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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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Climate Change? Nope, Arson.

Aside from the few lightening strikes that started some of the fires in Australia, it is alleged the rest of them were the result of arson and some of the arsonists were actually caught in the act and I’m sure I’m not the only one asking why anyone would want to deliberately set the country on fire?

A friend ,whose nephew is a fire fighter, told me his nephew had revealed that around 84 per cent of the fires ravaging the state of NSW were deliberately lit. They know this because of the way these fires happened. Because they did not follow the general pattern that fires follow and finished up by saying “Someone out there has an agenda, and they’ve put it into action.” That is a scary thing.

As expected, referrals to climate change have been doing the rounds, but lightening strikes cannot be attributed to climate change and arson certainly can’t, anymore than someone out there with an agenda can be linked to climate change. Unless that someone is at the extreme end of the climate debate and did something very stupid to force the issue. It wouldn’t be the first time a rabid extremist (individual or organisation, take your pick) has taken things into their own hands just to prove a point and force an issue or action, but if that’s the case here, we may not know about it for some time, if at all.

Unless someone talks. That is often how the crazies get caught. And it doesn’t take much. One too many beers and they decide to confide in their drinking buddy, or can’t resist the urge to big-note themselves, or one of their cronies lets the cat out of the bag and whichever the case, whoever they talked to dobs them in to the authorities. That’s how it generally goes down. I’m not necessarily talking firebugs here. Firebugs just set fires for the thrill of watching them burn. They don’t need an agenda, they just love fire. A climate change extremist on the other hand would see setting off a string of disastrous fires as a good way to force the Government to sit up and take notice, and implement the climate strategies the extremist individual or group believe should happen. Yes, that sounds completely over the top to suggest someone would go to such lengths to execute a deliberately calculated bushfire disaster and then attempt to pass it off as a natural climate change disaster just to say “I told you so!” , but show me a level-headed extremist and I’ll show you a vegan in a fast food outlet enjoying a beef burger and a milkshake.

But the bottom line is this, the majority of the fires devastating Australia were deliberately lit and I don’t give a rats about the perpetrators’ agenda. What they did was criminal, and the destruction of bushland, towns, homes, lives and the decimation of our native wildlife is beyond forgiveness. My dearest wish is that they are caught and incarcerated for a long time. There should be no other considerations here. People who deliberately do something like this should be taken out of the community and placed where they cannot do it again. Meanwhile, the fires are still raging.

It’s not over yet.