This tragic bushfire crisis is our Pearl Harbor moment

Bushfire smoke blankets Melbourne’s CBD and suburbs, as seen from the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel. Picture: David Caird

As large parts of Australia burn and smoke chokes our major ­cities, for many Australians the bushfire crisis is becoming our Pearl Harbor moment.

The 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor marked the moment American citizens stopped seeing World War II as a distant threat and it became clear that not being involved was not enough to keep Americans safe. It hit home that, whether they previously believed it or not, the US was facing an existential threat that was coming for them.

Climate change is not a war ­between civilisations but it is a war for civilisation. However, for the past two decades, successive Australian governments and most of the public have regarded climate change as an abstract and lower-order priority.

The devastation of lives, communities, animals and our economy caused by the climate-driven fires have now shown that climate change threatens our security and way of life. Summer in Australia will never be the same again.

The response to Pearl Harbor was a supermajority of support for the US to commit fully to the war effort.

It triggered war fever among the population. It became politically impossible for the government to remain on the sidelines.

The whole US economy and society were mobilised towards the war effort. An entrepreneurial, can-do attitude permeated the country. Targets for the production of war materiel were set and exceeded.

From a standing start, by 1945 the US had built more than 300,000 aircraft, more than Germany and Japan combined.

Today in Australia, already many local councils, and the ACT government, have understood the threat we face and declared a climate emergency. Scott Morrison says his government has always accepted the link between climate change and extreme weather.

If we accept that something is an extreme threat then we need to do what it takes to protect ourselves from it.

Where Pearl Harbor led to war fever among the American population, today in Australia these fires are leading to climate mobilisation fever.

A recent Australia Institute poll shows that two-thirds of Australians agree the nation is facing a climate emergency and should take emergency action, including most Coalition voters. Sixty-three per cent agree the government should mobilise all of ­society to tackle climate change.

At a high level, the solution to climate change is straightforward. The main step is to electrify everything and power it all with renew­ables.

Happily, we are now in a technol­ogical position where renewables are significantly cheaper than the alternative. This fact, combined with Australia’s world-leading solar and wind resources, means a zero-emissions economy will not only address climate change but also will lead to Australia being more prosperous and abundant than today.

So what does a mobilisation on climate look like?

Planning is the key to success. We would put in place 10-year plans to decarbonise each sector of the economy. A decade is short enough to plan for yet a timeframe in which humans have shown they can accomplish enormously ambitious plans. It took less than 10 years for the US to go from never having put a satellite into space to sending men to the moon and back.

Luckily, we have a headstart. People such as Ross Garnaut and groups such as Beyond Zero Emissions have done the preliminary work to put together sectoral plans to reduce emissions and shown a vision of Australia as the first renewable energy superpower. An abundance of cheap, clean energy will mean Australia can become the world’s natural home for energy-intensive industry, unleashing a wave of well-paid jobs.

A mobilisation on climate would future-proof Australia’s economy and align it with the macro direction of the world’s economy. Being the world’s largest coal and liquefied natural gas exporter is a huge economic risk when we know those technologies are now obsolete. No government would be proud of being the largest typewriter exporter once personal computers were invented.

Fortunately, our mining industry stands on the brink of a multi-decade boom to supply the minerals required to build the batteries, panels, turbines and all the other technology required for the economic transition. It makes enormous business sense for them to shake off fossil fuels and be supportive of this transformation.

A whole-of-economy climate mobilisation is the Australian project for the 2020s.

Nothing brings society together like a common challenge. Australians have the imperative, the spirit and the resources to create a cleaner, more prosperous and more unified country.

It is time for our governments to get on board.

Eytan Lenko is a technology entrepreneur and chairman of Beyond Zero Emissions, a climate solutions think tank.