Australia’s Environmental Arsonists By James Reed

     While the media here in Australia are going into overdrive about the bushfires being caused by climate change, we need to turn to overseas sources to get some sanity, and uncommon sense. Here is James Delingpole at Breitbart.com, making the sensible argument that it was, and still is, the environmental policies of the largely Leftist environmentalist system and Greens, that allowed the massive build-up of highly flammable dried vegetation:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-01-05-environmentalists-arsonists-australia-policies-forest.html
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/02/greens-made-australia-bush-fires-worse/

“As Paul Homewood pointed out last month, there has been no significant long-term decrease in rainfall or increase in temperatures in the affected regions. Yes, it has been dry in New South Wales (where most of the worst fires are), but there have been several years, especially pre-1960, when it was drier. The same applies to temperature. Yes, this has been a hot spring in New South Wales. But there have been times when it has been much hotter — making a nonsense of all stories in the Australian media about temperatures being the hottest ever: Neither is the monthly average of 38.0C a record high. The three years from 1899 to 1901 all saw average December mean maximum temperatures well above 38.0C. Since the station moved to the airport in 1993, 38C has only been exceeded once until this year, that was in 2005, when it averaged 38.5C, still well below the December 1899 when the mean was 39.9C. So, to be clear, there is zero evidence of any change in climatic conditions that might have increased the likelihood or severity of these bush fires. This is not — repeat NOT — a man-made climate change story, and anyone who claims otherwise is either a gullible idiot or a lying charlatan. There is, nonetheless, good reason to believe that the stupidity and irresponsibility of man is at least partly to blame for this disaster — just not quite in the way that the left-liberal MSM and the green wankerati would have you believe.

Man-made culprit #1: all the firebugs who have been deliberately starting fires in New South Wales, Queensland, and elsewhere. You won’t be surprised that their involvement has had very little coverage in the left-liberal MSM. Here’s a story from December headlined ‘Firebugs blamed for destructive Queensland fires’ — it notes: Figures obtained by AAP reveal 98 people – 31 adults and 67 juveniles – have been dealt with by Queensland police for deliberately setting fires. A 16-year-old boy was found to have started a fire that razed 14 homes in central Queensland and dealt with under the state’s Youth Justice Act. Two more teens, 14 and 15, were charged with endangering property by fire over a blaze that destroyed two homes and forced hundreds to flee. Man-made culprit #2: well-meaning idiots who don’t understand that unless you manage forested areas with controlled burns, you’re going to end up with out-of-control wildfires. Jo Nova has a damning story about locals in East Gippsland in the state of Victoria who successfully stopped a planned controlled burn at Nowa Nowa. Two of them were pictured holding signs saying, “Spring burns kill baby birds alive” and “Stop burning nesting birds”.

One grandmother was quoted as saying, “I’m more worried about climate change, and the impact the burns are having. I’m worried for my grandchildren.” ABC — the excruciatingly left-wing Australian Broadcasting Company, so woke it makes the BBC and CNN look like Fox News — reported on the protests with some enthusiasm last September but has since mysteriously decided to delete the story from Facebook. If this is the kind of obstructive idiocy that the mainstream media and the junk-science climate alarmism industry have created with their global warming propaganda, then the mainstream media and the junk-science climate alarmism industry have blood on their hands.

Man-made culprit #3: Greens
The people most to blame for the Australian bush fires are the greens. Just like in California, their tree-hugging Gaia worship blinded them to the reality that forests need regular clearance and maintenance if they are not to become a major fire hazard. Some Australian politicians on the right side of the argument are well aware of this: “The problems we have got have been created by the Greens,” Mr [Barnaby] Joyce told The Australian.
“We haven’t had the capacity to easily access (hazard) reduction burns because of all of the paperwork that is part of green policy. “We don’t have access to dams because they have been decommissioned on national parks because of green policy. We have trees that have fallen over vehicles and block roads, so people cannot either get access to fight a fire or to get away from fires. And we can’t knock over the trees because of Greens policy. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has lashed the “disgraceful, disgusting” behaviour of “raving inner-city lunatics” for linking climate change to the ferocious bushfires burning across Queensland and NSW. Yet still, in large parts of Australia, it remains illegal to remove trees from your land even in order to create fire breaks and protect your property — despite the obvious risk this ban creates to homeowners living in potential bush-fire zones. Trees have been designated a ‘carbon sink’, which supposedly offset Australia’s CO2 emissions.”

     Thus, the culture of the woke Greenies, along with the perennial problem of feral crazies who like to see things light up, creates the perfect storm leading to the catastrophic fires we are living through and, as usual, the political system will conveniently blame climate change, while ignoring the real causes. Indeed, even if climate change was operating, it would be more reason, not less, to abandon the mantra of not clearing the junk from the sacred Greenie forests. This belief, is the one which really pushes the system over into the oven, as fire bugs are always going to be there. The job is to minimise the available fuel.