
Australia's severe wildfires were predicted by the government over a decade ago - stopads
https://www.newsweek.com/australia-wildfires-government-decade-ago-1481276
======
L_226
Yes, but this was the 2008 Rudd (Labor) government. The current Liberal
government has spent most of its time reversing all the previous Labor
policies it didn't like (like the carbon tax we briefly had) - which is
business as usual in Australia after a change of government.

I really want to do an analysis of the money Australia would have made from
that repealed carbon tax up to now, vs the total amount of all the recent
donations to the RFS (currently at like A$48 million [0]).

It really is shameful that a nation with one of the highest GDPs per capita is
getting donations to deal with a situation that was foreseen, and not just
ignored but had (potential) solutions that were actively removed.

[0] -
[https://www.facebook.com/donate/1010958179269977/](https://www.facebook.com/donate/1010958179269977/)

~~~
chrisco255
If you think carbon taxes are going to stop a 3 year drought from occasionally
hitting Australia, a region with thousands of years of documented dry spells,
I don't know what to say. We don't control the rain. The only sensible thing
Australia can do is prescribed burning and bush thinning.

~~~
L_226
Sorry let me rephrase, a carbon tax would have done these things:

\- reduced Australia's carbon emissions (not a massive deal by itself)

\- built up a public repository of cash that could have been allocated to
something useful, like funding the fire services

\- lead by example; we will now never know if Australia's leading by example
would have encouraged a wider implementation of carbon tax schemes and a
reduction in carbon emissions

You are correct that it would have not by itself mitigated the natural drought
cycle in Australia, however the opportunity to reduce the impact was lost -
and Australia is poorer for it.

Finally, I did not suggest that a carbon tax would have stopped these fires,
only that I would like to do an analysis between what the potential sum of
taxes would have been versus the donation totals.

Cheers.

~~~
0xy
Also, notably, it does nothing to impact arson rates - which are the primary
cause of the crisis.

~~~
lucy_gatenby
This is plain wrong and is misinformation.

[https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-
claims-...](https://theconversation.com/bushfires-bots-and-arson-claims-
australia-flung-in-the-global-disinformation-spotlight-129556)

------
onlyrealcuzzo
This is a large part of what the USDA and The Department of Energy do in the
US.

It's sad we live in a world where people would rather not know risks than know
them -- think it's worthless to find studies that determine these types of
risks that most people wouldn't think of, or know how to calculate, or what
would be intelligent things to do to prepare for them...

I guess if all you care about is the market going up, you're better off if
people know about less risks.

~~~
vmchale
> I guess if all you care about is the market going up, you're better off if
> people know about less risks.

It's even more crass: the interests of a few oil/coal companies allow us to
paper over the very real dangers of fossil fuels &c. to the detriment of
basically everyone in the world, every other industry.

------
clumsysmurf
I read somewhere between 480 million - 1 billion animals have perished,
especially the less mobile species like koalas.

[https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2020/1/6/21051897/austral...](https://www.vox.com/future-
perfect/2020/1/6/21051897/australia-fires-billion-animals-dead-estimate)

------
vmchale
Scientists have warned about this for decades, but they were smeared or even
harassed by bad-faith actors. I wish that those responsible would be punished
or at least demoted.

~~~
trhway
That really depends on what end of the climate change stick the country is at.
Such smearing/harassment has never been a thing in Russia/USSR. Back at USSR
in the middle school in mid-198x we were taught the scientific fact of human
caused climate change/global warming. The lessons were learnt well - these
days Russia invests all the way into the things like the new and increased oil
and gas production and builds up the new large fleet of ships and related
infrastructure - ports, railways, etc. - to ramp full scale up during the
coming decade the freight route through the clearing Arctic as that route is
shorter than through the Suez channel.

~~~
vmchale
That's true. Here in the United States scientists were sued for telling the
truth, which caused immense headache.

