This is the first post of the year, and probably the last year of the blog. Hard not to be totally disheartened, firstly by events in the Northern Hemisphere, but mostly by the complete and utter ecological disaster in Australia. While it seemed that the fires in the Amazon region were bad, and the Brazilian reaction appalling, this is eclipsed down under.

I put Australasia in the title because the fires on mainland Australia are affecting the whole region. Certainly the smoke and haze has drifted across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. The remains of the Australian forests have landed on the South Island glaciers, and added to our own loss of alpine environment. And only the strong winds in the North Island prevent the smoke affecting the inhabitants here, at least the humans.

The Australian cataclysm is primarily that of the livestock and wildlife that have died in millions. Firefighters are trying to protect humans and their properties, but can’t save the animals, fauna and flora. The drought made it hard for farm animals anyway, but they were still being fed. The climate emergency that white Australia mostly ignores was already threatening wildlife and its habitat, but now it is being wiped out cruelly. Everybody knows about indigenous Australian species, especially the marsupials, kangaroos and wallabies, that can at least hop away to safety sometimes. The koala bears and wombats attract sympathy and are sometimes saved by humans, but what of all the other species.

The Australian Liberal Party was re-elected on an anti-environmental policy, and weren’t they proud of it. In the key areas of Queensland and Tasmania, where they would react to strong Green lobbying, the coal communities and loggers ensured that the Labor party lost the key seats that would have made the difference. The anti climate change brigade are still in full denial mode, and are currently blaming the ‘greenies’ for the extent of the fires, if not the cause. Inland Australia swelters in the heat of over 40 degrees celsius, and even the coastal holiday resorts are in peril, but the climate change deniers in the Liberal and National Parties claim it is the other side that are the ideologues. These gang of fools and right wing zealots still have a propaganda arm at Sky News Australia to dissemble.

Life in Australia carries on as normal. There are international cricket games to play, and an international tennis tournament to go ahead in Melbourne. The cricket tests were against New Zealand this year, the first time since the 1980s that our test team has toured in the holiday period, and played the Boxing Day test at the MCG instead of England. Our guys played poorly overall, and were affected by illness during the third test in Sydney. The Australians were as aggressive as ever, and continued to ‘sledge’ on-field, which is form of invective and swearing to intimidate the opponents, and trying to injure them. Not cricket at all, as played in other areas of the world, but the Australians always have to win.

In a previous post I criticised some of the reactionary policies of the Australian government, concerning refugees, and the deportation of petty criminals to New Zealand. All of these things have cost us, as does the upcoming trial of the Australian terrorist who killed 51 people in Christchurch last March. But since then a number of tourists have died in the White Island eruption, including Australians. Their politicians could have criticised the decision to allow tourist to go onto an active volcano, and right into the crater, when it seemed inherently unsafe. But any such criticism was moderated and efforts to assist the victims was the focus. So maybe there is still an underlying ANZAC spirit. In any case it is in our interests to send firefighters to Australia now, since the impact of the fires there are so widespread, but the environmental crisis is too far gone to change, even if the climate change deniers did not hold power in Australia.