Short Wave - What's Behind Australia's Historic Fires

Episode Date: January 8, 2020

Biologist Lesley Hughes from Macquarie University in Australia explains why the recent bushfires there could change the country forever. Hughes is a former federal climate commissioner, and has been the lead author on two reports for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia. Email the show at [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Things in Australia are really bad. No end in sight to the nation's bushfire emergency. Fires there have grown out of control. Authorities across Southeast Australia are racing to get people to safety. Why is this happening? Well, it's summer there. From the rainforests of Queensland and northern New South Wales to the Blue Mountains.

It's gotten well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Almost 2,000 homes have been. destroyed. Things are incredibly dry. From the Adelaide Hills to Gippsland in Victoria. And high winds? More than 200 fires in all... ...are only making it worse. From Tasmania.

It's astonishing what's happening in this country... ...to Western Australia. Firefighters are working around the clock. An area as big as Belgium has been reduced to ash. Wind here just keeps picking up. It is fueling these flames. You can feel the smoke stinging your eyes. You can feel that heat off of the fire.

It is radiating right now. At least 24 people have been killed. Things are so bad that in Sydney the other night, people posted videos online of elated cheering, echoing through the streets, because it was raining. But that rain was temporary, and fire season will continue for months. This is a story about climate change, politics, and so much more. So today we're talking with Leslie Hughes, an international voice on climate change, and an ecologist

who's been working in Australia for decades. We'll talk about the ecology of Australia, the animal and plant life that's being lost, and we'll ask if the fires could change things there forever. I'm Maddie Safaya, and this is Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. Leslie Hughes has studied the effects of climate change in Australia for decades. She's been a lead author on two reports for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and she's a professor of biology at McCory University in Sydney. That's where we reached her via a pretty okay Skype connection.

To ask her, why now? After all, Australia is a dry place. Fire has always been a part of the environment. So why are these fires so bad? Well, like the rest of the world, we've been warming up. In fact, 2019 was our hottest ever year by quite a long way, beating the previous record, which was set in 2013. Wow. We've been having heat wave conditions for the last couple.

couple of months and it's so dry in the east and the south that the fuel that is the vegetation which is very flammable anyway is incredibly dry the soil is incredibly dry that means that when air passes over the soil it is also very low humidity and together the heat wave conditions and the dryness set the scene that when we do get a spark and we have been getting a lot of dry lightning strikes we potentially create fires that are really supercharged and really cannot be controlled. Right. And you've worked in climate change for a good time. Do you feel like shocked or surprised by any of this by the current events there? I guess not surprised in that we've all been predicting these sorts of things for about 30 years.

The science has been saying this for 30 years. However, I have to say as a human and an individual living through it, the reality in front of your eyes is still a shock. Yeah, it sounds tough. I mean, give me an idea of the scale of this, because I know there's been bad fire in Australia before, the very deadly bushfires in 2009 kind of pop up to the top of my mind. Give me an idea of the scale. Well, the scale is like nothing we've ever seen in Australia. The 2009 fires that you mentioned were devastating, but they were quite localized.

Whereas what we've had for the last few weeks and in a couple of months is basically simultaneous fires at certain times in three or four states at once with hundreds of fires burning simultaneously. So you're an ecologist. Let's talk a little bit about how this is affecting wildlife. I saw the report out of the University of Sydney that states that about half a billion animals have been affected by the bushfires that started in September. But they're really only counting like New South Wales, so only part of Australia. And they're only really estimating mammals, reptiles, and birds. Is that right? Yes, that's right.

So it's an interesting ballpark figure just to bring home to people the scale of the devastation. But as you indicate, it's very much an underestimate of the ecological impact. The other reason, other than the fact that it's only New South Wales based and only based on the larger animals, that most people care about. So there's lots of other animals, of course, that have also been affected. What we can't really estimate at this point because it's still going is the aftermath of the fires

because, of course, those animals that have managed to live through them, whether they be underground or just lucky, will face a landscape with basically no food for the next months, if not years. So, you know, estimating the same, scale of that impact is almost impossible, I think. So I know there's some ecologists in Australia that are concerned that, you know, there's the potential for entire species to go extinct.

You know, Australia has some animals that either, you know, only primarily are found in Australia or are only found in Australia. Do you think, like, species extinction is possible here? Yes, I do. I mean, Australia, even without this event, has actually one of the worst rates. of extinction of any country, let alone any continent in the world. And we do have the record for the highest rate of mammalian extinction of any country. We have thousands of species that are found nowhere else.

And many of those endemic species are actually species that have very, very small home ranges, very small geographic areas. So they might only be found in one or two populations in a small area. Now, of course, if a fire goes through that area, it's very likely that we'll lose the species completely. So we don't know yet, of course, but I think it's probably very likely that several species at least will have gone extinct in the last couple of weeks. So, Leslie, these are the kind of things that you and other climate scientists and ecologists in Australia have been writing about, you know, kind of warning about for years. on a personal level, what is it like to be living that right now? Well, I guess frustrating doesn't quite come close to it.

I've been involved in climate change research for over 20 years, and for the last 10 years at least, I've been pretty heavily involved in climate change communication and advocacy through the Climate Commission and Climate Council and other bodies. So we've been talking about it for a very long. time. But I do think on the positive side, you know, one must look at the silver lining. You know, sometimes a catastrophe like we're witnessing can be a real tipping point in public perception and public outrage. And I'm certainly hoping that if nothing else, this

bushfire season will have changed the political landscape in Australia so that Australia will take more action at government level. The Australian public, of course, has been very concerned about climate change for a very long time, and that concern has been growing. Unfortunately, at least at the federal level, there's a mismatch between the public concern and federal action. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that, because obviously, you know, climate scientists see this as a climate story. Tell me a little bit about the people of Australia, about the government. You know, what are their views on this? Okay, well, climate change, you know, has been uppermost in Australians' minds for a long time.

A lot of people are making changes in their diets and active transport and other things. We're also seeing quite a lot of positive action at the local government and in some cases at the state government level, some states more than others. Where the big block is, however, is at the federal government level because for the last decade or so, we've had conservative governments that have really treated climate change as a matter of ideology rather than science. So how does, you know, not really accepting that climate change affects this extreme weather impact preparedness?

I mean, can we make an actual connection between those two things? Yes, I think we can because if there is a government view, and of course they're not stating this as a view anymore, but it's still there in terms of. of their inactivity. If a government can't accept the link between, say, bushfires and climate change, then the corollary of that is that they don't accept that this is an ongoing trend. And if you don't accept that things are going to get progressively worse, of course, it means you don't prepare for the future.

So, Leslie, I mean, do you think that this situation, these bushfires, like, are going to change Australia forever, like in a permanent way? Yes, I do. I do think it is a tipping point. It's, you know, Australians are pretty depressed right now. You know, we've been going around kind of half-heartedly wishing each other happy new year. And virtually every time somebody said that to me, they've also said, but it's not very happy, is it? And that's not because I work on climate change. I think this is really affected the Australian psyche. We know that the attention of the world is honest. I really hope that people don't go back to just what they were doing before. I mean,

I hope we can use this as a moment, tragedy though it is, to actually affect some real change in this country. Thanks to Leslie Hughes, Professor of Biology at McCory University in Sydney. This episode was produced by Brent Bachman, edited by Viet Le, and fact-checked by Rebecca Ramirez. I'm Maddie Safaya, and we're back tomorrow with more shortwave from NPR.