Comment: Fires rage and burn while Sydney, oblivious, parties on | emfarrelly
We’d long planned New Year’s Eve at our tiny off-grid farmlet. It should have been fun. Not fireworks, exactly, but fun. Yet it started spooky and got spookier. At noon, NYE, I was underground in the National Library, a sanctuary of cool against the crackling heat outside. But my attention was on the beach, not lounging in the shade after a dip but huddling with the thousands, from Mallacoota to Batemans, who cowered beneath angry, flame-blistered skies.
They’ll laugh and dance in the streets, and thrill to the sheer visceral roar as the colours bloom in the sky, sharing the easy euphoria. It seemed obscene. I couldn’t believe they’d really do it.” while, all around, people are living with the dead earth, starved animals, empty paddocks and inflamed skies of climate apocalypse seems like misplaced defiance. It’s bad manners, bad messaging and bad juju..
The water wasn’t still running. No one expected that. But I had to count what holes remained, should the spring dry up. Locals say that’s never happened. Now it seems almost inevitable. Same with our never-fail creek, mostly now a mass of dead river weed. Even so, we’re lucky. For these sad remnants of grass and water are the last in the valley. And although, ironically, the smoke impedes our solar, we’re not dying – yet.
The continent-wide dearth of rain is due to the unusually pronounced temperature difference between the African west Indian Ocean and the Australian east; the Indian Ocean Dipole. Supercharged by global warming, this has brought flooding to eastern Africa and combustible drought to Australia. And every piece of coal we sell makes it worse.
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