It appears Australia’s trapped in a climate spin. After all, for several decades now, this arid, prosperous country of 25 million people supported its country by selling coal to various parts of the world. And, with the East Asian economies growing, Australia is more than willing to help them maintain their lifestyle (and lights).
While Australia was helping Asia with its needs – food, minerals and fiber – it was also helping itself, but now the same things that once helped it is now bringing on its destruction. The fossil fuels the country uses is feeding into the climate crisis currently being experienced.
One such disaster currently being experienced is the wildfire crisis. In the last three months alone, southeast Australia has experienced brushfires that have scored millions of acres of land, positioned the air in Melbourne and Sydney and led to the evacuation of more than 4,000 residents and tourists who have ended up in the tiny beach town of Mallacoota.
The Australia fires have gotten international attention before, but it’s the present situation the country is dealing with that has really sparked interest. In fact, in just six months’ time, the Australian fires have burned over two times the area of both the 2019 Amazon and 2018 California fires.
Another issue is the permanent damage to the planet’s ecosystems. In this case, that would be the country’s Great Barrier Reef. In a two-year period from 2016 to 2018, about half of the coral in the reef had died, bleached out due to oceanic heatwave that left them starving for symbiotic animals.
Since it takes tropical coral reef 10 years to bounce off from this kind of die-off, and the pace in which climate change is happening, means the even more heatwaves are certain to hit the reef during the 2020s. The only way to ensure its long-term survival is to stop global warming in the next few decades and taking steps that reverse the damage.
That’s a goal that needs some kind of revolution in the world’s energy system, which means abandoning the use of coal for energy. And, that’s where Australia has a problem. After all, it’s the second-largest exporter of coal, and it’s avoided a recession for nearly 30 years thanks to the sale of it.
While polls show that the majority of Australians are worried about climate change, the government has failed to enact any type of climate policy. In the summer of 2018, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbell actually introduced an energy bill that included a climate policy.
However, current PM Scott Morrison defeated him in an election, saying climate change was only the concern of educated city people and that the policy was actually a threat to the vehicles in Australia. Morrison, who brought a real lump of coal to Parliament a few years back to defend the industry, has attempted to depict the wildfires as a crisis, but a crisis similar to previous ones.
To date, the fires have burned over 1,000 homes and killed nearly 20 firefighters. There have been two times as many fires in New South Wales than any other year in the 21st century. The reality is that climate change has perpetuated the epidemic, and with hotter, drier weather, the problem is only going to worsen.
Another reality? Australia is most at risk for the climate change consequences – one of which being that most of the 21st century has been spent in a drought. Its tropical oceans have become endangered, and rising sea levels are threatening its major cities. In order to reverse the dangers, the country’s men and women must come together and elect leaders who stand with them.
Without some type of effective leadership, Australia will be stuck in this climate downward spiral, using the coal that brings them prosperity financially but diminishes their lifespan.