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Nonstop Wildfires Are Straining the Global Arsenal to Fight Them (archive.md)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I thought this bit made an excellent point

non archived link

It was around this time in 2020 that the US was helping Australian firefighters with a catastrophic surge of blazes during what became known as their Black Summer. If the same thing happens this year, both governments will be in an impossible situation.

Maybe not this year but one year soon this WILL happen. We voters aren't taking any of this seriously, so neither are our politicians... be prepared.

After literally going through Black Summer (fire all around us), we moved to a place of zero bushfire risk in rural Tasmania. Even smoke triggers my partner who fought in those fires for 4 months, no pay. Hard to pay the bills

I guess what we need is nuclear submarines /s

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I believe the majority of our growth comes from immigration. If we penalize Australian parents I expect business would demand the government offset a lower natural birthrate with higher immigration. Removing hard fought benefits for Australians would likely only make kids and parents lives miserable and create more inequality and social problems.

Developed countries tend to naturally adopt low birth rates even with fair allowances for parents and care givers as the financial and lifestyle sacrifices are still relatively large. The natural birthrate in Australia also gets a boost from immigration and would likely trend lower if we weren't running a huge pyramid scheme.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Australia alone cannot repeal those laws and expect to make a scratch if that. I was referring to every government across every jurisdiction all over the planet. I doubt that low birthrate would be seen as being so painful when businesses are not required to keep delivering growing profits every quarter.

No civilization ever studied is known to have survived its own localised climate catastrophe or some other catastrophe. Every one of them either perished or, accepted the limitations imposed by land, air, water and lived within those limits. We might want to look inside ourselves for refusing to accept this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Taking hard won gains from working people isn't going to be popular. Most developed countries like South Korea, Japan and part of Europe already have low enough birth rates already to the point of concern about sustainability of their aging populations.

Let's lift the poor out of poverty and give them access to birth control and social services so that they have choices and all the evidence suggests they will choose quality over quantity and smaller families or careers over large families.

Working people fought for centuries for the conditions we currently enjoy only to have them eroded by crap like the gig economy. We should not give up parental benefits as well. We should give up waste and extreme consumerism not nurturing families.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-calls-for-managed-retreat-from-beachfront-properties-20250124-p5l6xp.html

I see that the available land area is shrinking at an increasing pace. Pretty sure water resources are dwindling similarly too. I see zero reasons to so much as congratulate pregnancies these days. The gains, which are codified in laws in the form of rights, to me, look basically like promises made by lawmakers to their citizens. Lawmakers are people too. And people keep their promises on a best effort basis. With dwindling resources, I see the ability of lawmakers to uphold rights shrink and dwindle too.

Like I said at the start, verboten, and I'm fine being alone on this. Though would be good to have company.