Australia burning
Authors: Mat Hope
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2020)

Wildfires have been burning across Australia for months, putting the prospect of long-term damage driven by changing climatic conditions into sharp focus. The latest round of annual UN climate talks in Madrid last December, the longest talks in history, ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Despite unprecedented public attention, many issues were kicked down the road to next year's meeting in Glasgow. The outcome was described by one participant as profoundly distressing”. Many blamed a group of countries that formed a coalition of the unwilling, comprising oil-state Saudi Arabia, Jair Bolsonaro's explicitly anti-environmental Brazilian delegation, and Australia. The latter's association with the talks' traditional obstructionists was particularly jarring, because while Australia's leaders were refusing to increase their climate ambition on the global stage, back home, large swathes of their country were on fire. The blazes have serious implications for the country's major carbon stores, which in turn makes mitigating climate change more difficult, and could have a serious impact on human health. The fires started in autumn, and are continuing to burn as of mid-January. Hundreds of fires have been raging simultaneously, with blazes in every state, stretching Australia's largely volunteer firefighters to the limit. New South Wales has been hardest hit, where 1588 homes have reportedly been destroyed and more than 650 damaged. One fire, at Gospers Mountain, became Australia's largest ever forest fire. In early December, Sydney recorded air pollution that was 11 times the hazardous level due to smoke from the fires. There are reportedly more than 2000 firefighters currently working in New South Wales. And firefighters from across the world offered to give up their Christmas holidays to come and aid the effort, with support from the US, Canada, and New Zealand on the way. The fires have drawn the eyes of the world. Australian actor Russell Crowe used his winner's speech at the Golden Globes to criticise the government's approach and urge stronger action on climate change, telling the millions watching via videolink: “Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based.” The public and celebrities have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the response, in part thanks to such awareness-raising efforts. Companies have also responded, with The National Australia Bank donating AUS$5 million towards the recovery effort, and supermarket chain Coles giving AUS$4 million. Not all the donations have been welcomed, however, with offerings from major emitters such as mining company BHP and oil company Chevron met with scepticism. One reason these donations haven't been wholly welcomed is that many see those companies as being in cahoots with a government that has put short-term profit over environmental protection. The government's neglect now looks likely to have a major long-term impact on the country's carbon stores. In total, more than 7·3 million hectares have burned across Australia's six states to date. More than 800 million animals have been put at risk in New South Wales alone, Chris Dickman, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, estimates. And the fires have already released carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to nearly half of Australia's annual emissions, according to NASA. Worryingly, the nature of these fires means it could take Australia's carbon stores hundreds of years to recover, potentially exacerbating the conditions that made the fires so bad in the first place. As Pep Canadell, chief executive of the Global Carbon Project, and a researcher at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) explains: “2019 was the hottest and driest year ever recorded in Australia. In both cases, it is part of a long trend of warmer temperatures and more variable rainfall with more big wet years and more very dry years. Clearly, this creates more opportunities for catastrophic weather conditions that will result in the continuation of increased fire activity.” While the fires were not record-breaking in terms of their overall scale, “what is unprecedented is the amount of burned hectares of temperate forests of Australia, which are a relic from once very extensive forests before land clearing in Australia began 200 years ago”, he adds. The burning of these forests is concerning because, “these are not grass and savanna fires from which all the carbon that is lost will be recovered in 1 or 2 years in new plant growth and soils”, Canadell says. It takes much longer for the carbon that has been released from the burned temperate forests to be recovered – decades to hundreds of years, he estimates. Helping ecosytems recover isn't enough, Canadell argues, if the government is serious about preventing fires of this sort and scale again. Instead, it needs to think long-term, and focus on addressing “the rapidly changing climate conditions which are producing longer and more intense fire weather”, he says. While some of the most striking images have been of Australia's scorching forests and injured koalas, the fires are also having an immediate impact on human health. “The length and density of smoke exposure is a new and possibly fatal health risk that many people within our community have not previously had to face”, Dr Tony Bartone, the president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), said in a statement in early January. “With denser smoke haze and longer periods that people endure smoke inhalation, there is a much higher risk that previously healthy people will face developing serious illness”, he said. People with existing respiratory diseases are at particular risk, with a recent study showing that bushfire smoke could be toxic to asthma sufferers. In some cases, this has required families separating as sufferers seek refuge in areas unaffected by the fires. Over the past 2 months, Asthma Australia has issued multiple notices recommending people stay indoors or find “clean air shelters”. Asthma Australia's CEO, Michele Goldman, is clear on the issue, saying in a statement that “even though smoke is penetrating inside homes and buildings, being inside is the safest option”, though this isn't foolproof, as it largely depends on the quality of the building. “Leaving town may be the best option for some people”, she adds. But it's not just asthma sufferers who are likely to feel the effects from the fires. Chris Moy, chair of the AMA's ethics and medico-legal committee, told one newspaper that “there are people who are going to probably die from these conditions”—a statement backed up by research. There is also some evidence that worsening air pollution is linked to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, conditions that can be exacerbated by fires related to dry conditions driven by climate change, or from polluting emissions that drive climate change. The AMA is clear that climate change will present serious health challenges in the future. In September, 2019, the AMA joined other medical associations around the world in declaring a climate change and health emergency. It pointed to a wide variety of potential health impacts including higher mortality and morbidity from heat stress, increases in injury and mortality from severe weather events, increases in the transmission of vector-borne diseases, worsening food insecurity resulting from declines in agricultural outputs, and higher incidences of mental ill-health. “There is no doubt that climate change is a health emergency”, Bartone says. Given such warnings, Australians are increasingly concerned that their politicians are not taking the issue seriously enough. And that could ultimately be reflected in the polls. Tom Swann, a senior researcher at independent think-tank The Australia Institute, argues that while the blazes “have already had a profound impact on Australian politics,” it is “too soon to tell” if “public pressure will force a change in climate policy”. “Many Australians see these fires as a climate disaster and are afraid about how much worse it could get as the world heats. But even as catastrophic fires rage across the country, the ‘business as usual’ denial and obstruction from some corners carries on.” Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been widely criticised for his response to the fires: first failing to cut short a Hawaiian holiday to come home to address the disaster, and then refusing to discuss his country's position on climate change in relation to the fires. His approval ratings subsequently took a nosedive. A number of politicians have also resolutely refused to accept the fires were related to climate change, despite many scientists saying they “undeniably” are. Australia's 2019 election was billed by many as “the climate election”. But Morrison's conservative coalition still won, against the odds, and despite the governing party's refusal to commit to greater climate action. This season's fires may ultimately tip the electoral arithmetic against him, forcing the administration to confront climate change and the crises it brings at home and abroad.