
A burning question about the bushfires
ArticleBeing Human
BY Simon Longstaff 16 JAN 2020
At the height of the calamity that has been the current bushfire season, people demanded to know why large parts of our country were being ravaged by fires of a scale and intensity seldom seen.
In answer, blame has been sheeted home to the mounting effects of climate change, to failures in land management, to our burgeoning population, to the location of our houses, to the pernicious deeds of arsonists…
However, one thing has not made the list, ethical failure.
I suspect that few people have recognised the fires as examples of ethical failure. Yet, that is what they are. The flames were fuelled not just by high temperatures, too little rain and an overabundance of tinder-dry scrub. They were also the product of unthinking custom and practice and the mutation of core values and principles into their ‘shadow forms’.
Bushfires are natural phenomena. However, their scale and frequency are shaped by human decisions. We know this to be true through the evidence of how Indigenous Australians make different decisions – and in doing so – produce different effects.
Our First Nations people know how to control fire and through its careful application help the country to thrive. They have demonstrated (if only we had paid attention) that there was nothing inevitable about the destruction unleashed over the course of this summer. It was always open to us to make different choices which, in turn, would have led to different outcomes.
This is where ethics comes in. It is the branch of philosophy that deals with the character and quality of our decisions; decisions that shape the world. Indeed, constrained only by the laws of nature, the most powerful force on this planet is human choice. It is the task of ethics to help people make better choices by challenging norms that tend to be accepted without question.
This process asks people to go back to basics – to assess the facts of the matter, to challenge assumptions, to make conscious decisions that are informed by core values and principles. Above all, ethics requires people to accept responsibility for their decisions and all that follows.
This catastrophe was not inevitable. It is a product of our choices.
For example, governments of all persuasions are happy to tell us that they have no greater obligation than to keep us safe. It is inconceivable that our politicians would ignore intelligence suggesting that a terrorist attack might be imminent. They would not wait until there was unanimity in the room. Instead, our governments would accept the consensus view of those presenting the intelligence and take preventative action.
So, why have our political leaders ignored the warnings of fire chiefs, defence analysts and climate scientists? Why have they exposed the community to avoidable risks of bushfires? Why have they played Russian Roulette with our future?
It can only be that some part of society’s ‘ethical infrastructure’ is broken.
In the case of the fires, we could have made better decisions. Better decisions – not least in relation to the challenges of global emissions, climate change, how and where we build our homes, etc. – will make a better world in which foreseeable suffering and destruction is avoided. That is one of the gifts of ethics.
Understood in this light, there is nothing intangible about ethics. It permeates our daily lives. It is expressed in phenomena that we can sense and feel.
So, if anyone is looking for a physical manifestation of ethical failure – breathe the smoke-filled air, see the blood-red sky, feel the slap from a wall of heat, hear the roar of the firestorm.
The fires will subside. The rains will come. The seasons will turn. However, we will still be left to decide for the future. Will our leaders have the moral courage to put the public interest before their political fortunes? Will we make the ethical choice and decide for a better world?
It is our task, at The Ethics Centre, to help society do just that.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
10 Comments
While completely unsure of the response I’ll get, I feel it is important to draw some attention to the First Nations use of fire to manage food gathering by burning small sections of the landscape on a regular basis.
We have a section of the community that wants to attribute near mythical Knowledge and outcomes to the process of “cold burning”. We can agree to the benefits and observe the outcomes. I think we can also agree, that in CONTEXT it has great merit. In the same context, we can clearly see that extensive, deliberate burning could not have taken place in the areas that have so savagely burnt recently, along the eastern seaboard and great dividing range.
I would contend that using fire to manage was common practice in more northern and central parts of the Australia, where we know it shaped the ecosystem and vegetation communities, for a purpose. Green pick after a fire draws in animals etc etc.
Rainforests, temperate or tropical, wet schlerophyll forests even, do not easily survive regular burning.
My contention is that if regular burning had taken place along the eastern extent of Australia, we would have a vastly different landscape. We would have more fire resistant, better adapted ecosystems and plant communities.
What is here, now, is in places far more dense than historical records would describe. We don’t know the exact mechanisms for the “thinning” of vegetation. It needs research.
Burning to reduce fuel load and to “manage” the landscape must have complete consideration of the CONTEXT. We should not be taking the use of fire to manage one landscape to another context without question, because it fits a romanticised notion of what is presumed to have previously been used. This would be inadvisable. I acknowledge the custodianship of First Nations peoples of our country and respectfully offer these observations.
No, we are not responsible for bushfires. Bushfires are a natural phenomenon. Simon Longstaff acknowledges that fact. We are responsible for exacerbating the frequency and intensity of bushfires in our land-management and hazard reduction failures, and in our failure to address human-induce climate change, i.e. global warming due to the emissions of greenhouse gases. Global warming is what it says. It is global. Australia generates only 1.3 percent of global emissions. To that extent, Australia is responsible for only 1.3 percent of the exacerbation of the frequency and intensity of bushfires attributable to global warming. The rest of the world is responsible for the other 98.7 percent. Wemust play our part in reduing emissions. We must reduce our emissions to net zero, in line with the Paris COP21target, of reducing global emissions to net zero by 2050. However, in relation to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, our responsibility does not end there. Our climate change responsibility is two-fold. We must reduce our emissions to net-zero by 2050, if not sooner. That is the first ‘fold’. The second ‘fold’ is that the Australian government must take an active role internationally, at the UN, and at climate and economic summits, and in its dealings with major emitting countries, accrual and per capita, in identifying and implementing a process and timeframe for reducing global emissions to net-zero by 2050. That is crucial. To me that is the urgent and more important responsibility. That addresses the major cause. Resilience, and adaptation are necessary. But addressing the cause of global warming is an imperative that our government must address as a matter of urgency. Madrid CCOP25 and the Davos World Economic Forum demonstrated the appalling failure of the Australian government to even acknowledge that in Australia’s interests, and the planet’s interest, it must exercise its responsibility as a global participant, and as a wealthy developed nation, in ensuring that global emissions are reduced to net-zero by 2050. To me, that is our real ethical failure.
ReplyClive Hamilton in his book “Defiant Earth” wrote ,
“What kind of creature interfered with the Earth’s functioning and would not desist when the facts became known.”
Surely our politicians need to consider the ethics of their present relative inaction on climate change policies in relation to future possibilities. Does ethics always have to take second place to economics? Still… most elections are won on more immediate economic outcomes than say some long term policies which the opposition put forward. One of the hardest jobs…surely it must that of our climate scientists who are a group of people who would wish their findings to be otherwise.
I CARE! I have been trying to the best of my ability to reduce my footprint since installing solar hotwater in 1998. And I take responsibility (with those many organisations that I help) in failing to get the message “out” before the last elections as to how very important it is to reduce our emissions to help save our planet from uncontrollable changes in the patterns of the climate. That we do not listen to our scientists and people who have saved us from bushfires for decades is astounding. How well educated are we Australians to not question ALL the information that is thrown at us? Australia has changed forever – this is the biggest change since the arrival of the first fleet which was not nearly so “severe” and far-reaching to start with. I am so angry with our current government who are still not doing anything – judging by the criticisms of the various charities “for not doing enough” yesterday it seems that they(the charities) have been left with the whole responsibility of “fixing” the current and ongoing disasters.
ReplyWe humans are masters of deflecting anything we don’t like, that fears us, in fact most everything we don’t understand – to remove any sort of responsibility.
There is no doubt that our ethics are poor to non-recognised at all.
It is so easy to ‘blame the government’ or others, so long as it is not ME.
No doubt we [that is all of us] need improve our ethics by taking responsibility for others. Those humans in need, for all other species, from large fauna eg whales large flora like trees to the most minor eg insects. And, for the environments each depends upon.
Good ethics ensures we, you and I, CARE.
ReplyHumans have always striven for a “better world”. We are not the first to do so. But what is “in the public interest” will always be a matter for debate, and politicians must weigh up all the different interests in a society. To dismiss politicians as putting their own “political fortunes” ahead of “the public interest” is a trite sweeping statement that does not help the debate. It perpetuates the “them and us” dichotomy where those who disagree with your idea of “the public interest” are demonised.
There are always different views on “the public interest”. For instance, while back burning for some is important to control fires, for others it destroys important habitat of threatened species. Or, while setting high targets for carbon dioxide emissions is seen as vital by some, it has serious effects on the livelihood of others.
So what is “in the public interest”? In our democracy politicians put forward their programs and the public decides which program they prefer. So the government of the day, elected by the majority of the public, presumably represents the “public interest”.
The argument must be about determining, through debate and persuasion, what is in the “public interest”, rather than starting with the claim that we already know what that is.
I don’t feel directly responsible. I did not vote for the current government. I also have been a long-time believer in climate change which I have felt personally since my early teenage years and I am now over 60. I do believe that lack of leadership, irresponsible government and an obsessive governmental focus on the economy rather than society and the environment have all contributed to our current situation. I am at a loss as to why we have had to end up in this predicament. The fact that we still have climate change deniers in our federal parliament astounds me. They must be very dumb!
ReplyGreat Insights Simon, thank you for your measured intelligent synopsis and foresight. Anna
ReplyYou’re quite the wind bag aren’t you? What’s your point and what do you propose exactly. I don’t see why it obviously involves ‘ethics’ either. Anyone can complain about how things didn’t work out well, doesn’t solve much though.
ReplyHello Ian NoName,
you perhaps should read the article mentioned at the foot of the comments – “How to respectfully disagree”.
Reply
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