One week ago on Saturday 7, Melbourne saw its highest temperature since records began 150 years ago: 46.4°C. There were warnings in the previous days that Victoria was facing its “Worst fire threat in history”. That was no exaggeration! Bushfires raged across the state (some deliberately lit, which obviously did not help). There was initially no mention of deaths, so it seemed the fires would be like previous seasons: some properties lost, a lot of forest burnt.
The next day, though, reports of deaths began filtering through: first 14, then it kept climbing over the next few days. The current toll stands at 181, though this is expected to increase as razed towns are searched for bodies. The bushfire deaths exceed “Ash Wednesday” (16 February 1983, 75 killed) and “Black Friday” (13 January 1939, 71 killed) combined, with thousands more left homeless (around 7000 to date). Thousands of native and domestic animals have also been killed.
People are looking for something to blame. Climate change scientists earlier warned that fires would become more intense and destructive; this fire is some evidence of that. There are many letters in the newspapers blaming the Greens political party and environmentalists (presumably for opposing burnoffs), but if such people had their way, all the forests would be felled! (There’s no bushfires in deserts…) An Onymous Lefty has a few sarcastic entries on the reactionaries. Housing has impeded on bushland as population has increased, so more damage and fatalities are inevitable. If people choose to live in fire-prone areas, there is risk. And, no, you can’t chop down all the trees to make a region safe (as much as some people would want to) – the trees have as much a right to exist. The habitat of animals is destroyed when trees are felled.
Some (hopefully permanent) links on the 2009 bushfires:
- ABC News: Bushfire Emergency
- Herald-Sun: “Victoria in flames”
- MetaFilter: Victoria’s Bushfires
- Wikipedia: 2009 Victorian bushfires
“Solution for the world’s water woes”, BBC News, 10/2. Yet another article on solutions to the world’s fresh water shortages, but does not mention reducing population growth as a fundamental solution! People can only restrict their water use to a certain degree; one still needs to drink, use the toilet and bathe! If population keeps increasing, this negates any water conservation efforts. A few commentators (including me) have pointed this out to the writer.
Daniel Tammet is a savant with Asperger’s Syndrome who has gained a measure of fame because he can recite pi to a huge amount and learn languages quickly (my more dour observation is that he’s certainly got a talent for self-promotion). But he instantly lost any respect I might have had for him, as he is an overpopulation denier, as demonstrated in this blog entry from 2006; he does not believe that the U.K. is overpopulated. He uses the spurious argument that if the population was distributed evenly across the land, then everyone would have an acre or so to themselves. This ignores the reality that there are mountains, lakes and wilderness areas where people couldn’t live. The U.K.-based Optimum Population site has a page on The UK’s population problem. 60 million people crammed onto a relatively small island is overpopulation by anyone’s standard.
