Tim Flannery, Opinion, Australia News, 7 Feb 2020<\/p>\n
In the face of the climate disaster it helped create, the Australian government has given us only lies and denial<\/em><\/p>\n U<\/span><\/span>nprecedented wildfires have recently devastated California, the Amazon, southern Europe, Siberia and Australia. It\u2019s safe to say that we\u2019ve entered the era of the climate-fuelled megafire. But because fire conditions depend on local vegetation, topography and climate, each of these great conflagrations is different.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s bushfires of the last four months have been true megafires, creating their own weather and becoming so vast in their impact that more than half<\/a> of all Australians have been directly affected by them. As I write, fires continue to burn around Canberra, and though rain has begun to fall in northern New South Wales, 17 are \u201cyet to be contained\u201d according to the fire service<\/a>. Meanwhile, what is traditionally the worst part of the fire season for Victoria and South Australia is just commencing. Conditions have been so severe that firefighters have often been unable to stop fires joining up, generating massive dry thunderstorms that spread fire with thousands of lightning strikes.<\/p>\n