Bushfires, Climate Change and Logic

It is undeniable that the Australian bushfires of 2019-20 were some of our worst. The terrible number of lives lost and properties destroyed exposes this reality. This morbid arithmetic is reinforced by the profound heartache, not felt by Australians since the 2011 Queensland floods and the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Journalists and politicians have relentlessly, and with unsettling zeal, declared the disaster to be “unprecedented”. However, although severe, by no objective measure were the 2019-20 bushfires without precedent. That is to say, it’s all happened before.

There is no perfect way to measure the severity of a bushfire event. Nevertheless, the most important parameter to any Australian is loss of life. In this regard, the 2009 Victorian bushfires are Australia’s worst with 173 fatalities. Tragic though our loss of thirty-four lives this year may be, there is no comparison to the harrowing toll of 2009 and many other more distant crises as far back as the…