Catastrophic bushfires in australia reignited the debate over Climate Change with the government accused of not doing enough why was 20191 of the worst years on record globally for wife eyes and is there the political will to find a solution this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program back to people bushfire is a common during the summer in australia but firefighters are calling this years conditions catastrophic at least 8 people have been killed since september including 2 firefighters who died on thursday when their truck was hit by a falling tree with a more than 100 fires burning the government in the most populous state of New South Wales has declared a state of emergency a heat wave and strong winds are making things worse australia recorded its 2 hottest days ever this week with the average temperature on wednesday hitting 41 points 9 degrees celsius a senior meteorologist rob mccallum explains whats made the situation so bad. So why is the fire season so much worse this year were cause the main cause is the drought has been long lasting the causes of the drought actually are nor was Indian Ocean Dipole now that unfortunately the normal has been made worse yeah shes been made worse because the whole world is warming and these higher temperatures tend to make a drought worse oversea more evaporation with higher temperatures and the consequence of a warming world thunderstorms often more vicious and that course gives you the gusts that we have seen so regularly so for this particular set up the climate is generally hotter all the records will need to be broken by about degree which is typical of the gradual warming in australia over the last 100 years or so so more evaporation give you much drier brush therefore the tenders that have burned and once it started by lightning by other causes causes the violent storms give you much worse winds theyre often on fronts and this one driving through at the moment while the crisis is triggering debate about Climate Change former chiefs of australias 5 fighting services accuse the government of ignoring warnings that bushfires will become more intense in a warming planet and the Prime Minister has been criticized for taking an overseas holiday Scott Morrison apologized and promised to return home soon. Because theres been such horrendous events. But is understandably caused a lot of these are the recruits that theyre solos who are affected both as far as especially we recruit of course its not just australia thats seen such ferocious 5 as they were more than 1600 recorded in europe this year this satellite imagery shows just how much of the planet was ablaze with wildfires in the last 12 months in july and august large parts of the amazon rain forest were destroyed burning at a rates not seen in decades tens of thousands of hectares of land and hundreds of buildings were burnt when science swept through california and weve seen wildfires in siberia and the optic to more than 100 a sign of warming conditions in one of the coldest spaces on earth. With. Lets bring in our panel now in Perth AustraliaPeter Neumann professor of sustainability at Curtin University in london martin will stir professor and chairman of observations science at Kings College london and in loon sweden emmanuel rise to his an associate professor of disaster Risk Management at the university of copenhagen welcome to you all gentleman thank you for being on inside story professor newman in perth how close the can we link the fires in australia to Climate Change. I think its no doubt that this is a catastrophic change not just a gradual thing thats happening and its at the point where every scientist is all of your a meteorology orally experts in the Fire Sciences the firefighters themselves assigned weve never seen anything like this this is beyond anything we ever have saying why is that though why do the fires in australia appear to be worse this year in particular. Well there is a thing called the Indian Ocean Dipole which is where the indian ocean changes in its Energy Patterns and it is all about how much energy is in the climate system which is increasing because of greenhouse and that dipole is very extreme at the moment so weve had a year of really hot drawing weather right across the country and then suddenly from november we had the fires starting way beyond an normal time and they just caught up and kept going some fires that been going for 100. 00 days they cant seem to be able to put them out so the the preparation of the last year dried of the get including some of the really with some tropical forests which dont normally boon for more than one of the one in 100 years at the most so its very extreme and its predictable based on the way in which the amended in g. Going into the climate system is is picking off certain parts with very extreme weather martin was so in london what is it exactly that we are experiencing right now is it a case that they are more wildfires in the world or is it rather that theyre becoming more intense and more extreme well for the last say 20 years weve had pretty good information about where farmers are on earth the timing and the magnitude basically from earth orbiting satellites and if you look at that record you can see that actually from year to year fires. Overall dont change that much its just that in certain parts of the planet there are extremes that can be you know 10 times or even greater. Than average so thats what were seeing in in some places but overall the amount of fire is not necessarily massively more this year than it has been in other years we just see were just hearing about these extremes which are obviously very severe is so what is causing this i imagine that the reasons depend very depend on the on the regions obviously yes theres a wide variety of conditions that affect fires and if the planet and i guess you know its partly climate that were weve heard about just now but also about human activity so for example in in canada over recent decades the fire season is typically lengthened largely due to climate warming its believed and so that allows fires to burn over a greater part of the year and so burn there in canada has roughly doubled they say in the last pe perhaps 50 years and thats largely down to climate whereas in places like some of the tropics its largely down to human activity so for example in the amazon weve heard of this severe fire season this year and probably that is mainly caused by people behaving in different ways perhaps due to inferences from the government or whatever not not climate so interesting a man you know youre far as martin said there is not every weather event that is a direct result of Climate Change what other factors you think the public should realise are responsible for the fires that we seen escalate this year. Yeah i think taking on from martin is very its extremely important. Of what what is climate and the human influence in all of this. Saying and whats happening in south america for example with the amazon fires theres also a lot of information about deforestation losing a large part of natural habitat due to development process. I think its extremely important to remember that a lot of disasters a lot of that direct streams also have a Huge Development a factor. Inside it and a lot of these developments processes. Have a huge role to play in how in some of the effects that were seeing today tell us a bit more about the social and economic and perhaps even political impasse that this is going to have imagine where we talk increasingly now about climate refugees thats one of the consequences isnt it. Well i think particularly what weve been through theres a huge discussion if you look at the social science of Disaster Research about who gets impacted who gets affected the worst in me and there is some evidence showing that a large amount of. Extreme weather impacts and some of the devastating impacts that were seeing is in a lot of countries which are primarily poor that are more liberal to disasters extreme weather events whos more affected within these countries lack of opportunity lack of sort of social and economic. Opportunity as well so how all of these factors do play a role. In sort of determining whos impacted in whos worst affected by disasters. We will continue to see. I think. A large number of people coming out to resume their ways is i think in the last couple of years weve seen young people taking to the streets we saw that even in cop 25 in madrid which happened recently. But i think that what we really need to go more into is also trying to garner more political will in the trash and speaking of the political will peter newman in Perth Australia as government and australias political leaders have come under a lot of criticism for whats being described as their inadequate policies what are these policies precisely right now is the Australian Government doing enough in your view to help stem the rise in Global Temperatures now theyre not doing nearly enough and. Master minnows very ashamed to be honest after the madrid conference when. We have brazil and america. Basically worked to undermine the the global agreement that was coming through the and governments basically doesnt want anything to change and. They are trying to say that we will keep up with the Paris Agreement but theyre never going to get close to it and they really have no programs in place to right now do anything right now i think australias target is a 26 to 28 percent reduction reduction in emissions by 2030 and australia of course is the Worlds Largest coal exports which is the largest source of grain Greenhouse Gas emissions is that sufficient is that target sufficient and are they on track to to do it. No theyre not on track even their own doctor is showing that and it was when there was quite a bit happening starting 10 years ago or so and and its its really petered out but a strain in business and style and householders are doing quite a lot theres a lot of solo being put on top of rooftops and so on but theres really no help from the government and so it its not going to make it and i do think they have to get serious that the one good thing about these bushfires is its really woken up the politics of Climate Change it was an issue in the last election but it didnt really raise its head and nuff to change votes and i think it would now and the Prime Minister has got that message very strongly in recent days martin peter said there the one good thing about these bushfires and i know that not all fire is a bad of course i mean were talking about this bushfires in australia but theyre not all that bad explain that to our viewers if you can please. Thats right i mean fire is a natural process in the environment and in fact many ecosystems like the boreal forest for example or the african savannah as theyve actually evolved to have fire as part of their natural ecosystem function so if you excluded fire from those ecosystems it wouldnt be a good thing. So and it is the case that there are many places on earth that have very regular fires that we dont really hear much about because theyre not negatively impacting human populations or infrastructure or whatever so far is not a totally negative thing obviously we hear about the most extreme events that are you know perhaps unwanted but but in many environments on earth fire is a natural process that if you exclude fire. You will damage the ecosystem and in fact what you will end up with is probably more intense fires because you you have a buildup of dead fuel around that in the end will burn and the fire will be worse so do you think its annoying to go where standby is not all bad do you think for the countries that are negatively impacted is it going to get worse in the years to come. Well i think as weve been talking about under some future climate scenarios certain places will see increased risk of fire i mean even here in the u. K. Where i am there a climate that suggests the southeast of england is going to get more fire prone basically because of Climate Change so certainly some regions are likely i guess to experience worse fire situations because of Climate Change yes but also as i say before human activity has a lot to do with it right indeed and was so ill come back to you to discuss you know that the political will whether its there or whether more should be done let me just bring in emmanuel into the conversation once again emanuel you started talking about this a short while ago the Public Opinion about the Climate Crisis do you find that its moving in some parts of the world that the u. S. For instance is still seems to be resistance to decisive and comprehensive action on Climate Change do you find that you know with the protests that weve had weve had 0 around the world you know with people like gretta thornburgh that the Public Opinion is changing. Well its changing but i think its still rather slow i think one thing is the Public Opinion but theres also an important part of political opinion because a lot of decisions need to be made in those power holes and its important how does this Public Opinion how do these weisss how do social movements collective action how does this reach those halls of power. And i mean at caught in madrid i mean i think a lot there was a lot of frustration about whether or not what will be agreed on there was a lot of things that will that really didnt. Go the way things should have gone but there was a slight hope when because there was a lot of waste there was a lot of young people there and there was a lot of University Academia scientific involvement. I think i think we still divided in that in that space and lets also not forget that people in many countries have been fighting climate have been fighting disasters for a long period of time have been talking about the in my mint for a long period of time so so this is i think i think the skillet which its happening as is probably different today but but i think people in people in many parts of the world have been talking about this for a long time right now professor newman the 21000 u. N. Framework on conventional Climate Change was a letdown for many people as weve heard here what do you think individuals communities and governments can do how can they better plan for this new reality and adapt to the continually changing conditions. Well as a lot they can do it there are there are many things that are now very straightforward that we can see the work im doing in the i. P. C. C. Is about transport and its very clear that electric vehicles. Are the next big thing so sala is now by far the cheapest option in producing power and that needs to spread very quickly it is spreading but then electric vehicles need to be tapped into that. Heavy transport is powered or shipping in aviation and doing almost nothing big trucks and so on so weve got a lot of research that still needs to be done about what is the solution for them we do know a lot of things that we can now do very quickly but the there are some that remain a major issue so weve got to get on with it in at the Research Level at the trial and demonstration level but also just at the Household Level and businesses getting into Energy Efficiency and putting solar on rooftops and and getting on with the business of electrifying their transport systems manuel said what do you think countries can do to be better prepared to tackle these wildfires of course some countries have better means than others but how can they prevent them if there is a way. Well i think a lot of it is about how you manage the land and. The policy for example of complete Fire Suppression putting out every fire starts is ultimately probably going to be defeated because you will end up getting a fire that you cant put out and because youve suppressed everything beforehand the amount of material there to burn will be far greater the fires will be more intense and more difficult to tackle so its about managing the land in a proper way for your environment and that might mean even applying fire to landscapes at certain times of year in a in a controlled manner so you reduce the amount of fuel that is available for you know uncontrolled of ours to burn that kind of thing so but obviously it needs to be appropriate to the environment and i think also another thing to point out is that we hear about you know tragedies where people are dying in wildfires and obviously this is a terrible tragedy but there probably is maybe a 100 or something a year of that whereas they may be hundreds of thousands dying early deaths from air pollution related to wildfires these are the kind of estimates that being made so while we hear a lot about the potential climate impacts of fire or the impacts of climate on fire its also important to. Consider the air quality impacts which directly affect human health right at pitting human. Martin talked about Land Management there a short while ago some in the Australian Government have indeed blamed Land Management for the disaster which is true to a set next and isnt it. Yes it is to a certain extent but the what they suggesting is that we need to go in and be burning off regularly to keep the brush down but theres been quite a bit of silence donnellys and they fires that have swept through would not have been stopped the areas that have been burnt were cleaned up in the sime why it did not prevent the bushfires so they so far beyond anything that the Fire Management processes could have fixed. So i do think that theres a limit to how much that kind of management can do when you get these very extreme events coming through the new clip this is like a flying throw it can throw far as a kilometer of away and and it just is is extraordinary to see how fast it can move and theres nothing can stop it so we have we have a genuinely big issue i think to deal with than just changing simple Land Management weve really got a major Climate Change issue and adapting to that theres going to be a hostile shines of where people leave theres a lot of People Living in the bush who are going to be too scared to in future were going to see some major changes by emmanuelle rational in and i think ill give you the last word what do you see as the solution for dealing with these disasters whether its in developed countries like australia or other parts of the world that are less developed and that are also affected how do we you know deal with this crisis. I think particularly coming out from top 25 theres a lot of blame game thats going on at the moment and the question is can can we sort of move in the direction of solutions there is a whole yes were taking small the use that but i think every time we do that because behind and fall back we dont really view each inclusions and the negotiations dont go very much ahead and it is it is going to be hard no doubt is going to be hard but it is possible however i think its for countries to sit together to actually come to really hard decisions. Really is and vision like i think which which is what was the major take home message from from top 25 we really really want to see countries take major decisions in these ambitions in that direction we need more risk informed him and i think we really have to turn down the cycle from from the from looking at it from stopping disaster risk creation in the future. And there was very little hope a cop 25 but i dont think that we see a lot of young people i think thats the whole is it sometimes i think the young people were telling the government listen to the science and i do wish that that that is taken more seriously all right well thank you very much gentlemen for a very interesting discussion peter Newman Martin will stir and emmanuelle rationally thank you once again for being on inside story and i thank you for watching you can always watch this program again any time by visiting our website at aljazeera dot com for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com for slash a. J. Inside story you can of course also join the conversation on twitter a handle is at age 8 inside story from the fully back to ball and whole team here on inside story thanks for watching. A bombarded city. Can be rebuilt. Its buildings restored. But can shattered lives be mended. 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