Deadly fires in Australia have made climate change converts, as in California
LA TimesThe turning point came in 2017, when wind-whipped blazes swept through the foothills, jumped a freeway and burned through thousands of homes and businesses, killing more than 40 people. “No one can recall an event like this,” said Nick Clark, a farmer who lost most of his sheep’s pasture to a wind-driven fire on Southern Australia’s Kangaroo Island in mid-January. “Going back 20 or 30 years, the realization was there but I don’t think there was the opportunity to engage in the conversation,” said Jon Missen, mine closure and rehabilitation officer for one of Australia’s biggest brown coal-burning power stations, Loy Yang, in the Latrobe Valley, the heart of Victoria’s energy industry. There’s a political conversation — I think we’ve got a lot of denialism in this country about climate change … and the other kind is the conversation they have around dinner tables and barbecues,” said Greg Smith, a South Australia State Emergency Services worker from Noarlunga who was assisting crews on Kangaroo Island last month. “Australia has struggled with climatic conditions for a long time,” Mackay said during a recent tour of the Loy Yang power station, which burns the brown coal that’s plentiful in the area.