Bushfires and fuel reduction

[David]

[stui magpie]

I live in the bush with a State park backing onto our our backyard, it desperately needs a controlled burn and has so for many years. I am not blaming the Greens as why this has not been done because they have no influence to stop this! I know this because I have been asking this to be done and the answer I get is that it is on the list to be done (2 years ago) but they haven't had the time and resources to get it done safely. It seems that the easy answer is to blame the Greens! I am so over all the hate that the Greens get and I try not to respond to the dickheads who presume they know it all!

Where did I blame the Greens?

[think positive]

No one here blaming the greens,
Blame whoever is stopping the fuel reduction burns,probably don’t want to spend the money, false economy.

But the coal miners are not to blame either

[pietillidie]

[KenH]

I live in the bush with a State park backing onto our our backyard, it desperately needs a controlled burn and has so for many years. I am not blaming the Greens as why this has not been done because they have no influence to stop this! I know this because I have been asking this to be done and the answer I get is that it is on the list to be done (2 years ago) but they haven't had the time and resources to get it done safely. It seems that the easy answer is to blame the Greens! I am so over all the hate that the Greens get and I try not to respond to the dickheads who presume they know it all!

Where did I blame the Greens?

I am talking about the constant posts on facebook and the like constantly blaming and abusing the Greens, unfortunately the hard left side of the Greens makes it easy not to like them so as to make the rest an easy target.
Nearly all the complaints about fuel reduction gets put on the Greens and seems like the Libs and Labor are happy to let this happen.

[Pi]

More firefighting aircraft might help a whole lot:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-15/ ... s/11705502

"This year, nine large helicopters and seven fixed-wing aircraft have been contracted from the northern hemisphere, but only half have arrived in time for NSW and Queensland's devastating fires."

We shouldn't be 'borrowing' stuff, it should be available as a permanent asset with local pilots who can fly the terrain blind folded.

Where do we get the funding?
right here!
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/nationa ... ters-cost/

If I voted some lame ass out of office 30 years ago I shouldn't still be paying for it.

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

I live in the bush with a State park backing onto our our backyard, it desperately needs a controlled burn and has so for many years. I am not blaming the Greens as why this has not been done because they have no influence to stop this! I know this because I have been asking this to be done and the answer I get is that it is on the list to be done (2 years ago) but they haven't had the time and resources to get it done safely. It seems that the easy answer is to blame the Greens! I am so over all the hate that the Greens get and I try not to respond to the dickheads who presume they know it all!

Where did I blame the Greens?

I am talking about the constant posts on facebook and the like constantly blaming and abusing the Greens, unfortunately the hard left side of the Greens makes it easy not to like them so as to make the rest an easy target.
Nearly all the complaints about fuel reduction gets put on the Greens and seems like the Libs and Labor are happy to let this happen.

fair call on both counts.

It's not the Greens political party, it's generally well meaning but misguided people who would refer to themselves as Greens.

And yeah, why would the Libs or Labs disagree.

[think positive]

you can blame any corporation for the tax thing, why just coal miners? partly?
lets talk about partly.
partly to blame, choosing to live in the bush and not choosing to be prepared, there are guidelines, you only have to drive around and you can clearly see properties that are not following them. My sisters just removed a bunch of trees in order to pass council regulations to build their replacement house, which has been torn apart by a tornado and then another storm. that house was there for probably 60 plus years with trees far too close. Drive through the bush, along the coastal road, its ridiculous, round the back of Lorne, there are streets you would never get out of. Driving down the dirt track to their property their are massive branches overhanging, a truck that removed the debris from the storm could not get down there, how would fire trucks? the trees are on the council part of the road, so they are not allowed to cut them back.
Now lets talk about insurance. Dont drive a car unless you can afford to insure it, dont live in the boondocks unless you can afford the insurance, and dont build there unless you can afford to build to the required, or above the required BAL requirements. And no its not everyone, but its far too many.
Ive argued enough about the land preparation, fire roads, back burning, apparently it was too dry in winter, bullshit, find a way. they do up north. Im not going into the politics of it, i really dont give a **** which party says what, or whos fault it was. Who ever gets to make the call should be put in jail, and for Gods sake listen to the indigenous experts, who are crying out to be heard. Read the land. its not brain surgery. Stopping cows from free ranging in the national parks, worrying about wild flowers, and yes baby birds, they will find somewhere else to nest.

stop making excuses and be prepared.

my donations have gone to emergency services and animal rescue. They did not make the choices.

and for (mates with) sake, heed the warnings and get the hell out of there, NO-THING is worth dying for. NO-THING is worth the lives of the CFA etc trying to save you while you save your bricks and mortar, or your boat.

save the political one upmanship for later, right now, Go Koala Man!

[pietillidie]

^No real disagreement on the idiocy of building under eucalypts; it ought to be illegal. But whataboutery won't do where the giant toxic mining squid is concerned.

I think you've forgotten about the mineral wealth windfall tax, or whatever it was called, and efforts to implement an ETS or a carbon tax. Two taxes explicitly concerning fossil fuels mining, on top of the usual avoidance.

Moreover, most industries do not dump enormous toxic externalities on the country, and most industries are kept in line by much truer competitive market conditions. Mining relies first and foremost on intransparent deals with thugs, crooks, dictators and terrorists to secure land and mining rights, and undermine environmental law. It's a filthy industry in every sense of the word right across the world.

[stui magpie]

Without going off track, has anywhere actually implemented a robust ETS that isn't full of loopholes?

I don't trust any government of any flavour to do that, as soon as you allow offsets you create a cottage industry of shonks.

[pietillidie]

^There is a strong argument that you actually need to excite a cottage industry to get the momentum. Plenty of industries are legislative cottage industries, such as accounting, law and flight safety, and society is still somehow built on them.

The EU scheme seems to have gone okay. From what I can tell it's the first major global effort, so everyone is watching it. But if enough people are on board already a tax would probably suffice. Perhaps like any tax now it will need to be significantly transnational to work properly.

The windfall tax was simple enough, though, but the giant squid still managed to kill it off.

[stui magpie]

Sorry, I wasn't clear on the cottage industry.

When there's an opportunity to make good coin for little effort, such as setting up shonky carbon offset credits to sell, people do it and others will buy them.

Net impact means that polluters still pollute but can point to their offset credits (which have zero environmental impact) to show how well they're going.

[Wokko]

That's the shit Turnbull's kid was neck deep in while Daddy was pushing for carbon offsets and ETS. Climate economy is just a big wealth redistribution scam, from the middle class of Western nations to the wealthy elites and the 3rd world corruption factories.

[stui magpie]

Nice article in todays Aged.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... VUCZmOkJF4

Few selected snippets

National parks and state forests will be targeted in a major new federal effort to conduct more land clearing and controlled burn-offs under an approach that could shame the states into stronger action.

The Morrison government will heighten pressure on the states to intensify their programs to lighten the fuel load in parks and forests before the peak bushfire season, but has stopped short of more drastic intervention.

Good.

Victoria’s former fire chief Craig Lapsley said fire intensity had increased in the past two decades amid a changing climate and more extreme weather conditions and this current crisis was a "watershed" moment.

Mr Lapsley, who led the recovery after the 2009 Black Saturday fire, said the way state governments had managed the bush had changed in the past 70 years because of society’s conservation and environmental values.

well maybe it's time we changed back

“There’s obviously been a change in the logging industry. The bush is not being logged to the same extent it was," Mr Lapsley said. "There’s been a change in the amount of fuel ... more fuel levels and a changing climate and changing weather on top of that. These are things our values have demanded, but it has created the situation we are in now. We need to talk about how we manage."

Damn straight. Hotter drier climate with more fuel than there used to be, the result is pretty clear.

In 2010, the Black Saturday bushfires royal commission recommended Victoria undertake at least 385,000 hectares of planned burning a year. Last year there were 74,000 hectares burned off. This year there were 130,000.

No where near enough. But I'm sure there will be valid reasons

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said public safety had to come first in hazard reduction.

“It's becoming harder every year to find enough days where it's safe to do burn-offs, to get anywhere near the amount that there was found back through the royal commission more than 10 years ago," Mr Andrews said.

Nope, just bullshit excuses. There's plenty of days where the burns can be done, look at the WA model, plan it and resource it properly and teach them how to do cool burns rather than northern hemisphere style burning.

If people want to live near the bush, they can either get used to some smoke during Autumn or see it all burn and lose their house in Summer

Bushfire expert Ross Bradstock told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last week that spending on the work needed to jump to $500 million in NSW alone to keep up with the growing bushfire threat.

So? How much fkn money does it cost to fight fires like these? Spend more on prevention you don't have the same level of disaster.

Mr Morrison said his comments about hazard reduction had been in response to questions and reflected what he had been told on the ground in East Gippsland and elsewhere.

“It would be no surprise to anyone who is closely associated with this that that is a matter that I would say has been most commonly raised when I have been out and about,” he said.

Absolutely. No more excuses about being too busy or not enough resources or even worse, doing partial burns and fudging the figures as was shown to have happened during the Royal Commission which is actually worse than not burning

Natural Disaster and Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud has set up a federal inquiry into the issue, in an exercise that is expected to hear intense debate between environmentalists and others over controlled burn-offs.

With all respect, phuc the environmentalists, give them a wet hessian sack and a bus ticket to where the fires are and invite Indigenous representation in instead.