Through the heatwave haze, the hypocrisy of Australia’s fossil fuel policy shines bright | Adam Morton

On Tuesday, Australia’s second-largest city experienced one of its hottest days since modern instrumental records began in 1910. Several Melbourne suburbs exceeded 45°C.

The country’s fifth largest city, Adelaide, reached this temperature on Monday. Its inhabitants then experienced their hottest night in their history, with a minimum of around 34°C.

Remote communities have been hit even harder. It was 48.9°C in Hopetoun and Walpeup, in north-west Victoria, and 49.6°C in Renmark, over the South Australian border. An out-of-control bushfire has burned in the Otways region, southwest of Melbourne, close to areas that faced flash flooding just two weeks ago.

So what, right? Sure, Australian summers can be brutal. We have been here several times. Rinse and repeat.

Well no. We know there’s something bigger going on here.

It is too early for attribution studies to examine the role played by the climate crisis, caused by increased amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, during the latest heatwave. But we have a pretty good idea of ​​what they’ll say.

Academics from World Weather Attribution have already published an analysis that found the heatwave that hit much of Australia in early January was five times more likely to occur now than before human-caused global warming changed the climate.

It is now a key part of the heat story across the continent and beyond. It is remarkable – and a victory for fossil fuel companies and special interests that deny climate change – that this phenomenon is rarely mentioned in the daily news of heat waves and other extreme weather events.

The study found that the heat that helped fuel bushfires that have burned more than 400,000 hectares (about 1 million acres) and destroyed nearly 900 buildings since January was likely about 1.6°C higher due to the climate crisis.

This more than offset the weak La Niña weather phenomenon which likely lowered temperatures slightly than they otherwise would have been. The heat would have been even worse if there hadn’t been La Niña and probably even worse if there had been an El Niño-enhancing temperature.

Fires linked to these heatwaves can be devastating, but the heat itself regularly has an even greater effect.

It disrupts lives and kills, but more discreetly.

The only time Melbourne was this hot was February 7, 2009 – nicknamed Black Saturday. – when the heat peaked at 46.4°C. Then the advance warnings – Victorian Premier John Brumby described it as “about as bad a day as you can imagine” in terms of fire risk – prompted our family to cancel our eldest son’s first birthday party at a nearby park.

We stayed indoors, where the floors of our second-floor apartment in a brick building in Brunswick were too hot to walk on without shoes. Outside, Lygon Street in the late afternoon looked like a scene from an apocalyptic melodrama. There were few signs of life on this usually busy thoroughfare, and the sky was a swirling orange-red tinged with gray. The wind sounded like the explosion of a forced-ventilation oven.

It took a few hours before we learned that fires had engulfed towns and communities without prior warning, causing an unprecedented death toll that eventually reached 173 people.

What is sometimes less remembered is the heatwave that tortured the city for the two weeks before that horrific day and killed twice as many people.

Temperatures topped 43C for three consecutive days in late January, buckling train lines, causing power outages and driving people from their homes in search of air-conditioned respite.

A peer-reviewed study later linked the heatwave to 374 deaths. Those who died were mostly frail and elderly people, less able to move or resist heat stress.

This kind of heat was truly extraordinary then, but not so much now. The World Weather Attribution study found that we should expect heat waves like the one we experience in January about every five years.

While a recent analysis by the Climate Action Tracker finds that global temperatures could reach 2.6°C warmer than average pre-industrial levels under existing policies, this would likely happen every two years. The norm, in other words.

What should we think about it? The obvious starting point is that limiting and responding to the climate crisis should be at the center of decision-making and national debate – for politicians, voters, businesses, communities and the media – which is still not the case. Preparing the country to face and survive inevitable and increasingly serious changes should be at the heart of this approach.

For decades, climate adaptation has been considered secondary to the need to reduce emissions (including by journalists – I’m as guilty of this as anyone). Warning and response systems for bushfires and other extreme weather events are much better than in 2009, but there is still a long way to go.

A national climate risk assessment released by the Albanian government last year gave a glimpse of what could happen, warning of “cascading shocks” to the financial system from climate-driven extreme events, illustrating the urgency.

This year is expected to see the development of a promised “action agenda” at different levels of government to transform a national adaptation plan – at the moment little more than an outline – into something meaningful.

This does not mean that reducing climate pollution should take a back seat. In 2026, it is increasingly likely that the focus will shift to huge domestic fossil fuel exports, an area where the government – ​​which says it is committed to trying to limit global warming to just 1.5C, a target that is fast fading – remains openly hypocritical.

Labor continues to support the opening and exploration of new gas fields that could be exploited for decades, including in the offshore Otway Basin, just south of where the bushfires are currently burning. On Tuesday, a report by Urgewald researchers ranked Australia at the top of a global list for planned expansion of metallurgical coal used in steelmaking. Thermal coal expansions still get the green light.

Anthony Albanese’s defense is that other countries are responsible for emissions released when they burn Australian fossil fuels.

But this is a constructed argument. This reflects decades-old carbon accounting rules, not an inherent truth. And international rules are, more than for a long time, up for grabs.

I wonder what people in Melbourne and Adelaide think this week about the government’s position. A few more days like Tuesday and it might be interesting to ask questions.