Official Report Admits Oz 19-20 Fires Driven By Warming Climate; Area Burned 2X Size Of Florida
A royal commission into Australia’s 2019-20 bushfires—and how the nation responds to natural disasters in general—issued its final report on Friday, presenting a dire warning of a future shaped by global warming and describing the country’s disaster outlook as “alarming”.
The commission made a total of 80 recommendations, including new legislation to allow the prime minister to declare a national state of emergency. And while none of these recommendations explicitly outline ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change, the report broadly acknowledged that global warming will play a central role in future disasters.
In the report’s foreword, the commissioners point out that their inquiry required them to “look to the future. A future where such events will, regrettably, be more frequent and more severe.
“Consecutive and compounding natural disasters will place increasing stress on existing emergency management arrangements,” they warned. “As the events of the 2019-2020 bushfire season show, what was unprecedented is now our future.”
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/3annpn/australia-2020-fires-climate-change-driving-factor
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Although fires are an annual occurrence on the continent, last season’s apocalyptic blazes, known as the “Black Summer” fires, burned up to 83 million acres, an area twice the size of Florida. The report’s findings come as fires rage on America’s West Coast. More than 90,000 people were urged this week to flee their California homes as Santa Ana winds fueled fires. Already, it has been a record-breaking fire season in the U.S., with wildfires tearing across parts of California, Oregon and Washington.
Australia’s last fire season was one of the worst on record, too. More than 30 people died in the blazes, including at least nine firefighters. More than 400 people may have been killed by smoke pollution from the fires, according to a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia. More than 3,000 homes and many other buildings were destroyed, and one researcher, in a widely shared figure, projected that as many as 480 million animals have been killed or would die in the state of New South Wales—where Sydney is located—alone.
The authors did not urge specific action to reduce Australia’s green house gas emissions—most of the report’s 80 recommendations revolved around practical ways to improve Australia’s natural disaster response. Mullins, who is also a councillor at the non-profit Climate Council, says the report makes a stronger statement on climate change than he expected. “It calls for mitigation across all sectors,” says Mullins. “I take that as code for the government must be serious with your policies on climate change.”
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https://time.com/5904762/australia-bushfires-climate-change-report/
