John Buell

Australia: The Fire This Time

Australia is facing an all-encompassing disaster. Or is it? Even as fires circled much of the island continent and, for a time, left only two roads out of the country’s largest city, Sydney, the nation’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, refused to allocate more funds for volunteer fire fighters or to treat these events as anything more than the usual fires the nation experiences every summer. His refusal, punctuated by a slow return from a Hawaii vacation, is shocking, but it illuminates some lessons we might all learn. Australia could be a preview of not only the more widespread and intense fires we will be forced to endure in the near future but also of the pitfalls in the response to those fires.

As with many aspects of the ongoing planetary emergency a teenage girl shall lead us. As the PM continued to deny any connection between these events and climate. Greta Thunberg commented that if these events did not inspire recognition of a crisis, what would? This of course is just the point. Naomi Klein’s classic “Shock Doctrine” details the ways “natural” disasters often create the grounds for extraordinary political changes, often installation of a whole new class hierarchy. But such disasters don’t come wearing a label on their back. There are some indisputable facts, but many others that are speculative or poorly understood. Our ideology and ethics help constitute a prism through which we construct the narratives with which we understand events of this magnitude.

Morrison views these fiery events through a prism of faith in an extractive capitalism. That faith is so strong as to deny even the indisputable facts. Indeed Morrison would likely treat widespread opposition to extractive capitalism as an emergency. Thus the most sunny land on the planet seeks its salvation through coal. The faith is the neoliberal conviction that its market gains from coal can fund any other resources it needs to fight the fires.

This faith in an ultimately controllable environment may have encountered some challenges that have not received the emphasis they merit. Reporters and photographers repeatedly cited the size and intensity of the fires, but their unpredictability deserves more attention. Consider this piece from a recent Common Dreams news summary:

“A southerly change swept through at 5 p.m., making the fire even more erratic and changing the fire direction. Around this time, NSW [New South Wales] authorities began warning of a bushfire-generated thunderstorm that had formed over Currowan and Tianjara fires in the Shoalhaven area, on the NSW south coast.

“The fire service said this would lead to increasingly dangerous fire conditions. Such storms, known as pyroCB, can produce embers hot enough to spark new fires 30 km from the main fire.”

Those fires would gain strength from the multiple feedback loops at the heart of the fire. It marched towards the Mount Piper power plant and Springvale coal mine, which would take months to extinguish. The irony of the coal-fired power station being destroyed by a bushfire that was partially the product of a drier climate is summed up as “the ultimate climate change feedback loop.” In such a context merely waiting for where the fire would next turn was itself a source of grave anxiety.

There is a class dimension to this story as well. Perhaps the most affluent are the ones that are most confident in the manipulability of the natural environment. They can escape the most dangerous and severe consequences. Common Dreams again:

While his country was on fire, right-wing climate-denying Prime Minister Morrison was on vacation in Hawaii. Morrison returned to Australia on Dec. 21 after two firefighters died fighting one of three huge blazes near Sydney.”

Or can the wealthy always escape? I am inclined to think that, in addition to the benefits and privileges wealth bestows, it also conveys an exaggerated faith in one’s ability to avoid all the dangers faced by ordinary citizens. Common Dreams: “One Twitter user posted a picture showing from above the blazes around Sydney as Morrison was arriving in the city, reportedly after circling for an hour due to runway closures.”

Next time Morrison may not be able to land. These fires are obviously very dangerous and governments must do all in their power to address the short- and long-term causes. But equally important and closely related is attention to the political and social order that starts and magnifies these megablazes.

John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His books include “Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Email Jbuell@acadia.net.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2020

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