Clear thinking cuts through bushfire blame game

Chris Kenny’s first article for the year has covered most of the pros and cons of dealing with droughts, very hot summers and how people and governments must try to do better in the future to minimise the tragedies we have experienced (“Out of the bushfires and into the land management plans”, 18/1). One life is one too many to lose, but there have been worse fire disasters in the past. We all remember previous bushfire seasons.

Political accusations are unwelcome. The blame game being played out against Scott Morrison every day is unfair and absurd. The premiers have the basic responsibility and power to organise the logistics of fighting the fires, but appear to have escaped the opprobrium for the time being. There are no winners in this present disaster, certainly not for human and animal lives lost.

Lesley Beckhouse, Queanbeyan, NSW

Chris Kenny’s clear thinking presents a stark contrast to the hysteria being generated after the bushfires. Perhaps a little too controversial for Kenny at this time of muddled thinking is the fact that we still don’t know what is causing the moderate temperature rises over the past century. There are scientists who express doubt about rising CO2 levels being the key element in global warming.

Canadian physicist William van Wijngaarden points out that water vapour is a greenhouse gas that occurs in much higher proportions than CO2 and its influence is not well understood.

Judith Curry says that the causes of climate change are more complex than just the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere. Curry contends that the climate is a complex chaotic system influenced by many factors including greenhouse gases, the atmosphere, oceans and the sun and is not able to be controlled by human beings.

Denzil Bourne, Jerrabomberra, NSW

Chris Kenny is right to assert that some bushfires in Australia’s past have caused more deaths than those of this summer. But not in their geographical spread. It is their reach across five states that has caught the world’s attention.

Kenny blames news hysteria on leftist ideologues and journalists who want to pay Scott Morrison back for winning the last election. If he talked to farmers, small business owners and residents on the NSW south coast, he would get a different picture. Widespread public anger is directed at a government that has done too little, too late. It is generated not by hysterical news reports, but reality.

Kenny would also see that very few people are fooled by the government’s claim that Australia’s carbon emissions are low compared to those of other countries. Our per capital emissions are among the world’s highest, and become among the highest in absolute terms when our coal exports are factored in.

Richard Broinowski, Paddington, NSW

Chris Kenny said it correctly: what matters is how to prepare our landscapes and properties to resist and survive inevitable blazes in the worst conditions. So, in these areas we need better building design regulations including the need for water storage, fire safety bunkers with underground water supplies connected and landscape design that ensures we have sufficient area around the infrastructure to retard the fire front with its intense radiant heat. The Australian Insurance Council and local governments are in the best position to enforce this. We must learn how to deal with bushfires better. But that will be impossible if we do not have the correct building design and landscape design to assist.

Brian D. Teakle, Lockleys, SA

While Chris Kenny is correct to remind us that the loss of human life in fires over previous decades was much greater, it is the total area the fires have devastated in recent months that has shocked us all. These fires have burned about 10 million hectares — 20 times the area of the Black Saturday fires of 2009.

This is what justifies the use of “unprecedented” as a descriptor for these fires and the need for a more concerted action to do more to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

And while Kenny is also correct to remind us that reducing Australia’s emissions will have minimal effect globally, it is worth considering that if every country that contributes less than 2 per cent of emissions took a similar unambitious position, then one-third of all global emissions reductions would be sacrificed.

Maree Nutt, Newport, NSW