The confluence of abnormally dry conditions across NSW, coupled with the prospect of windy conditions and hot, dry weather led to last week’s declaration of the prospect of ‘catastrophic’ bushfire conditions in NSW.

The warnings from State Rural Fire Service, backed by the government, unfortunately proved to be both accurate and timely.

Only extensive pre-emergency planning and actions, with heroic efforts by fire fighters, water bombers and other emergency services limited the extent of losses to lives and property in many areas of eastern NSW,

And this all took place before the onset of likely bleaker conditions in the coming summer months.

Across NSW rural areas communities already wearied by the consequences of harsh and persistent drought face a raft of climatic and economic uncertainties.

Catastrophic fire conditions represent a last straw for many rural producers.

For those in coastal areas, the extent of the ‘dry’ and its effect on otherwise normally wet, green and lush environments, including rain forest, has generated shock and despair.

Thick, fuel-rich tinder dry vegetation has burned with the fury of blast furnaces, wiping out whole communities of native plants and animals.

The extensive media coverage of the vast fires, including the threats to the edges of metropolitan areas, has not only awakened city dwellers to the scale of the fires and their impacts but aroused new rounds of debate and blame-laying among politicians and others.

Ordinary people are faced with the prospect of assessing what may be factual analysis and credible policy responses and what amounts to entrenched ideological responses with speculative and fanciful underpinnings.

The stance that ‘droughts in Australia are simply a regularly repeating feature of our climate’ stands against the views of respected Australian and international researchers who worry that the continuing rise of human-induced emission of greenhouse gases is providing an additional factor to the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere and the apparent changes to climate now being experienced from pole to pole. Thus, the climate debates continue in this country.

The problem is that, even if Australia urgently goes it alone and stops using coal for power generation, 78 countries around the world rely on coal for some or all of their power generation.

Only Belgium gets by without coal. China and India have hundreds of coal-fired power stations, but both countries also use nuclear, wind and hydro generation sources.

The bulk of France’s electricity generation, more than 72 percent, comes from nuclear power.

China is the world’s largest coal consumer, drawing more than 70 percent of its electricity from coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and is reportedly building or planning more than 300 coal fired plants in countries including Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines.
Australia currently depends on 21 coal-fired power stations for base-load power generation – more than 70 per cent, in fact.

Mitigating, ending or even reversing current climate trends will not be an overnight process, even in the unlikely event that the whole world decides to co-operate.

This means that we will have to come to terms with a changing climate over the decades ahead.

Responsible climate policies will not simply be the ending of the use of coal.

Approaches to agriculture, environmental management (including fire management), water, health, industry – and even lifestyle – may have to change or be subject to substantial legislated modification.

We should demand that our political class deals with such matters on the basis of facts and science, not political thought bubbles and ‘flat-earth’ science.

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