‘The more unequal the society is, the more severe the climate disaster’

"We are now on track to a three-degree world, which is still a world we absolutely do not want to live in...Capitalism as we know it now would be unviable. We are on track to tear it down by accident." Climatologist Friederike Otto
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/19/climatologist-friederike-otto-the-more-unequal-the-society-is-the-more-severe-the-climate-disaster
#ClimateBreakdown #FossilFuels #disasters #insurance #inequality #ClimateCrisis #floods #bushfires #habitability

Debate rages over push to declare buffel grass a weed of national significance

"A pasture grass providing benefits as feed for livestock is not considered a weed."

End of debate.
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-20/graziers-and-environmentalists-clash-over-buffel-grass/105145268
#biodiversity #monoculture #livestock #cattle #lobby #SettlerSociety #weeds #bushfires

Hope spawns for 'cyptic' endangered frogs decimated by bushfire
By Danielle Pope

Scientists at Melbourne Zoo are celebrating after successfully breeding two critically endangered Victorian frog species in a world-first.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-09/gippsland-endangered-frog-breeding-program-melbourne-zoo/105145648

Their house burned down in the LA fires. Then the predatory phone calls started
By Barbara Miller

For residents of Altadena, hopes of rebuilding their community just as it was are facing mounting challenges.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-08/rebuilding-altadena-after-the-la-fires/105133552

Understanding the health impacts of the climate crisis
and imagining a positive future

"Climate change is the greatest threat to human health now."

"Climate change is already causing significant shifts in weather patterns and an increase in extreme weather events around the world, including droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, storms and floods."

"The major cause of pollution is the burning of fossil fuels, further motivating action on reducing GHG; adverse weather events, such as heatwaves, can acutely amplify pollution impacts."
>>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2514664525000190
#climate #FossilFuels #meat #food #water #insecurity #mentalhealth #neurology #ClimateBreakdown #ExtremeHeatwaves #drought #bushfires #floods #pollution #pesticides #InfectiousDiseases #mortality #restoration #biosphere #inaction #governance

Airborne Hazards
Smoke pollution from pile burning, bushfires and burn pits

Push for Australia to recognise toxic burn pits in Afghanistan as cause of cancer in soldiers >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-11/burn-pits-afghanistan-iraq-causing-adf-soldiers-cancer/105004910

Airborne Hazards and Burn Pit Exposures (US)
"Open air pits used to burn several waste products, including, but not limited to: chemicals, paint, medical and human waste, metal/aluminum cans, munitions, petroleum and lubricant products, plastics and Styrofoam, rubber, wood, and food waste."

List of illnesses from airborne hazards and burn pit exposures >>
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/burnpits/

Pile burning in rural NSW
"Burning of cut and stacked vegetation is referred to as a pile burn." The piles often also contain waste materials. >>
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/13323/Standards-for-Pile-Burning-V2.pdf

Black Summer bushfire smoke
"Before summer's end, 33 people had lost their lives, more than 3,000 homes had been destroyed, and more than 17 million hectares of land had been burnt, devastating lives and regional economies. Many cities and towns were blanketed in smoke with air quality ranking amongst the worst in the world.">>
https://www.apsc.gov.au/state-service/state-service-report-2019-20/chapter-1-commitment-service/black-summer

Greater gliders' spectacular recovery after bushfires https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-04/greater-glider-population-booms-after-blue-mountain-bushfires/105003914

"Endangered #GreaterGliders in part of the southern #BlueMountains have made a spectacular recovery after the black summer #bushfires in 2019-20... the #marsupials' numbers are 45% higher than were before the fires began in 2019... Greater gliders are like #koalas. They feed exclusively on #eucalypt foliage... there's been a lot of new eucalypt foliage for them to feed on"

Nature–society relations in disaster governance frameworks

"This paper studies how the relations between nature and society are constructed in disaster governance frameworks. Dominant disaster governance frameworks present nature and society as separate realms, and the organisation of society is increasingly seen as the key cause of hazards and disasters. Disaster impacts are similarly framed around adverse societal consequences, while other-than-human nature is merely the background across which disasters unfold, as property lost, or a means of disaster governance. Although the centrality of human impacts is troubled when biodiversity or a disaster flagship species is threatened, neither situation challenges the nature–society dualism embedded in dominant disaster governance frameworks. The attention and resources of disaster governance target the societal side of nature–society dualism. This study finds, though, that in peripheries characterised by remoteness from centres of power, a sparse human population, and large spaces of other-than-human nature, the vulnerabilities facing humans and other-than-human nature risk being ungoverned."
>>
Meriläinen, E. (2025). Nature–society relations in disaster governance frameworks. Disasters, 49(2), e12678. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/disa.12678
#disasters #NaturalDisasters #governance #property #tourism #NSW #remoteness #FossilFuels #ClimateBreakdown #acceleration #climate #Bushfires #floods #cyclone #FirstResponders #trauma #nature #biodiversity #forests #NSWLogging #roads #koalas #deforestation #OtherThanHumanNature #NatureSocietyDualism #peripheries #vulnerability

ADVICE: Sandstone Caves fire (Warrumbungle LGA)

Firefighters continue work to contain a bush fire burning in the vicinity of the Newell Highway between Coonabarabran and Narrabri. The fire, which is more than 1,900 hectares in size, is burning in remote bushland within the Pilliga Nature Reserve. The Newell Highway remains closed with diversions via the Oxley and Kamilaroi highways.

With hot and dry conditions forecast to continue over coming days, residents in the area are urged to stay up to date via the Hazards Near Me app and RFS website: www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fnm

It was 32° Celsius in my bedroom when I last looked after 11pm last night.

There must have been some winds around as I slept, as #SES crews are around town clearing branches & trees from the roads.

The local #firies are at the fire station, having breakfast & waiting to see what the day brings. (There were 2 small #bushfires yesterday evening about 9km’s from me).

Prescribed burn in the the Valley of the Giants gone wrong
Save the tourist infrastructure not the national park?

"A plan to protect tourist infrastructure has resulted in an estimated 180 large trees falling over. Western Australian authorities say the planned burn was carried out east of the Valley of the Giants precinct to protect visitor infrastructure. While the tourist hub was untouched, conservationists say the fire has been "catastrophic" for a nearby section of bushland, and the outcome should have been predicted."
>>
https://au.news.yahoo.com/popular-aussie-national-park-too-dangerous-to-enter-after-botched-project-053459736.html

The Dorrigo Arc Rainforest Centre in Dorrigo National Park tourist "upgrade".
Dorrigo Escarpment great walk review of environmental factors: public consultation
Have your say on the review of environmental factors

until Monday 24 February 2025.
>>
https://www2.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/parks-reserves-and-protected-areas/park-management/community-engagement/walking-tracks-and-trails-in-national-parks/dorrigo-great-walk/dorrigo-escarpment-great-walk-review-environmental-factors
#tourism #infrastructure #clutter #Dorrigo #rainforest #systemic #failure #values #bushfires #ControlledBurn #NationalParks

I'm in Devonport today, on the north coast, and even the sea breeze can't blow away the taste of smoke in the air.

#tasmania #lutruwita #fire #bushfires #climatechange #climate

https://pulsetasmania.com.au/news/hobart-affected-as-west-coast-bushfire-smoke-spreads-across-the-state/

The quiet catastrophe unfolding in outback #Australia after spread of invasive species https://au.news.yahoo.com/the-quiet-catastrophe-unfolding-in-outback-australia-after-spread-of-invasive-species-005659161.html

Smoke haze in Adelaide from bushfire 700 kms away
#Australia #summersunday #bushfires

This is not good.

While the #Grampians and #LittleDesert in Victoria are currently having terrible #bushfires take a look at Apple Maps satellite image of #Ngarkat Conservation Park across the border here in #southaustralia
Are these artifacts of the imaging, underlying #geology or scars from past fires?

The #bushfires in the Grampians region over the past weeks, have now burnt just under 100,000 hectares. Here is what that looks like, placed over a map of Melbourne.

Bree Myers and her daughter, Indie Francis, outside their house in #Dimboola, Victoria, as #bushfires rage nearby.

Photograph: Diego Fedele/AAP

@photography
#Australia
#firefighters

Community Efforts to Care for Animals During Climate Disasters:
Experiences and Recommendations from an Australian Bushfire Affected Region

"Formal disaster prevention, preparation, risk management, and response remain highly anthropocentric, with non-human animals afforded minimal attention, resourcing, and support. This article reports on informal community efforts to care for non-human animals during and after the 2019/2020 “Black Summer” bushfires in Australia, when over three billion animals were killed, injured, or displaced."

"Key findings are that:
human communities understood and treated non-human animals as part of their communities; humans went to extraordinary lengths to care for and rescue animals; these efforts were largely invisible to, and unsupported—even condemned—by formal emergency management agencies. We conclude that human-centric emergency and disaster management policies are at odds with community values and behaviors. We argue that disaster management must evolve to accommodate and support the realities of community-based rather than individual-based approaches, and must simultaneously expand to consider communities as multispecies."
>>
Sturman, A., Celermajer, D., MacDonald, F. et al. Community Efforts to Care for Animals During Climate Disasters: Experiences and Recommendations from an Australian Bushfire Affected Region. Int J Disaster Risk Sci (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-025-00623-8
#bushfires #fires #FossilFuels #ClimateBreakdown #care #biodiversity #wildlife #NSW #megafires #2019Bushfires #BlackSummer #disaster #preparation #pets #property #livestock #anthropocentrism #multispecies #community #values

Care for non-human animals during and after the 2019/2020 “Black Summer” bushfires in Australia

"In fighting these fires, authorities focused almost entirely on protecting human lives and property...The role of rescuing and caring for domesticated and wild animals fell almost entirely to community groups and individual carers, who stepped up to fill the gap at significant cost to themselves – financially, emotionally and sometimes even at a risk to their safety.The standard view in Australia is that only humans matter in the face of bushfires. While some guidance on disaster preparation talks about how to protect pets such as cats and dogs, wildlife carers, farmers and horse owners often found themselves facing incoming fires with little or no information or support."
>>
https://theconversation.com/as-the-black-summer-megafires-neared-people-rallied-to-save-wildlife-and-domestic-animals-but-it-came-at-a-real-cost-248432

"69% of Australian households own a pet.">>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/29/the-veterinarian-shortage-in-regional-australia-is-not-a-looming-crisis-were-already-in-it
#bushfires #fires #FossiFuels #NSW #megafires #2019Bushfires #BlackSummer #disaster #preparation #property #IntroducedPets #livestock #pets #dogs #cats #menagerie