Margi Prideaux’s urgent and excellent Fire: A message from the edge of climate catastrophe, was written in the wake of devastation. In the Black Summer of 2019–20, Kangaroo Island was one of many communities ravaged by unprecedented bushfires. Now, Margi advocates for communities and nature impacted by climate catastrophe.
In this guest post, Margi writes about the potentially grim future we face in coming years if current climate inaction continues.
Read her piece in full below.
Climate Betrayal
It’s the season of reckoning. Queensland shudders under the weight of two cyclones, Victoria fights wildfires, and Perth swelters under unprecedented heatwaves. And what do we hear from those in power? The same hollow call to ‘prepare’. These words aren’t just empty – they’re a damning indictment of our governments’ betrayals. In this era of climate chaos, our leaders show no foresight, no preparation, only a feeble reaction as society crumbles under the weight of their negligence.
The social contract, the very foundation of democracy, demands that we, the citizens, play our part: obey the law, pay taxes, and contribute to society. In return, our governments protect and serve us. Yet what we see is a gross violation of that contract. Our state and federal governments, deaf to our pleas, are leaving us to fend for ourselves against the relentless onslaught of climate-driven disasters.
The final text of the latest UN climate summit, COP28, now dubbed the UAE consensus, is nothing but a cowardly whisper in the face of a roaring climate crisis. Meteorologists have officially declared 2023 the hottest year on record. With El Niño’s ominous touch in 2024, global temperatures threaten to breach the 1.5°C threshold, hurtling our world further into the abyss of climate catastrophe. Amid wars, geopolitical upheavals, and the looming spectre of a second Trump presidency, Australia now grapples with escalating and overlapping climate-driven disasters, eclipsing what Europe has so far experienced. The country’s premiere science agency projections foretell hotter and more frequent wildfires, increasing droughts, declining snow depths, intense rainfall, and flooding events, painting a bleak future for Australians across the country.
Despite inquiries, reports, and scientific papers, new agencies with legions of staff, and contractors, Australia’s state and federal government disaster preparedness remains fixated on ineffective and shortsighted ‘education’ and ‘communication’. This isn’t resilience-building; it’s a setup for devastation – lives destroyed, nature obliterated, and personal and governmental costs soar. The neglect of investing in preparation for what’s on the horizon – in adaptation and resilience – betrays the social contract.
This is deeply personal. The Black Summer wildfires in 2019/20 ravaged my community. We lost everything – our homes, histories, health, and our mental, physical, and financial stability. We are still navigating the treacle of rebuilding our lives. The pain could have been averted if Australian governments had paused to think, to listen. They were warned then and dismissed the threat. They have been warned every year since. Even after subsequent and devastating floods, and wildfires, heat and storms, they are resolutely ignoring the urgent need for communities to adapt and prepare.
The new Australian Warning System has been roundly criticised by researchers and the media as a ‘dog’s breakfast’ and a ‘cock-up of massive proportions’. It painfully demonstrates how their strategy of education and communication is fatally flawed; warnings arrive too late, prompting reactions, not proactive preparation. And costs are soaring. In the US, 2023’s climate-driven disaster costs neared $93 billion for 333 million people. In Australia, with a population of a mere 26 million, current disaster costs already sit around $38 billion annually – more than five times per capita – are projected to soar to $73-94 billion by 2060. A Deloitte report from 2021 warned of a $1.2 trillion cumulative cost over 40 years, even with low emissions. A significant chunk of this could be averted with adaptation and preparation.
From the ashes of Black Summer, I drafted a wildfire preparedness funding proposal for my community. Nestled in a high-fire-risk region, our needs demand costly government applications and labyrinthine approval processes – more fire tracks and earth breaks, controlled burning, a community radio communication network, and permanent water filling stations for firefighting. Our highly praised proposal, lauded as a potential case study, has been denied funding five times over the past three years. Money is in the system, but it is being directed inward, building up agencies, policies, websites, and government staff. On paper, it looks like government investment is there. At the coalface, it is a broken contract.
In 2022, UN General Secretary António Guterres condemned the world’s ‘empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world’, warning that ‘we are on a fast track to climate disaster’. Australia is living that disaster now. For those who haven’t faced a firestorm or heat dome, the consequences are hard to grasp. People shy away from believing these ‘storms’ will trigger regional or even local social collapse, but they already are.
While the world bickers its way to net-zero, and 2024 menacingly threatens to tip too many balances too far, communities in Australia are being devastated by apocalyptic wildfires, catastrophic rain bombs, lethal floods and mudslides, and deadly droughts because governments have not invested in adaptation and preparedness. Australian governments have broken the contract with their citizens. Lives are lost, people abandon homes never to return. Nature is annihilated. Many communities won’t bounce back.
People can only be pushed so far. The ripple will become a wave. Soon, these isolated events will coalesce into climate fury. Soon that wave will become radical. If Australia does not empower communities to help themselves, it will face the wrath of communities scorned. It’s a lesson for the world.
About the author
Margi Prideaux, an author and negotiator with a PhD in global wildlife policy, shaped policy in dozens of international and domestic conservation processes before losing her home and farm to the Black Summer wildfires. She now advocates for communities and nature impacted by climate chaos. Her latest book is Fire: A Message from the Edge of Climate Catastrophe. linktr.ee/margiprideaux