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Keywords: Bushfires

  • RELIGION

    Christmas in a time of fire

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 December 2019
    15 Comments

    This year the contrast between the original story of Christmas and its Australian circumstances has cut even deeper. Bushfires have taken lives, destroyed properties and spread smoke and ash over cities. If the theme of the first Christmas was one of hope and joy, behind the bushfires this year lurks anxiety about the future of the world.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The bushfires of the vanities

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 November 2019
    10 Comments

    The fact that they so easily turned their attention away from the lives of the people threatened by fire to brawling about their own virtues and lack of them offers little hope that the lives of Australians will count with them when they reflect on the causes and the proper response to the fires.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    A view from Africa of Australia burning

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 14 November 2019
    10 Comments

    As fires obliterated large swathes of Australia, I was largely oblivious to the news — though tenuously connected to events as I travelled through oven-hot, tinder-dry national parks in Southern Africa. It was only when I reached the airport in Johannesburg that the extent of the catastrophe became apparent to me.

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  • CARTOON

    Playing with fire

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 12 November 2019

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate indifference is an Aussie tradition

    • Greg Foyster
    • 31 January 2019
    9 Comments

    One of Australia's foundational myths is of white settlers weathering nature's worst. It's actually in our national character — the story we tell about the nation — to dismiss climatic extremes like heatwaves. Maybe one missing part of taking climate change more seriously in Australia is a shift in culture to respect the heat.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Greeks pull together in the face of fire

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 30 July 2018
    11 Comments

    Greece is a fire-prone country, and climate change has meant an extremely hot summer. In addition, the austerity forced on Greece during recent years has meant a reduced fire service, with not enough firefighters and no money to buy the latest equipment. Even so, it is heartening to see the reaction of the Greek public to the fires.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Youths burned by the flames of self interest

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 26 June 2014

    When it comes to symbols of destruction and renewal, few are more potent than bushfires. That is particularly true in the Australian context. Galore's poignant coming-of-age story unfolds in the weeks prior to the 2003 Canberra bushfires. It is, in part, a rumination on adolescent self-centredness: its inevitability and inadequacy as a shield protecting the vulnerable, budding self from the flames of experience.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    It's time to heatproof our cities

    • Greg Foyster
    • 10 February 2014
    23 Comments

    Climate change has loaded the dice towards hotter days and more frequent heat spells. Heatwaves are only going to get worse, and air conditioning isn't the godsend it seems. We need to start retrofitting our cities, suburbs and homes to withstand the sweltering summers to come. Any new houses that perform poorly in the heat are going to be a tremendous burden on the next generation.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate denial tide is turning

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 04 November 2013
    47 Comments

    With the publication of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Los Angeles Times made the bold decision to no longer publish letters from climate change denialists saying climate change is a matter of fact, not opinion. While this might seem like a small victory, the more substantial issue on the horizon is the global campaign for divestment in the fossil fuel industry. As it gains momentum and fossil fuel companies will be forced to reassess the value of their assets.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bushfires demand response-ability

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 23 October 2013
    5 Comments

    Human land practices and increasing temperatures alter the earth, and are influenced by politics, law, philosophy and economics. In Lisbon, Western philosophy sought to sever God from nature; now we pretend that the fusion of humans and nature doesn't exist. The term natural disaster shouldn't be trusted. It is superstitious to think humans and nature aren't locked in a reciprocal relationship with political and ethical responsibility.

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  • MEDIA

    Reality trumps Japanese horror stories

    • Stephen Alomes
    • 23 August 2011
    7 Comments

    All too often anxiety trumps reality. In Melbourne in recent years, we received emails from friends overseas worried that we might be affected by the Queensland floods or NSW bushfires, hundreds of kilometres away. Japan has problems, but Japan it is not a disaster zone.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kinglake undone

    • Jordie Albiston
    • 21 June 2011
    5 Comments

    Prayer has not prevailed. She sits silent without lover or friend: she slumps in her blackened skirts: she slumps in black dust: she slumps in her black that was green.

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