Friday 6 March 2009

Stop calling it a DAMN natural disaster.

Those fires that burned their way through Victoria's consciousness are being labelled as Australia's Worst Natural Disaster.

It was tragic, horrifying, and hot, but nothing about them was natural.

It was caused through man's apathy and disregard for the welfare of fellow humans AND bureaucratic incompetence, IMHO.

Saying it was a NATURAL disaster removes liability and diminishes the urgency and need for someone to start answering some questions. I think that is intentional.

IF you wanna see a NATURAL disaster head to the north of Queensland.

11 comments:

  1. ...just don't start telling me it's all the Green's fault for not permitting burnoffs. That line gives me the shits.

    The Greens would rather that people hadn't built their houses in the tree zones to begin with. And the Greens have been talking about climate change and environmental dangers for decades. But instead of recognizing that this kind of disaster is the sort of thing the Greens have been trying to prevent since their inception, people want to spit the dummy, disavow their own lifestyle choices and responsibilities, and blame the Greens -- well, pretty much everything, I note.

    Fuel-reduction burns in areas of Australia which are fire-adapted do indeed make sense. Building residences among the trees in fire-adapted ecosystems makes no sense at all.

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  2. I'm not as narrow minded as to lay the blame at the feet of anyone in particular, probably excluding the people that lit them.

    People live where they live. It's just the reality.

    People live in Wellington, Un Zud, KNOWING that that city sits smack on top of the Pacific and Indo-Aus tectonic plates fault line. To me, that's retarded, but that's the facts. All we can do is make where they live as safe as possible.

    Isn't part of the reason you live on Tassie the environment?. Thing is, you have to destroy that environment to live there. You have your house, your infrastructure to make life there liveable, and your economy.

    That's the reality of being human. We may not like what we do but we all do it and while we do it we should be as safe as possible.

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  3. I tend to think that it was either one person doing it on purpose somewhere (Or group, whatever). Or one person doing it on accident. It's amazing what a cigarette butt in the right place will do. Ask California.

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  4. "Thing is, you have to destroy that environment to live there. You have your house, your infrastructure to make life there liveable, and your economy."

    ...and yet on the fifty acres we bought, we're bringing back local-species native timber on the majority of it. The house was here, yep. And I'm maintaining a firebreak, yep. But the water supply comes from the property. And I'm introducing nothing that wasn't here, and I'm actually locking up a shitload of carbon with the new trees.

    I'm not saying you can't live in dangerous places. I'm saying that when you do, you take your chances. And I'm saying that if you make that choice, you should understand you're a custodian, not an owner-operator.

    Assuming the greater ecological disasters don't manifest, the land my children inherit from me will be more productive (in terms of food species and biodiversity) and easier to manage than the property Natalie and I bought. We did away with the cattle. We're re-using house-water to grow berries and fruit and nuts, and keep a garden. The fences are gone, and the cow-paddocks are returning to wattle and blackwood, except where I've added fruit and nut trees.

    If we can manage the finances, eventually even the power we use will be generated here from photovoltaics. It'll take time, but to be able to hand that kind of thing on to my children is worth the time and effort.

    The eventual orchard and forest will even be lower in fire risk than the previous paddock system. The local forests hereabouts hold a tremendous amount of water in the understory. They're quite literally rainforests, here on the hillsides. The paddocks, on the other hand, dry out every year and turn to tinder.

    The idea that we can keep on modifying the environment to let humans live where and how they like is dead. It's no-go. There's six billion of us. We can't do it. Pretense to the contrary is not just stupid: it's lethal to the ecosystem that supports human life.

    We'll always need infrastructure, but it can be changed away from carbon-burning. And if we choose to live in bushfire zones, then we should build houses with rammed-earth walls about a metre thick, with deep-recessed windows and roofs designed to deal with the fallout from fires.

    We just don't have the right or the resources to keep doing whatever the hell we like. The recent fires should be more than adequate proof of that thesis.

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  5. No matter where we live, there are risks associated with simply living. Life is a gamble from day one. I am sure the people of the suburbs in Canberra thought they were safe once upon a time.
    We have little if no control over life and what can happen, natural or man made. but we can control how we react, how we learn from our experiences and how we can work to improve the lot of both nature and man, together.

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  6. Sorry to be flippant but isn't the worlds worst natural disaster the pommie cricket team?

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  7. I concur Moko

    Its the greenies fault!

    Most of them would like to see the human race extinct, except for them of course.

    Read Rainbow Six by tom clancy.

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  8. Crap. The human race is doing just fine at becoming extinct without any help from a few fire twirling feral hippies.

    A fire storm is no different from the one that is headed my way. If you are in its path, you are fucked, or might get lucky. Who knows? But there is bugger all that puny pink people can do in the face of such a thing.

    My animals are already toey - they've already registered the drop in pressure without the web to keep them posted of the storm's advance.

    Sorry, can't hang around - got a natural disaster on my door step. And you know what? You can't sue God.

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  9. Just not in the biblical sense....

    Hughsey, take care, and as for suing deities yes how shite is that?!!!

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