The Australian air touched a ‘hazardous’ level of air pollution in January 2020 as the smoke from burning bushfires in South-east Australia flew, choking people in urban cities. Daliva Jakupovic, a Slovenian player forfeited her ongoing tennis match complaining breathing difficulty at the Australian Open happening in Melbourne. People in Australia have now witnessed a change in climate that soon displayed its true colors.
Scorching summer, escalating fire
Australia witnessed its driest and hottest summer in 2019–20 breaking records. Parts of forest in New South Wales and Queensland were ablaze and soon the fires went out of control. The bushfire soon spread to larger areas in south-eastern states which are mostly residential. The fires were so violent that they could be spotted from space through a NASA satellite.
How Catastrophic were the Australian bushfires?
The bushfires burnt a total of 24 million acres of land into ashes, destroying 2500 homes and killing about a billion animals. The alarming news is that extreme fire cases like this are predicted to happen every year at the same intensity if the temperature in Australia keeps on rising, according to a report by the Daily Mail.
The smoke that emerged from these fire turned the sky orange in the neighboring country of New Zealand. The glaciers turned yellow from the smoke and a state of emergency has been declared in the state of Queensland and New South Wales. According to the Daily Mail, Australia’s Bushfire is so severe that it had already burned twice as much land as the fire in the Amazon Rainforest. The bushfires have released 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere making the air toxic according to the website Technology review.
Australia lost its biodiversity to bushfire
Australia not only lost its green land but also its biodiversity at large. This isolated island country has a unique diversity in plants and animals. It is home to kangaroos, koalas, echidna, platypus, thorny dragon and other 244 species of animals. The fires have burned hundreds of koalas and wallabies (small kangaroo) alive, the animals who have survived this fire are choking and dying due to lack of food and water. The birds and animals whose habitat has been destroyed are now searching for a new home.
Rescuers have shared videos of thirsty koalas drinking water has gone viral and is bringing worldwide attention to the severity of this fire.
The Rescue teams have recently airdropped fruits and vegetables for animals who have no greens to fulfill their appetite.
Australian fires have hit the economy bad
The bushfire made a loss of more than 4.4 billion dollars to the Australian economy. Tourism and travel to this country are said to be affected and have declined in the past few months. The people who have lost their farms and livelihood in the fires now seek out for government support.
Why the Australian Government isn’t waking up?
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison lives in a denial that there is any link between Australian Bushfire and climate change. The Prime Minister is criticized for his negligence towards environmental issues and encouraging the use of coal.
Prime Minister, Scott Morrison was recently abused and people refused to shake hands with him as he neglected the fires and went off for a vacation in Hawaii when the thousands of people saw their houses burning. Later, he apologized for the same.
Apart from being the world’s largest coal exporter, Australia is the second-largest emitter of carbon per capita ( amount of carbon dioxide released per person) in the world.
The government has recently approved the project of Adani coal mine, which seeks to extract 10 metric tonnes of coal every year. This project brings huge environmental hazards in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia keeping marine life at threat therefore, it faced several protests and the project was kept at stay since nine-years.
Are Australia and India on a similar page when it comes to environmental issues?
One thing common between Australia and India is public and government negligence towards the environment and climate change. People choose to ignore the subject of climate change until and unless nature’s fury affects them personally.
Climate change is real. It affects all of us. We are experiencing extreme weather conditions, scorching summer to biting cold, sapping dry heat to massive humidity. We are facing it all but choose to overlook its cause. According to a public survey, only 29% of the Indians perceive global warming as a serious threat and think we should worry about it.
Australia, is the world’s largest exporter of Coal, while Indians plan to increase their coal consumption by 50% according to an article published by Deepak Gopalakrishnan. Coal which is the biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emission is consumed at an unprecedented rate and its consumption doesn’t seem to decline.
The government seamlessly introduces infrastructure and industrial projects keeping environmental concerns at stake. Encroachments in Mumbai’s Aarey forests and Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Delhi’s Okhla Bird Sanctuary are examples of the same. When flashpoint disasters like cyclone Fani in Orissa (2019), flooding in Mumbai and Kerala (2018), Uttarakhand flash floods (2013), Kashmir floods (2014), take thousands of lives who is to be blamed?
Fire in Bandipur Forest in 2019 burned around 10,000 acres of land is one similar example to Australian bushfire. So, do not think that a similar fire situation in India cannot come about in the future.
We better take climate change seriously.
Climate change is becoming a sad reality. We are losing nature to it. It is high time that we take climate change activists like Greta Thunberg seriously and pressurize our government to take action. Limit usage of fossil fuel and look for better alternatives because responding to climate change will be one of the biggest challenges we face this century.
