Backing a climate change culprit won’t work

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, hauled over the coals over lack of any action on tackling global warming, has backed the coal industry in his country, even as bushfires spread their dangerous tentacles. Coal is one of the fossil fuels that causes global warming.

Australia’s national carbon emissions are low compared with major polluters. However, its fossil fuel exports – mostly coal – account for an estimated seven per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

The opposition leader, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, pilloried Morrison’s “stubbornness” in refusing “to change course.”

“People are scared of what is going on around them. And if Mr Morrison thinks that there’s nothing to see here, it’s because he can’t see through the smoke and haze that’s been created by these bushfires,” Albanese said.

Morrison spurned calls for “reckless” and “job-destroying” cuts to the country’s vast coal industry. His conservative government has fiercely defended the lucrative coal industry in Australia, which produces a third of global coal exports and provides work in swing electoral districts.

“I am not going to write off the jobs of thousands of Australians by walking away from traditional industries,” Morrison told the Seven Network, in one of several morning interviews rejecting calls for further action.

“What we won’t do is engage in reckless and job-destroying and economy-crunching targets which are being sought,” he told Channel 9, responding to calls for more climate-friendly policies.

Morrison has been trying to stem the backlash over a Hawaiian holiday he took as bushfires ravaged an area the size of Belgium and unleashed toxic smoke into major cities.

Some areas of Sydney are set for “catastrophic” conditions. One person was killed in a car crash on Friday near South Australia’s capital city of Adelaide where an emergency warning is in place, though the precise circumstances surrounding the death is not yet clear.

Australia has been fighting wildfires across three states for weeks, with blazes destroying more than 700 homes and nearly 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of bushland.

The death of the two firefighters overnight when their fire truck was struck by a falling tree as it travelled through the front line of a fire brought the death toll in New South Wales to eight since the start of October.

Ten more firefighters were seriously injured on Thursday, with four in South Australia being treated for burns and smoke inhalation.

Searing heat and high winds are forecast, leading officials to urge people to evacuate their homes early if they live close to bushland.

Holiday plans have been scuttled, with national parks closing camp sites and the main coastal road linking Sydney with southeastern beach towns again shuttered due to the impact of fires.

Almost 200 homes have been damaged by fires in South Australia and New South Wales.

A Big Bash League cricket match in the capital Canberra was abandoned at the weekend because of toxic bushfire haze that left Australian Test bowler Peter Siddle needing treatment for smoke inhalation.

Bushfires occur frequently in Australia, but scientists aver several weather phenomena have made this spring-summer bushfire season among the worst on record.

Record-low rainfall, record-high temperatures and strong winds have made the situation more combustible, and according to scientists, are influenced by climate change.

But Morrison has insisted Australia will meet its 2030 emission targets.

Australia committed at the 2015 UN climate summit to reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

However, environmental activists say those targets are not nearly enough to help the world keep global warming at considerably safe levels.