Andrew Bolt: We can sit out a couple of dry years, but a longer drought could spell massive problems, especially for Melbourne

It's time our complacent governments organise the fuel reduction burns that we’ve been told after every fire disaster could have saved towns and lives.

Global warming panic has turned Australians into helpless ninnies, just waiting for another firestorm or, worse, for Australia’s biggest city to run short of water.

The wonderful rains of the past three years have suddenly dried up and the media is once more full of horror stories about “catastrophic” fire conditions caused by you-know-what.

Cue the hand-flapping. On the ABC on Wednesday, for instance, an ABC reporter listed what she thought was an unprecedented list of climate disasters, including fire, and asked a climate crusader how we could save ourselves.

His advice, and I kid you not: Australians should be “making sure your superannuation funds are ethical and, you know, a green focus”.

The media is once more full of horror stories about ‘catastrophic’ fire conditions. Picture: Upper Sturt CFS

Wow, that ought to do it. Make gestures that won’t change the climate but could slash your retirement payout.

I have a better idea. Get our complacent governments to organise the fuel reduction burns that we’ve been told after every fire disaster could have saved towns and lives.

It’s like Australia has never before had wet years followed by dry, with all the grass and leaves that built up in the good years now turned into fuel.

Just look. New South Wales has burned off just 24 per cent of the 280,000 hectares its Rural Fire Service says needs burning.

Victoria’s government claims it’s meeting its statewide targets, but its latest Joint Fuel Management Report admits the fire-prone Latrobe region, in southwest Gippsland, for instance, still has a “residual risk” of 84 per cent, when it should be 71.

I know, firefighters say it was too wet for too long to do much burning off. Besides, you can’t get many volunteers to turn up outside the weekends.

Victoria’s government claims it’s meeting its statewide targets on burn offs. Picture: Alex Coppel.

But if our governments spent as much on burning off as they do on destroying coal-fired power stations, we’d be as right as, well, rain.

No, much easier for your pollie to wail about global warming, and make pointless sacrifices to the earth gods. That way they can dodge the blame when everything turns to ashes, just as they dodged the blame for allowing new housing estates to be built in flood plains.

Oh, they flooded? Global warming!

Why do so many journalists let them get away with this fraud, when even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits we can’t blame global warming for dry spells that turn our bush into firestorm fuel?

Its latest conclusion: “There is low confidence in the emergence of drought frequency in observations, for any type of drought, in all regions.”

It is much easier for your pollie to wail about global warming, and make pointless sacrifices to the earth gods.

In fact, Australia has actually had more rain over the century, as has NSW. But now we’ve got a double whammy that’s heating Australia and drying the rains: an El Nino in the Pacific Ocean and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole.

But another bad fire season might not be our biggest worry, especially if you live in Melbourne, now our biggest city.

Dam levels for our capital cities are already starting to fall to below where they were last year, which isn’t a problem yet because of the recent rains that filled many dams to overflowing.

So we can sit out a couple of dry years, but a longer drought could spell massive problems, especially for Melbourne.

In 2009, the city got a shock when its dam levels fell to just 29 per cent full, forcing the government to ban people watering their gardens.

CFA firefighters prepare a pump at a dam in Gembrook. Picture: AAP

Since then, Melbourne has added another 900,000 people, and Victoria is expected to add 3.5 million more by 2051 under our reckless immigration policy.

Where’s the water for all those people? Victoria hasn’t built a new dam for drinking water since 1984, when Melbourne had 2 million fewer people. Dams, you see, are now a sin against nature.

True, Victoria instead built an expensive desalination plant to turn sea water into drinking water by using massive amounts of electricity.

But, hello. Electricity? Isn’t Victoria – more than any other state – running out of exactly that, with the Australian Energy Market Operator warning of blackouts as early as this summer?

What’s more, the desal plant can supply just a third of the water Melbourne needs now, and even less of what needs in a decade.

See the problem? But when the dams run low again, just wait for some other clown to do the old Tim Flannery routine and blame global warming, not our politicians.

Cry for Australia, a land filled with people led by earth-worshipping religious zealots, when what we really need is firefighters and dam-builders. Less voodoo and more can-do.