Climate change grandstanding

“Look over there” is a standard ploy from a minister whose portfolio is in crisis and a distraction is needed. In a speech on Tuesday, NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean praised “the incredibly brave men and women out there on the frontline at the moment fighting these horrific bushfires” and in the very next breath declared: “These bushfires have been caused by extreme weather events — high temperatures, the worst drought in living memory — the exact type of events scientists have been warning us about for decades that would be caused by climate change.” This may be normal discourse for a Greens activist this fire season, but not a ranking member of the Berejiklian government. Mr Kean is a Liberal from Sydney’s bush-fringed north shore and once a proud torchbearer for TV enviro-evangelist Malcolm Turnbull.

Linking climate change to the bushfires, Mr Kean said: “This is not normal and doing nothing is not a solution.” Yet we could close down all our industries, get to zero emissions, and make not a jot of difference to global warming. Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan called out Mr Kean’s diversion for what it was. “Too often state governments are using the bogeyman of ‘climate change’ to distract from their shortcomings in managing our land,” Senator Canavan said. As the minister responsible for NSW parks and reserves, Mr Kean should get cracking on doing things that could actually reduce the ferocity of bushfires, such as clearing the amount of forest fuel. For Greens and many councils, hazard reduction is anathema, but as we have recently reported the lack of controlled burning has been a contributor to the tinderbox. As has the lack of rain. More sensibly, NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey points out there have been extreme weather events in Australia for centuries. “Everyone on the ground knows that this is simply caused by a lack of rain,” she told Sky News on Wednesday. Severe drought has been the primary driver of this season’s fires.

Bushfires are endemic to our land. Several of the nation’s deadliest conflagrations have occurred in years of below-average temperatures. In Victoria in 1926, 60 people died, while in 1939 there were 71 deaths and 650 homes lost. In 1967 in Tasmania, 62 people died and almost 1300 homes were lost.

What is different now is that climate change is being blamed, even by people who should know better. Like Mr Kean, they are playing political parlour games and inevitably taking the focus away from victims and people risking their lives to fight bushfires. Whatever the case with the science, we need to take practical steps to reduce the risk of bushfires, including fuel load reduction. With no relief for drought-ravaged regions over the summer — Bureau of Meteorology officials told a meeting of state and federal ministers on Tuesday there would be no significant rain until at least April — fire hazards will become only worse.