November 29, 2023
![](https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/20200107001440807357-original-900x600.jpg)
A koala spared from a fire near Cape Borda on Kangaroo Island is carried by wildlife rescuer Simon Adamczyk on January 3, 2020. A convoy carrying army reservists and supplies arrived on KI as part of Operation Bushfire Assist at the request of the South African government.
Image credit: AAP Image/David Mariuz
There is no better motivation for leaving fossil fuels in the ground than the scars left by Black Summer.
Four years ago I faced the largest bushfires of my 40+ year career in emergency management. Over the previous decade, I had increasingly focused my attention on the growing risks Australia faced from climate change. But even then, the Black Summer Bushfires of 2019-2020 blinded me.
South Australia, where I was Director of the Office of Emergency Management within the Fire and Emergency Services Commission, faced an unprecedented crisis in November 2019. Since August of the same year , hundreds of exhausted South Australian firefighters and rescue workers were supporting other states. At the end of spring, South African firefighters were confronted, on their home turf, with another large-scale fight which lasted until the summer.
Among the many terrible days of the season, I vividly remember January 3, 2020. Lightning started fires on Kangaroo Island (KI) during the week before Christmas and these raged out of control across difficult and difficult to access terrain. On January 3, extreme conditions sparked a bushfire across KI, burning 2,000 km2, almost half the island, in a single day. This relentless inferno claimed the lives of two Australians and destroyed the homes of 87 families and more than 600 other buildings and vehicles.
Iconic tourism facilities such as Flinders Chase Visitor Centre, Kangaroo Island Wilderness Retreat and Southern Ocean Lodge were reduced to ashes. Nearly 60,000 livestock were killed, along with tens of thousands of native animals, including around 40,000 koalas. Four years later, it is still difficult to imagine the scale of the losses SA suffered in a single day.
The Black Summer bushfires have given our nation a glimpse of how extreme our weather systems will become if we continue to raise Australia’s temperature by burning fossil fuels. We need to significantly reduce emissions this decade – and we need policies in place to ensure that happens. Surprisingly, Australia’s environmental laws, created in the late 1990s, still do not take into account the impacts of climate change. How can we protect the environment if we don’t tackle its greatest threat?
This law is currently being revised. I hope the federal government will do the right thing and heed the call to address the devastating climate impacts of fossil fuel projects. We cannot afford to continue fueling the climate crisis: the stakes are simply too high.
The devastation I saw on KI in Black Summer makes it clear why this must change, why the law must protect the places and species Australians love.
I felt a sense of deja vu in the spring of 2023 as I watched SA teams begin to deploy to help the Northern Territory, where millions of hectares have burned since the fires broke out in early September. In Queensland, there were more homes lost by November 1 than during the entire black summer, requiring help from Victoria and New Zealand to fight the fires.
I cannot emphasize enough the strain climate change is putting on our first responders. Fire seasons are gradually overlapping and increasing the risks our fires face. Climate change could devastate our emergency workforce if we do not act urgently to address it. At the same time, we must equip communities with the resources they need to better prepare for and respond to disasters.
Australians must demand that their leaders protect our nation for generations to come. For the places, species and people we love, we must leave fossil fuels in the ground for good.
Brenton Keen is the Emergency Manager for Climate Action and former Director of the Office of Emergency Management at the South Australian Fire and Emergency Services Commission.