Black Saturday to be repeated

I’m going to just ramble and ‘think out loud’ for this blog, for a bit of a change.

I read Living in the Hothouse by Ian Lowe a couple of years ago. It was a depressing forecast when I read it. I already knew I was living in a rain shadow, and that Victoria had been in drought for about 10 years, but after reading it, I considered moving to Tasmania.

Well, today, on the front page of the Melbourne Age, the headline was State faces ‘worst-ever’ fire season. The article by Peter Ker was about a leaked report from the Department of Sustainability and Environment about the coming fire season in Victoria, and its predicted intensity.

Victoria’ rainfall has been its lowest on record for the first six months of 2009. Even if we get above average rainfall (which we won’t) for the rest of winter and spring, we’re still looking at extremely dry conditions in the heavily populated areas in the regions with 250km from Melbourne. The report predicts drier conditions than last fire season, which produced Black Saturday, with the fire season starting as early as November.

Although Peter Ker’s article didn’t refer to climate change, I was instantly reminded of Living in the Hothouse when I read the predictions. Ian Lowe forecasted longer dry periods, more intense heat, and horrible fire seasons, for south eastern Australia. The book was only published in 2005, and we’re already seeing the results.

I am lucky the the wind on Black Saturday was blowing slightly from the west, otherwise the fire would have roared straight into the valley in which I live. As it was, it stayed on the other side of the Tallarook ranges, and burnt into Strath Creek. But this summer, the Tallarook ranges will have to burn. It’s tinder dry and full of undergrowth and fallen trees. If a fire started in there, there’s no stopping it, and all the homes nearby will fall victim to the embers.

Do things have to be personally brought home to people ... do we have to think of our own livelihoods before we realise how dire climate change really is? I was already an advocate for carbon trading, for sustainability, and for simple living. But, even if we all do the right thing, we have already raised the global temperature by about 1 degree. And it’s enough to produce Black Saturday.

What will the Black Saturdays of the future look like? Will insurance companies continue to insure people in the country? Will insurance companies survive? How high will our policies be? Do we leave or do we stay to fight, if we know the insurance companies will forsake us? How much hotter and drier will it get in a world where the temperature is another 2 degrees higher, as our Government suggests it will get?

I wish we had a leader that would take a stand. We have to take responsibility for our emissions and our wasteful actions now.