- Banned
- #9,076
In the summer of 1974-1975 (southern hemisphere), Australia suffered its worst recorded bushfire, when 15% of Australia's land mass suffered "extensive fire damage". Fires that summer burnt an estimated 117 million hectares (290 million acres; 1,170,000 square kilometres; 450,000 square miles).
Alarmism and exaggeration don’t help anyone. Did you know that tourists don’t want to come here because they were told the whole of Australia was burnt to a crisp? Bushfires are part of this land and always have been. We should be wiser now in how we deal with them.
By 2040, those conditions – temperatures 1.5C above normal, contributing to the worst bushfire season the east coast has ever seen – will be average. By 2060, on current projections, it would be considered “exceptionally cool”.
The 2019-20 fire season, dubbed “black summer”, will become the norm.
It’s a grim future that has turned Greg Mullins, the longest-serving fire commissioner in Australia, into a climate campaigner.
In 50 years of firefighting I had never seen fires like I did last summer. Australia must take climate change seriously | Greg Mullins
“It’s gonna be a very, very dangerous place to live – not Australia, planet Earth,” Mullins says. “I’m deeply worried about my grandsons and what they’re inheriting from us.”
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