The Fire This Time

There was a terrifying piece on the Washington Post a few days back, “Too late to leave: Australia’s advice for surviving a bush fire when surrounded” by Diana Leonard. It seems that the bushfires in Australia are now moving so fast that frequently people aren’t able to get out of their way. Increasingly, people are getting trapped by the fires, and so have to take shelter where they can and hope to fight the flames.

A particularly ominous line in the piece is “‘Climate change is producing more frequently these unprecedented conditions,’ said Crystal Kolden, a professor and fire scientist at the University of Idaho. ‘Fires are moving faster than people have ever seen.’”

Meanwhile, of course, Australia’s Prime Minister and his government continue to act as if there weren’t a problem, and to deny any link between the fires and global warming.

This is a fairly awful situation, and not just for Australia. When our leaders seem so willfully ignorant of what’s going on...willfully stupid, in fact...that then one wonders just what they’re getting us into.

One feels a bit that the whole human race is surrounded by fire...and Washington, and so many other capitols...tell us there isn’t really problem, and really it’s all in our heads.

Even as we blacken and burn.

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

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Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)



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