One of the takeaways of all this that the world should acknowledge and consider is that climate change will bring fires to areas that don't normally burn. So people in, say, Oregon and Washington states may consider yearly fires to be a California thing, but those old rules no longer apply.

If there's a positive in this, it may be the wake up call Australians needed - maybe. I still wouldn't underestimate the capacity of at least half the population to not give a fuck or to spitefully wish to inflict disaster on future generations - kind of 'I'll be dead anyway so fuck it - let it burn!' attitude - especially with government members showing leadership like this:

“To try to make out as some politicians have to hijack this debate, exploit this tragedy and push their ideological barrow, that somehow or another the Australian government could have done something by reducing its carbon emissions that would have reduced these bushfires is just complete nonsense.” (Craig Kelly, government MP - from the Liberal Party, which is the supposedly the more moderate half of the Liberal/National conservative coalition government)

Typically, people like this say the problem was 'we didn't do enough fuel reduction burns'. This annoys the shit out of me on many levels, most of which i've discussed before. In their minds - and it's not just some dickhead politicians - they have large supporter bases - the overriding problem is trees. Get rid of all the trees and we won't have bushfires. We won't have a planet of course but at least we won't have bushfires.

Equally frustrating is the dearth in charismatic leaders on the environmental side of politics that have the ability to sell the 'save the planet' message to the public. The main flag bearer appears to be Greta Thunberg - unfortunately she's still too young to run for office