Australia Is Beta Test For Developed World Collapse; Hardly A Word On Climate As Election Wraps Up
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Farmers were among the crowd at the organic grocery. Jo Wearing, 76, said most of her pastures had been pulverized by the flood. She was frustrated the Labor candidate, Patrick Deegan, wasn’t talking more about climate change. Deegan denied shying away from the subject. “The Labor party really is the sensible center when it comes to climate change,” he said. When a reporter for The Post pointed out his website made no mention of climate change, Deegan said it was an inadvertent omission. Two weeks later, it remained unchanged. The incumbent, National Party member Kevin Hogan, who won handily in 2019, did not respond to a request for comment.
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Two months later, Lismore was a ghost town. In many neighborhoods, every house had been gutted. Yards remained piled high with debris. The ground was littered with mud-stained objects: a toothbrush, board games, a “Conan: The Avenger” comic book. Almost everyone had a story like Mandeno’s. The flood seemed like climate change in action. “When you’ve had a flood as big as this one, I don’t know how you could not think it was climate change,” said Lisa Cameron, 49, outside her flood-stricken house. It now bore a Luke poster. But others were unsure. Tony Parfitt watched the water rise around his bed-bound wife and feared she would drown in front of him. It was only after his neighbor swam over that they were able to lift her out of harm’s way. They were eventually rescued through the living room window by good Samaritans with a boat. Several of their dogs drowned.
Parfitt didn’t think climate change played a role in the flood. But the Liberal voter still planned to punish the party on Election Day. “They haven’t done much for the flood people, have they?” he said. The government had offered each affected homeowner around $2,000. But Parfitt, who couldn’t afford flood insurance, estimated the damage was at least $70,000. His wife kept having nightmares of rising waters. “We’re all still traumatized,” he said.
Lismore’s mayor, Steve Krieg, urged the ANZAC Day crowd to emulate the resilience of the war generations and rebuild. Some have suggested the town be moved to higher ground but Krieg, whose own home and coffee shops flooded, scoffed. “We can’t throw in the towel after one natural disaster,” he told The Post. But it wasn’t one disaster. A month after the flood, the town was inundated again. That made three major floods in five years. It’s difficult to determine how climate change impacts a particular event, but scientists say the trend is clear: global warming means more frequent and intense natural disasters. That trend was evident downtown, where a sign on a building showed the previous flood record, set in 1974. Now a new line had been added with spray paint — seven feet higher.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/17/australia-election-climate-change/
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