Politicians Fiddle While Australia Burns

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- For weeks now, I’ve not been sleeping properly. Lying down has provoked paroxysmal, bronchial coughing, as drifting clouds from bushfires around Australia’s east coast have settled on my home city of Sydney. A thrumming headache has been a constant. Taking my daughter for an asthma checkup last week, we walked through haze filled with swirling motes of ash. 

Tuesday was the worst yet. As I wrote this article, a building fire alarm went off in Bloomberg’s office, caused by the permeating fumes. Thick smoke has rendered the Sydney Harbour Bridge invisible. Ambulance calls for breathing problems have risen 30% on typical seasonal levels. Beaches are black from settling embers.

You’d think that Australia’s political class would be under pressure to come up with solutions to the disaster spreading over nearly 10 million people — about two-fifths of the population — across some 1,000 kilometers (more than 600 miles) from the capital Canberra north to the third-largest city of Brisbane. The air-quality levels for Sydney are currently worse than New Delhi and Beijing.

In fact, the silence has been deafening. Until a press conference Tuesday, the last time a journalist had asked Prime Minister Scott Morrison a question in a public forum about the rampant bushfires was during a radio interview more than two weeks ago. The opposition Labor party has confined its questions in Parliament over the past month to a mild request to bring state and federal governments together to discuss the problem.

The reason is coal. Australia’s largest export last calendar year has a crucial role in the climate change that’s already making spring in southeastern Australia warmer and drier, which in turn increases the odds of the extreme weather that causes severe bushfires. The relationship between climate change and fire season is one that many politicians are unwilling to highlight. After the Labor party suffered a battering in coal-mining seats in May elections where they’d been equivocal in backing the industry, there’s now bipartisan support for a policy of downplaying the link.

This is an extraordinary situation. Wildfire pollution is a major public health problem wherever it occurs, causing respiratory problems, heart disease, pregnancy complications, and other ailments.

Fires near Moscow in 2010 were responsible for more than 3,000 excess deaths, according to a 2014 review. Some 184 bushfire-affected days in Sydney between 2001 and 2013 resulted in 197 premature deaths and 1,223 hospitalizations that could be attributed to smoke exposure, according to a separate 2018 study. Just a handful of days in that 13-year analysis saw concentrations of PM2.5 — fine particles of pollution capable of penetrating the bloodstream and reaching all the tissues of the body — above 50 micrograms per cubic meter. Over the past month alone, there have been nearly 20 days above 50; average concentrations Tuesday were running as high as 1,085 in parts of Sydney.  

Yet last Thursday, the legislature’s final sitting day this year, the opposition threw questions at the Liberal-National coalition government on banking regulation; education in rural areas; the staffing of aged-care facilities; vocational education funding; and a handful of other issues. The fires didn’t merit a mention.

With little respite expected from extreme fire weather for weeks, possibly months, it’s likely that many hundreds will suffer severe health problems or even death from the current conditions. Yet inside the political bubble, you could be forgiven for seeing it as a non-issue.

“The government should do a lot of things,” said Yuming Guo, an associate professor in environmental health at Melbourne’s Monash University, citing more funding for emergency services and indoor public spaces such as libraries and shopping centers where people could shelter and breathe filtered air. Above all, though, they need “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because this is directly related to climate change, and climate change is directly related to bushfires.”

All the political momentum right now is moving in the opposite direction. Joel Fitzgibbon, an opposition representative who suffered a severe swing against him in his coal-mining constituency north of Sydney, has been busy attacking former colleagues who have called for tougher action on climate change. Labor leader Anthony Albanese is on the same page, embarking on a tour of coal country in Queensland state and declaring his strong backing for continued shipments. 

Though a swath of urban, green-tinged electorates moved from solid Liberal to swing status in May, Labor is focused on stemming losses from a smaller number of marginal seats in coal-mining regions instead. With the opposition declining to hold the government to account, the political press gallery in Canberra has taken its cue and joined the vow of silence.

This obliviousness is intolerable. Those affected can think of little but the choking fumes they’ve been dealing with for weeks. Those in power have nothing to say on the subject. Something has to give. Stick your head in the sand long enough, and you end up suffocating.

U.S. air quality standards state that average annual PM2.5 should remain below about 12 micrograms per cubic meter.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Patrick McDowell at pmcdowell10@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities, as well as industrial and consumer companies. He has been a reporter for Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Guardian.

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