This past week has seen unprecedented bushfires across north-eastern Australia and predictions it will only intensify in the coming months. Experts concur that the underlying conditions are driven by climate change, itself caused by increased amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Leading government and public figures have argued that we shouldn't discuss climate change during this bushfire emergency. Yet when citizens, and most especially our children, previously tried to raise climate change on the public agenda, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told them that they should 'stay in school' rather than participate in the global School Strike for Climate. Implicit in this statement is that children should perform their part in 'business as usual'. This presumption that our normal routines will and must continue denies evidence that these routines and obligations are already being disrupted by climate change.
What does education look like under climate change? Last week almost 600 schools throughout NSW and Queensland had to close due to the catastrophic fire danger levels. Consequently thousands of children missed out on school because of the climate change they were told to not worry about. It was evident that on those days it was too risky and dangerous for children to attend school.
This is just one example of how climate change is threatening, and will increasingly threaten, children's education. Both climate 'shocks' — short term, intense events like bushfires — and 'stressors' — long, drawn out and slower changing processes like drought — can negatively affect children's schooling.
Perhaps most evident is the basic issue of accessing school. As seen with these fires, disasters can prevent children from attending school if the threat they pose triggers precautionary school closures.
In some cases, school closures are caused more directly and devastatingly by disasters. The loss of Bobin Public School has left all of its children without the school many of them no doubt loved and all needed. Others' access to school may be disrupted not by an impact on their school as much as on the infrastructure, transportation and/or adults they need to get there, or on their home. Many children this week have been displaced from their homes. For many of these, this displacement will likely be for an extended period, if not permanent. For them, getting to their original school, or indeed to any school, will be one of the enormous challenges they now face.
Even for those able to access their school, their