,500 hectares were burnt, two human lives were lost
– a fire-fighting father and son – and 60,000 farm animals died.
But so much more was lost as the Kangaroo Island community sought to save
itself from the monster fire that was started by a lightning strike, burst into
two pyrocumulonimbus clouds, and devoured everything before it at lethal,
unstoppable speed.
It will take years before the toll on the island’s biodiversity is fully
understood, not least because these fires burned “hotter, deeper and were far
more extreme” than its landscape has adapted to.
To add to this, Australia has recently suffered from unprecedented, ravaging
rain and flood events. Warnings abound that climate change – driven by the
burning of coal, gas and oil – is consigning Australia to an era of climate
disasters.
Australia’s national science agency reports that Australia will be hotter and
drier, with fewer but more intense tropical cyclones. Heavy rainfall and floods
will continue. Intense, longer-lasting marine heatwaves are expected, as is
more frequent and severe bleaching of coral reefs.
These are not natural disasters. They are unnatural. And Australian governments
are not prepared. They have, as Professor Rosemary Lyster has argued, “a
terrible track record of policies for disaster prevention, preparedness and
response”.
We must be better prepared, Lyster argues. Yet if the focus shifts from
preventing disaster to simply responding better, we will lull the community
into a false sense of the inevitability of loss, and we will let governments
off the hook."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
