Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us

(Reposted from Australia Group)

"As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne with its exquisite rainforest and alpine gardens. Fire laps at the border of the Walls of Jerusalem national park with its labyrinthine landscapes of tarns and iconic stands of ancient pencil pine and its beautiful alpine landscape, ecosystems described by their most eminent scholar, the ecologist Prof Jamie Kirkpatrick, as “like the vision of a Japanese garden made more complex, and developed in paradise, in amongst this gothic scenery”.

(snip)

"Today Tasmania is burning. Its fires are so large that a firefighting team was reportedly called out in New Zealand to investigate a heavy smoke haze that turned out to have drifted across 2,500km of ocean from the Tasmanian fires. Firefighters are confronted with 1,629km of fire front, with fires having consumed 190,000 hectares, or 3% of Tasmania’s land, with authorities warning there is no sign of the fires abating for several weeks, and the potential for catastrophic consequences still a distinct possibility.

To date, Tasmania has had the extraordinary luck this summer to not have had the gale-force winds that characterised the tragic 1967 fires, in which 62 people perished within a few hours. But luck is only that, and one day soon, this summer or next, or the one after, that fatal day will dawn, and the catastrophe that will result will dwarf all previous Tasmanian fires in its fatal tragedy because everything else has changed, and all for the worse.

The Tasmanian fires have attracted little national media attention because there has been as yet, thankfully, no loss of life and only a handful of homes burnt. And yet these fires signal a terrifying new reality, as disturbing and ultimately almost certainly as tragic as the coral reef bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/05/tasmania-is-burning-the-climate-disaster-future-has-arrived-while-those-in-power-laugh-at-us

Please read this excellent article by Richard Flanagan, and think about what our leaders worldwide are really doing about climate change. That's right - sweet FA.

We are cursed, mainly through the efforts of Rupert Murdoch and a dominant right-wing media, with a ruling party concerned only with grabbing all the cash they can before they get thrown out of power, and with a dim-witted "leader" who is clueless and gutless.

The express train is charging down the track with its whistle blowing, but they think if they don't look at it, it won't hit them. I think there are few countries where this attitude doesn't prevail.

Polling all over Australia shows that amongst a clear majority of voters, climate change is one of the biggest things on their minds. They're worried, and crying out for action, but our rulers have their minds and their ears closed.

Three months until we can vote this mob out, although politics being what it is, I'm not sure we can really count on a new Labor government to act on climate change either. Something happens when parties get voted into power - their prime concern is just to hang on as long as they can.

Makes you wish for some kind of universal revolution. But instead, I fear we'll all go out with a whimper, and sooner than we like to think.