I watched, only briefly, TV pictures of the annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display in Sydney. I’m not sure that firework displays work terribly well on telly and this one certainly didn’t work well at all. I guess, as with all such displays, you needed to be there. What I could not understand, for the life of me, was why the hell it was happening in the first place?
Whole sections of Australia are on fire. People have died, whole towns have been destroyed, the air quality in some parts of Australia has been so bad people have been wearing gas masks. And the politicians still want to set off some fireworks? Of course they do. As John Lydon once sang, “tourists are money.”
Australia has plenty of previous when it comes to the destruction of the environment, not least in the mountainous production of coal which continues unabated. With the continuing destruction of the barrier reef, pollution from growing gridlock in big cities, population pressures on the Australian coastline, declines in wildlife, the destruction of rural land and a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions you realise that, along with the disastrous ongoing drought, this is a country in a major environmental crisis.
Australia’s right wing prime minister Scott Morrison is a friend of the polluter, not the environment, but even he has had to bow to the overwhelming evidence that climate change is real, it is worsening and it’s man made. And he is so concerned, he has confirmed that his country will do nothing more to improve its dismal record in dealing with climate change.
Never mind. Millions love to watch the fireworks and all the ensuing smoke, adding to the smoke coming from its burning land, will continue to choke the lungs of Australia.
When the young Australians of today become the old Australians of tomorrow, what will they make of their parents and grandparents who sat back whilst the environment was destroyed? And not only that, deliberately went about having a firework display that added to the poor air quality and made things even worse?
