Liz Fairley comments on Australians who choose to live in areas vulnerable to fire:
…to inhabit the bush, especially as climate change takes hold, is to make yourself fuel.
Certainly, we should feel compassion. And certainly, there should be regulations. Quite probably there should be more assiduous back-burning. But to blame green policies – to cull already endangered shark species, to reduce tree cover – is to blame nature for human folly.
Liam Sheahan might disagree she goes on:
Some have to live in bush, or swim at dusk. But bush suburbs and forested hamlets are voluntary, designed for the illusion of paradise on earth. It works, too, like any bubble, until it doesn’t.
Tim Blair contrasts her suggestion to avoid one voluntary life threatening risk to the numbers on a different one:
So they should live elsewhere; make different “lifestyle choices”. Farrelly is dismissive of tactics (“Cut the trees! Burn the undergrowth!”) that would reduce the risk of living in the country, preferring that people simply live elsewhere, contrary to their preferences.
Yet more than 6700 people died of AIDS in Australia from the beginning of the epidemic until mid-2007 – a far greater number than were killed in bushfires during the same period. Imagine if Farrelly had written in 1989 that those at risk of AIDS should stop being gay (“To inhabit the bath houses, especially as AIDS takes hold, is to make yourself HIV positive”). Instead, sensibly, medical and social solutions were sought (“Kill the virus! Use the condoms!”) in order to preserve human freedom and human lives.
Funny how numbers can put some things in perspective.
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