Climate Disaster..?

I saw a headline, possibly on social media I think, proclaiming the world needs to prepare now for climate refugees. Seriously? Well apparently so. I think the UN was mentioned somewhere in the headline too, but to be honest, I didn’t read the article, however I do believe it was prompted by the bushfire emergency that has ripped through much of Australia this summer.

But to have climate refugees, there has to be a climate emergency, and that’s not what happened here in Australia. Aside from those few fires ignited by lightning strikes, the rest of them (around 80 percent) were deliberately lit. So it wasn’t a climate disaster at all, it was an arson disaster and needs to be treated as a major criminal offence if/when the arsonists are caught.

Okay, so some may cite the long drought preceding the fire season as “proof” it was climactic, but it’s still gets a no from me because Australia has always been a drought-prone country and our droughts can last a very long time. Add to that the fuel that has built up on the ground because various environmental groups have opposed maintaining fire trails through national parks and controlled burns in general over the winter months and you have a tinderbox just waiting to ignite, and in this case, arsonists took full advantage and set the country alight.  I can only guess why, but I don’t think I’m too far off the mark with my suspicions. But anyway, as it was an arson emergency, it cannot be labelled a climate situation, because it wasn’t. Fires that start via a natural occurrence follow a specific pattern. The fires that raged through Australia did not, and that’s how the authorities know it was arson. Plus, they did catch a couple of the arsonists and I so hope they catch the rest.

Hence no climate refugees. Fire refugees, yes, and there are a lot of them because so many homes have been lost. But the fires that have devastated Australia, being mostly deliberately lit, cannot be attributed to any type of climate change because had the arsonists not gone out there and set the country on fire, none of it would have happened. Those fires started by lightening strikes would have been contained eventually and dealt with. But that’s difficult to do when fires are popping up randomly all over the place and our firefighters are stretched beyond their limits trying to deal with more fires than there are people available to fight them.

I have no idea who planned to burn the place, or why they thought it was a good idea, but I live in hope that Karma will be a real bitch when it eventually catches up with them, because anyone who would put such a plan into action is a sick excuse for a human being and what they have caused is beyond forgiveness.

But to reiterate, there are definitely no climate refugees here.

Only fire refugees.

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